#idk i just think it's wild how two terrible points in house's life have some connection to Bathtub

[marc--chilton]

oh fuck ow ough. do you guys think after the infarction house Struggled with baths for a while. like he has bathtub baggage already. it's vulnerability that can be used against him, he's cornered, it hurts, and isn't it so shameful to be terrified of a bath at his age?

delirious with pain and to have a bath suggested to him to help, and all he remembers is ice and john watching him with disdain before he left greg locked in the bathroom to suffer alone

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

[dirtycccat]

the demon bros + (un)dateables  drunk

tw for drinking so if you’re not into that yeah be warned. also there’s some mentions of horniness because uhhh,,,ya know

 Lucifer

normal soft drunk

it’s neither too easy nor too hard to get him drunk

also his drink of choice is probably wine really really expensive wine

he has a pretty high tolerance but not as high as his party animal bros

since it looks like he drinks pretty often if you look at all the alcohol in his  mancave  study

it’s canon he’s a soft drunk??? which,,,, cute

but also chaotic af

i feel like he just reverts to angel lucifer? the really cute innocent baby that’s also very, very chaotic (think of lesson 37+ luci which i only saw screenshots of but still)

expect him to do a 180: if he’s a stern emotionally constipated dad sober drunk luci is basically him with 0 filters but a lot of emotion

he’ll make weird dad jokes, tell people he cares about them, ask dumb dumb questions that he thinks about daily but never voices

“ok mc but what is lol actually and why does levi say that all the time. wait why are you laughing… lots of love? ok then I send you lol”

prefers to drink with close friends and family only because he knows how he gets when drunk

will not admit it but he enjoys being able to feel so?? free and say whatever he wants since he feels like he can’t normally

Mammon

heavy weight hyper puppy

he has a pretty high alcohol tolerance probably since he’s into partying

also he knows his limits because of past experiences

but sometimes limits are made to be broken

and once they’re broken oh boy

drunk mammon is just him but hyper

or more like even more hyper

i feel like he’d become as excited as a golden retriever on redbull in the first 4 hours

dancing with everyone, making crack jokes, getting into weird situations

and then if he drinks a liiitle bit too much

he’d just break down

and cry

and be an emotional mess

which ends up in him crying over your/ his bros’ shoulder telling everyone he loves them

and then end up falling asleep

so you have to take turns carrying him to bed and make sure he’s safely tucked in with a glass of water close by

you don’t mind though since usually he makes sure you get home safe when you go drinking 

Leviathan

heavy weight emotional drunk 100%

another boy that sleeps near a bottle of alcohol so he probably drinks regularly

if you’re in your room all day it’s pretty easy to just do it since you’re safe so he does it whenever he feels like it

this jealous boy can fake being chill while sober but once you get him drunk expect tears, angry rants, yelling, semi-public mental breakdowns

you always end up having to put him into bed while he cries on your shoulder all the while you try to lift this surprisingly heavy boy into his bathtub bed

but also since he’s the most artistic of the family I bet sometimes he does art while drunk?

you once went to his room trying to return a manga you took and oh no levi is painting a 2 meters ruri mural while he’s in the nude

don’t question it it helps him concentrate

sometimes sad bitch energy mixed with alcohol equals great things

he’s also in the lowkey horny drunk category

what can you do it happens when you’re a touch starved nerd,,, all alone in your room,,, drinking

 Satan

light weight happy drunk

two glasses of wine and he’s gone

remember like all cards with satan drinking? yup he’s a happy drunk

if sober he’s like ugh partying is for nerds

drunk satan just wants to party with everyone

and vibe

he’ll invite everyone to take group shots, dance all night, do weird shit that ends up being photographed (to his next day hungover dismay)

he’s terrible at club dancing but he will be found in the middle of the dancefloor going wild

expect embarrassing dancing at first

but if you want to correct him he won’t say no to dancing with you more,,, intimately

may or may not grab your hands and start waltzing at some point though

(you think it’s great he’s so happy and free so it doesn’t matter)

  Asmodeus

heavy weight horny drunk

has the highest alcohol tolerance since he’s the party animal of the family

lmao what did you expect

drink of choice is probably devilgrammable cocktails: fun, sexy, colorful just like him

he’s the definition of babe let’s drink so we can have wilder sex

loves how oversensitive he feels while drunk??? and how his senses get overwhelmed

will moan out loud if he bumps into a table while drunk no shame, no regrets

and dance really lasciviously with whoever catches his eye

if you’re romantically involved not only will he grind into you or let you do so with him

but expect lap dances

if you surprise him with lap dances instead expect to be,,,, rewarded wink wink

but if you do something meaningful for him or give him tthoughtful compliments 

he will go into his emotional mode and literally hug you and never let go 

...and you’ll have to spend your night in his arms while he tells you all about how he thinks you’re perfect for him and how thankful he is that you’re in his life

expect some tears in those moments (that he tries to hide while you casually pretend they’re not there in the first place)

Beelzebub

 idk normal tolerance and emotional drunk

since he’s HUGE it’s probably not super easy to get him drunk but also since he doesn’t really drink much it’s not hard either

talks about issues and cries

a lot

so he doesn’t drink all that much

and only does it with his family

him and belphie always end up cuddling and falling to sleep together if they both get drunk since they are both emotional messes when alcohol is involved

and you join them too if you’re drinking with them

Belphegor

heavy weight emotional drunk but on the angry side

like his twin but he probably...drinks more?? he’s such a sad bitch I mean c’mon

like his bro he’s an emotional drunk

sad crying, angry crying, just crying

that’s him that’s what you get into if you tell him to drink with you

will get in the stabby mode if too drunk

so don’t let him drink too much if you value your and his life  

...rather cuddle him until he gets too comfy and warm and falls asleep 

works every time

Diavolo

normal tolerance sleepy drunk

is used to drinking because of social gatherings and high class etiquette but he doesn’t indulge often

since he mostly drinks with luci, barbatos and you

high key prefers sweet cocktails instead of normal fancy drinks

i bet if you took him to the club he’d want to try out the weirdest most colorful cocktails

and then make barbatos redo them

can hold his liquor but he’s still a sleepy boy? like alcohol probably calms him and he’s just so comfortable and at peace he just,,, naps with his head on your shoulder (or luci’s, or barbatos’ depends who he’s drinking with or who’s closest to him at the moment)

if he’s in the club though it’s a different story

he goes full dad mode

doing all the embarrassing dad dances but proudly

remember the meme with prince william or whatever in the club? that’s him

A+ for effort though he really becomes the life of the party

 Barbatos

heavyweight vodka aunt

doesn’t really get drunk drunk since he has to take care of diavolo 24/7

but once it’s self care day

oh boy

he turns into a single suburbian mom

you’d think he’s the sophisticated wine mom but oh no

closes all doors and windows, puts on a hot bath with scented oils, lights candles, plays soft jazz in the background

and then drinks straight liquor out of the bottle

(like that one vine)

if you’re close and drink together he’ll also talk a lot more than usual

and give you fun stories about the bois and diavolo

“mc did i tell you about the first week lucifer and his brothers came to the devildom and had to cook for themselves for the first time in their lives? lucifer did not know how an oven works and that you have to close it after you’re done cooking and almost burned the whole house of lamentation down.”

 Simeon

light weight spaced out drunk

do not give him alcohol unless you want to experience weird random xD simeon

physically he’s here, spiritually he’s astral projecting

looks the same, smiles handsomely, no change here

...but if you try talking to him he’ll say the weirdest shit like

“mc do you think that the stars know that they are loved and we watch them every day”

uh idk simeon??? what do you think???

if you’re romantically involved he will flirt shamelessly, even more shamelessly than usual 

because,,, he’s just more honest so he just says whatever

people get uncomfortable around you two and end up backing off and leaving you alone

surprising enough or not he looks like he’s also a lowkey horny drunk

ofc you can’t tell since he’s so chill all the time

but I bet you he’s horny inside hornier than asmo

Solomon

heavyweight deep drunk

this boy has done some drinking in his lifetime 

...since he has whiskey grandpa vibes

will say really out of the blue thoughtful things??? which is so not like sober solomon 

“mc you remind me of one of the people that meant the most to me they too were here for me and believed in me when no one else did and I have to thank you for that”

wow solomon that sure was random since you were talking about how cold it is outside before but thank you i guess

fakes being not drunk easily but you can tell the moment he starts speaking that he’s gone

also looks at you straight in the eyes when he talks to you

and sometimes starts giggling or blushing

which makes you go??????? solomon are you okay

[reversecreek]

pops hip n winks at the dash. haaaaiiii. me again. i’ve honestly missed playing lana fr a while she’s one of. my most treasured muses bc she’s jst a silly n vivacious ball of sunshine or alternatively? a train wreck depending on which way u turn her in the light..... i actually hv two playlists made fr her n one is rly old bt it’s more like. songs that Remind me of her which u can find here n then here is more like. stuff u’ll most often catch her blasting on her record player as she dances around in her underwear w the curtains open. OH and here is her pinterest 🍓⚡

* kristine froseth, cis female + she/her  | you know lana jameson, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, a few hours? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to play that funky music by wild cherry like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole cherry red gym socks worn with nothing else, doodling penises in the condensation of a stranger’s car window, a bumper sticker on the back of a convertible cadillac that says ‘scrappy doo is a filthy slut’ thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is june 2nd, so they’re a gemini, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nai, 24, gmt, she/her  )

HISTORY:

lana grew up in a big house in albany, NY. i picture it w dark oak floors n lots of light furniture. albums framed on walls. mayb some rolling stone covers too frm way bk when of the bands her dad’s label signed. kind of like… a rock star palace w no evidence of children at all. i think i described it best in one of lana’s self paras once when i said the garden ws “as big as it was unloved”

lana’s mum victoria (vic) ws a music journalist w a pretty fruitful career ahead of her when she met lana’s dad richard (rich). his record label ws jst starting out, founded on the coattails of his wealthy best friend’s (jensen peters) investment w his other best friend (who he jst calls knoxville). it rocketed to success when they signed poppy injects, a rock band w an electric stage presence, n vic ws drawn to the glitz n glamour of a man tht ws at the helm of his aspiring industry. their love ws very impulsive, all or nothing right frm the start, n it ws almost like she ws mre in love w his accomplishments n what he represented than him.

(DRUGS TW) anyway so jameson records repped a few rock bands bk in the eighties, altho poppy injects r who they’re mostly known fr, namely bc of hw brightly they crashed n burned. they were a big chart success bt the lead singer hd quite an intense struggle w heroin (wsnt rly subtle abt it either while he ws in the public eye as u cn probably imagine frm such an on-the-nose band name) n he ws always in n out of the papers. it eventually brought down his career n it ws a big publicity nightmare

lana pretty much… grew up around figures like this throughout childhood. real characters who wld kind of��� b extremely volatile n destructive abt their troubles. the jameson house was an open one as welcoming clients went n a lot of parties took place there. a lot of the time musicians wld b snorting lines in the kitchen when she wnted to grab a bowl of cereal fr breakfast n it was just. a very strange environment fr a child to grow up in. more zoo than home. more shaken snow globe than resting place. (END OF TW)

(ABORTION REFERENCE) her parents always kind of jst… didn’t like her much. her older brother caleb ws unplanned bt they sort of welcomed the surprise more bt… quickly realised they weren’t cut out fr parenthood n then when lana came as another surprise 3 yrs later they didn’t even try to hide their resentment abt the situation. her mum ws actually booked in to have an abortion bt cldnt go through with it at the last minute. once when lana ws a kid she asked her why she’s so cold towards her she jst turned her head frm her dresser, looked at her, told her abt this n said “idk why i didn’t go”. lana didn’t kno wht to say to tht so she jst left her room n closed the door (END OF REFERENCE)

(DISSOCIATION TW) bc of the intensity of her parents ignoring her growing up lana adopted this sense of like…. she didn’t rly kno what it ws bt it ws a delusion of sorts where she thought she ws a ghost bc she gt this strange outside feeling. she’d jst sort of… drift around the halls w no-one acknowledging her n sometimes she ws jst convinced she wsnt actually there or they cldnt see her n she ws jst haunting the house frm a previous family. (END OF TW) her imagination festered an explanation out of smthn she didn’t understand essentially. lana used her imagination to do this a lot growing up. it ws kind of like the band aid she slapped over everything. after all she wasn’t alone if she was sword fighting imaginary pirates dwn the hallway with a poker from the fireplace. 

the one saving grace tho tht sort of?? gt her thru this n made her feel Seen ws caleb. lana quite genuinely hs always thought the sun shines out of her older brothers ass like she jst thinks. he’s the best person in the entire world. wld b rly bewildered if anyone questioned tht. he wld always look out for her n cut the crusts off her sandwiches (he’d cook fr them most of the time bc their parents were too busy/didn’t care to) n sometimes wld even sleep at the bottom of her bed curled up like a guard dog. it ws always lana n caleb n his best friend tommy against the world in tht house (tommy lived next door bt was always over bc he had very strict parents tht he found suffocating)

(ARMY MENTION) SO when tommy announced tht he’d signed up to the army (bc of pressures from tommy’s military dad to fulfil some kind of stupid “legacy” tommy didn’t even care abt) n caleb said he was going with him lana ws understandably…….. completely blindsided. she ws rly upset tht they were leaving n was kind of like “wtf why are u doing this like what do u even think this is gna solve” etc n begged caleb not to leave her there on her own n jst to not sign up in general bc tommy had to bt he didn’t listen. 

ERM i won’t go into it but it didn’t turn out well as u can probably imagine bc the army is a terrible industry n caleb had to return home without tommy. he wasn’t the same after that. (END OF MENTION)

what’d been a rly close relationship before where he ws basically like a surrogate father figure to lana was Not there any more. he ws rly withdrawn n always pushing her away n snapping at her for the sake of getting her to leave him alone. on top of this lana had a lot of shit go down while he was away n rly just shouldn’t have been a kid alone in tht house. regardless lana thought if she kept grinning as wide as she cld she’d convince caleb to join in too. maybe if she seemed fine n happy he’d take the lead. maybe she’d believe it too n start to feel it n everything could go bk to how it was before her world became so different. lana liked the way the sky flipped when she tipped her head back on the swings bt this was different. everything was upside down bt this didn’t make her belly feel like she’d swallowed a butterfly and it wasn’t funny bt still, she kept laughing. always desperate to find something to laugh at n if she couldn’t find it she invented it. as long as ur laughing the world can’t b that bad.

she ws always well liked in school bc she jst tended to treat everyone like they were bffs no matter who like u cld have literally bumped shoulders w her once in the corridor n she’d be like OMG HAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII let’s kiss<3 n like she ws a huge notorious flirt w any n all as well as incredibly impulsive n jst. wild honestly to put it simply too bt things like. changed a bit frm 16 onwards. (HYPERSEXUALITY & IMPLIED TRAUMA TW) she jst became far more reckless honestly n like....... jst didn’t rly seem to care after a certain point abt herself too much.... got herself in a bunch of bad situations.......... kind of jst flung herself to the wolves numerous times without any caution abt the way they’d bite. formed a lot of self destructive habits one of which ws cruising craigslist personals fr random hook-ups n like. she literally cld have wound up in a ditch somewhere honestly it’s a shock she hasn’t. despite various dips n inclines in her journey navigating this side of her it’s very much still present in her life to this day n she struggles to kno hw to control herself at points. sometimes she feels like a melting candle tht needs moulding by thumbs until it can form a person again. sometimes she’s only sure she’s real when she’s being touched. (END OF TW)

ANYWAY. laughs nervously. went to college to study dance bc she’s always loved dance in general bt specifically ballet (despite definitely not hving the discipline for it) n honestly this was both good n bad fr her. had a whole string of terrible heartbreaking relationships bc she tends to fall into those hard n fast n they were w a lot of bad people fr like 98% of the time. she kind of learned more abt what love is during her time there tho which is a gd thing bt she still isn’t very good at knowing hw to believe she deserves it so it’s a process. she hd fun tho. threw 498572598475 outrageous n elaborately themed parties. ws friends w pretty much everyone on campus. 

despite a strained relationship w her brother n having to go home to visit n check on him whenever he got rly bad it ws the first time it actually felt like she’d found a home in a lot of rly loving n genuine friendships n lana will never forget hw much that experience meant to her even if she definitely struggled there too. college felt like a place she belonged n then suddenly she couldn’t belong there any more n there was a big sense of floundering in that. like where do u go now when u’ve never known home elsewhere? how do u happily go out into the world if it means leaving ur world behind?

she applied to a dance company in LA n fell in w a pretentious art scene there full of wannabe andy warhols n the like. became a makeshift edie sedgwick to some guy w dyed white hair n the idea his every concept was revolutionary when rly he jst shot her dancing barely clothed splashing around in a random fountain in his friend’s mansion on an ancient film camera. she’d spend her days floating around on lilo’s and prancing in feather boas and racing with glitter leftover frm last night in her leotard w smudges of faint red lipstick to barely make her job on time. always a sexy train wreck bt this time? make it hollywood. 

(IMPLIED ALCOHOLISM TW) i won’t lie to u lana hs always partied way too hard bt then partying way too hard turned into slurping merlot thru a crazy straw shaped like a flamingo at 4 in the afternoon wearing penis novelty sunglasses n it wasn’t quite so much of a party when u were doing it on ur own. this rly snowballed into place in college bt carried on n wound up getting her fired from the dance company bc she turned up to rehearsals drunk one too many times n they didn’t allow fr sloppiness like tht. it was a “professional operation” that didn’t “accept that kind of behaviour” bt lana was jst like ummmmmmmmm that’s totally dramatic btw way to spank me in the town square like i’m gale w a raw ass n back in the hunger games bt ok sure i’m out ig. BOOP! (literally booped the director on the nose before leaving) (END OF TW)

honestly hd no idea what to do w herself after her job fell thru in LA n was pretty embarrassed actually upon sobering up the nxt day. cldn’t bring herself to tell her friends for a hot minute bc she felt like a failure or smthn n she was meant to be living this glamorous life out there being the classic wild n silly n fun Lana Jameson. cldn’t figure out how to repackage it into a funny story tht wouldn’t worry ppl. eventually wound up jst caving n telling her closest besties (shoutout freya n rosa) bc she ws hving a weird time dating losers n randomly living in LA even tho she didn’t kno why she was there any more after losing the job n they were jst like. fk it then. jst come here. we’re in irving. and so? mizz jameson packed her bags....

PERSONALITY:

always smells vaguely of wild cherries or strawberry starburst or jst the candy aisle in general. if she ws a vinyl record she’d b this one n she’d only play good vibrations by the beach boys, dancing on my own by robyn, play that funky music by wild cherry, femme fatale by the velvet underground n (i can’t get no) satisfaction by the rolling stones

the jameson family r pretty well off n bc of her relation to such a big music industry figure she’s hung out w a fair few relatively high rep ppl thru her teens. mostly kids of celebrities n stuff like tht. she amassed a bit of an instagram following #nepotism bt also fr her style (v penny lane-esque in some aspects. lots of fur cuff trimmed jackets bt then also jst…. a wild combination of everything honestly. pastel faux fur coats, seventies style platforms, bright red cowboy boots, pink fishnet tights, holographic stickers of planets on her cheek n glitter used like highlight, 90% of the time a red lip) n bc she’s not gna make ur eyes bleed to look at or anything let’s b real

growing up lana was always a huge social butterfly. knew everyone n everyone knew her. she ws one of those girls tht ws kind of impossible to ignore or forget. very animated, always made u feel like u were the centre of the universe whenever she spoke to u, always made it feel like u were best friends even if ud only spoken to her once.

deliberately puts on tht kind of Magnetic Alluring Act tht femme fatales wear in movies w most ppl. kind of…. is always playing A Role of the person tht she wants to b seen as. hates being sad n always wnts to be happy / making ppl happy. chameleons to situations. feels like she’s performed as the vivacious n fun loving Lana Jameson fr so long tht she doesn’t rly kno who she is beneath tht bt she isn’t too keen to find out. sometimes gets glimpses n feels the urge to close her eyes.

she’s always been rly spontaneous n adventurous. always doing something weird n wild every weekend. she has ten thousand ridiculously absurd n chaotic stories. she’s like oh ya this one time this guy made me ride him with a daddy saddle like i was woody and he was bullseye. he literally made me call him bullseye. or she’s like. oh ya once i had to run barefoot thru a cabbage patch bc this one farmer wanted to have a threeway w me n my friend tht we met off craigslist n every framed photo in his house was a pig dressed up in cosplay bt honestly they were kind of cute n he was sexy aside frm the murderous vibes n the fact he kept calling me babe which i’m pretty sure means he wanted to dress me up next bt like whatever honestly.... she tells jst the most batshit stuff n the person she’s telling it to is left blinking like. wtf.

uncontrollably flirty. insanely confident. cld make a joke out a paper bag n will try. she tends to laugh when she feels like crying n has a smile brighter than a ray of texas sunshine.

likes to roller skate n hs a red pair she’ll glide around in at night lit up by amber street lamps breath sticky w the taste of wine n lollipops probably heading to a random hookups. who needs ubers?

always dapples her fingers thru the breeze when she’s driving in a car w the window down. honestly likes dangling her whole body halfway out too. she almost always has some sort of sweet on her, whether it’s sour haribo cherries or strawberry lollipops.

luvs bowie (ONLY aesthetically) n prince (wholeheartedly) n madonna (completely) n anyone tht’s a vintage style icon w little care fr what ppl think.

daisies n poppies r her fav flowers bc daisies r wild n overlooked n poppies r the first thing u look at in a green field. she’s had like 8472493874 ‘relationships’ n none of them hav lasted beyond a month / hav been terrible / hav seen her being treated badly / she’s cheated on them. honestly it’s like a burning train wreck but u can’t quite tear ur eyes away. often the heart of many sordid gossip scandals.

PLOTS:

TBA bc she’s only jst arrived in town i won’t lie to u all but i’m gna whip things up on here anyway n link in chat w updates at some point........ that said? lana is insatiable n it isn’t rly unlikely tht she cld’ve bumped into ur muse in a grocery store aisle n somehow a wild spontaneous adventure spawned frm that alone.......... if u have any immediate ideas we can discuss 😋

[writingwife-83]

My 2020 Sherlolly Self Interview

Thanks for organizing this fun activity @sherlollyappreciationweek! 🎉 I’ll start out with a very brief “about me” section-

I live in the northeast area of the USA, I’ve been married for seventeen years, have one teenage son, and I’m in my *gulp* late thirties now. I do volunteer ministry work and also work part time from home. Among other leisure activities, obviously I love writing! I started writing original fiction when I was a preteen, but I’ve been writing fanfic under the pen name “writingwife83” for over six years now. I discovered fanfic and the world of online fandom after becoming obsessed with BBC Sherlock in 2014 after s3 aired. I read The Full House, fell in love with the whole concept of fanfic, specifically for sherlolly, and couldn’t help but give it a go myself. And as they say, the rest is history!

Below the cut I’ll talk about some of the topics and fics suggested by followers/readers. Buckle up cuz it’s a lot lol...

Ok, first up to be kind enough to give me some feedback is @readstoomuch. You said- “what inspires you. Any story (I love them all!). Who do you love writing? Who is hardest for you? And which is that one story that you had fun doing?”

As for what inspires me, first and foremost it’s the show and characters itself. Watching those two on screen, it’s not hard to be inspired! But beyond that, I find a lot of inspiration in music and art, and just generally in other creative works and people. I think for a while I had my own internal inspiration and no lack of it, but as months dragged into years lol, I have found that the rest of the shippers are invaluable in filling the gaps when I lack inspiration and motivation. Some prompts I’ve gotten from others have taken on a life I never would have expected, and that’s pretty great. I honestly don’t think writing works best as a purely solitary activity. I know myself and although there is an aspect of my writing that will always be “for me,” that’s absolutely not all it is. It’s the fun of creating with others and it’s the fun of sharing with others.

As for who I love writing and who’s hardest, I think I’ve always felt pretty comfortable writing the main characters in Sherlock. I probably especially love writing Sherlock himself because he’s fun to break down and really dig deep into his emotions and thought processes. There have definitely been times some of the side characters have overwhelmed me and made me nervous about conveying their voices accurately. For instance, Mycroft can be tough if it involves pulling him out of his shell in a way that still feels believable and true to character.

That one story I had fun doing? Well there’s no way I can say just one. 😆 As far as reader response, there’s no other fic that can compare to the fun of I Told You So, that’s for sure. But as far as the actual plotting and creating, I think the fics I’ve had the most fun with are the multi-chapters I’ve done since becoming good friends with @thisisartbylexie. Having her as a sounding board, plotting buddy, and editor has absolutely increased my creating fun and has definitely also made me a better writer.

Thanks so much for asking @readstoomuch 🥰

Alrighty, @thisisartbylexie, you asked- if there's a fic that you ever wanted to go back to change in some way, which one would it be and why? Which one do you feel "oh wow, did I write that?" in a super positive way?

Idk how to choose just one fic. There are plenty that could use some changing lol! One I’d like to fix though, would be Pleased to Meet You. I know (because I’ve been told) that there’s inaccuracies in that one seeing as I’m not personally familiar with university settings in the UK. I did actually attempt research and I thought I got the idea, but apparently it didn’t work out terribly well. But the plotting and progression of that fic is one I’ve always been happy with, so I guess I feel like it’s a shame if it came off messy in some general ways and distracted from the rest of it. I like how I was able to weave that one into the canon of the show up to that point. And tbh it actually still fits as a uni backstory for them without any conflicts to the canon. As much as I enjoy canon divergence and AU, I also have a big soft spot for fics that simply connect seamlessly to what we’ve already been given.

As for “oh wow, did I write that?” I think one of my proudest accomplishments has been Zephyr. That fic kinda has it all lol. The tropes, the pining, the romance, the Victorian setting...ugh I love it. And there’s a climactic kiss moment in that fic that’s one of my faves I’ve written. I’m so glad I wrote it because of the Sherlolly Remix Challenge in ‘16, and at your suggestion, Lexie. But I will also be forever sad that I had to release that fic all at once on AO3 once completed. That fic would have been great fun to be writing and posting as I went along! And on top of being happy with the fic itself and how it came out, I’m awfully proud of the fact that you were excited enough about the fic to illustrate it, and that @goodshipsherlolly enjoyed it enough to record it as an audio fic. Honestly, what more could a writer ask for? 🥺

@mizjoely, you said you’d like to hear anything about The Queen’s Man. Okey doke, you got it lol!

I actually went back and read through most of that fic when I got this because it had been a long time since I’d looked at it. I gotta be honest that in hindsight...I’m a little surprised it did as well as it did.😂🙈 As some may remember, it started because I saw a magnificent manip and wanted to write something to go with it, and then because that was well received, somehow it just kept going. I did very little world building and development of characters in that fic. It was largely just one shippy, romantic, pining scene after another lol. At the end I did kinda tie it all in and wrapped the story up ok, but it was definitely one of those self indulgent fics where I didn’t feel like doing the hard parts and really just wanted to write the fun stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I loved writing it, and I’m so glad it got the positive reception that it did! But it just kinda makes me laugh because it goes to show sometimes you don’t know what’s going to do really well. You could agonize over clever plotting and world building and character development etc, and be so super proud of the finished product and all your hard work, but then you share and the response is like “meh.” And then other times you legit just throw something together with barely any careful thought, and the crowd goes wild! But aside from all that, the visuals in my head of that AU are just too drool worthy to me. Molly in Medieval royal attire? Sherlock in dark armor with a Purple Tunic of Sex™️ underneath? The two of them lingering in the dimly lit hallways and rooms of a castle and gazing endlessly in mutual pining? Yes to all.

Thanks for asking @mizjoely 😘

Ok wow, see what I mean? That was long! 🤣 If you read all the way through this whole thing, *Moriarty voice* thank you...bless you. Honestly, this ship is amazing and I don’t think I’ll ever have a writing experience anywhere else like I’ve had here. I’ve seen the other side of things in another fandom now, so I can all the more so confirm that there’s no ship quite like sherlolly. The warmth, reception, and longevity is mind blowing and I’m just awfully happy to have played a part in creating for the beauty that is Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper. 💕

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #341

“anger, misery, you’ll suffer unto me”

Would you risk your life to save a total stranger? I don't think so. Have you ever trashed your ex’s car after an argument? No, and I never would. Grow up. Have you ever done something because of peer pressure you are ashamed of? I don't believe so, no. Have you ever been embarrassed to introduce your parents to anyone? No. Would you leave a note on a car claiming responsibility if you damaged it? Yeah; guilt would eat me alive otherwise. Have you ever used someone's handicapped parking pass to get a parking spot? Fucking ew, no. Have you ever held back a well-deserved compliment because you were jealous? No. Do you guilt people into giving you what you want? Ugh, no. Would most people consider you better than average looking? Ha, no. For yourself, would you rather have a perfect body or high IQ? Give me the perfect body, living in my horrible one has affected my mental health badly enough. I'm fine with having a moderate IQ. I just want to feel happy in my own skin. Have you ever embarrassed some intentionally in public? Wow, no. Have you ever used a false ID? Also no. Are you embarrassed to tell people your job? I'm embarrassed to tell people I don't HAVE a job. Do you remember the first conversation you had with the person you have feelings for? I don't. I'm sure it was RP-related and not friendly, but I don't remember the exact convo. Have you ever got a D or F on your report card? I want to say no; I think the lowest I ever got was a C. If you had twins, would you give them rhyming names? Ugh, no. I'm sorry if you're into it, but I'm just not. I would want to ensure they knew their uniqueness and individuality was seen. Is there anyone that you wish was IN your life who used to be? There's a large number of those kinds of people. What brings out the worst in you? Probably when I'm building up towards a PTSD meltdown. I get VERY short and snappy and am convinced everyone hates and wants to leave me. My mouth also has NO fucking leash, and I know I can say very mean things that I'll regret later. What do you prefer, Skittles or Starbursts? Skittles. Mike & Ikes or Jolly Ranchers? Jolly Ranchers for sure. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter? Waffles (with syrup). Don't knock it 'til you try it, I'm telling you. What are some wild animals commonly found where you live? Besides birds obviously, there's squirrels, deer, opossums, raccoons... Have you ever had a lucid dream? I think I've had just one. What's your biggest problem at the moment? Probably my anxiety having stunted my growth in so many areas. Have you ever turned down a job offer? I don't think so, no. What's the longest hospital stay you've had? For what? I think my longest was almost two months for suicidal thoughts. Two months might sound long, but it was like... my third or so psych hospital stay for that same reason. What's something really basic that you're terrible at? Even the most simple math. I don't even know the majority of my elementary multiplication tables. Have you ever hugged someone for over a minute? Yeah. Would you ever get a tattoo on your collar bone? I have one there already, but I plan on getting it covered because it was an impulse tattoo that I feel no connection towards. Have you ever searched for your house on Google Earth? My old house, yeah. Are you a beach, country, or city person? Country. Living in the suburbs has definitely reminded me of that... Are you faster at text messaging or typing on the computer? Typing, by a long shot. I make typos texting too much. Have you ever kissed anybody who had a mustache? Yeah. Who is the last person that you said "I love you" to, besides family members? Sara. When was your first real relationship? Sophomore year of high school to early college. Have you ever cried over an ex? I've cried the entire mass of water on Earth over an ex lmao. Have you ever kissed someone of the same sex? Yes. Is there something really bad that you’ve done, that only YOU know about? No. Have you ever copied someone else’s homework? I think I have once or twice, but obviously with consent. What’s a hobby you would like to try out? If my legs worked like actual legs and I didn't sweat like an absolute pig, I would like to try out herping, but without actually interacting with the animal like picking it up and scaring the daylights out of it. I'd just be happy enough looking for reptiles, amphibians, and inverts to photograph instead. Does that still even count as herping? What was the last event you attended? My youngest niece's birthday party. How about the last event you organized? I've never organized an event. What’s something you get excited about doing and want to do it right away? Whenever I take nature pictures, I'm immediately keen to get them into Lightroom and do the postproduction. Is there anything you feel you’re better at than anybody else? Definitely not. What’s the biggest insect you’ve ever seen? If you exclude places like the zoo, that would probably be a rhinoceros beetle or something. Oh no, actually some kind of local moth I don't know the name of. They're beautiful big white boiz. How about the biggest spider? I might be mis-remembering, but I believe at a reptile convention I went to with Sara, one of the vendors had a goliath bird eater tarantula in one of the cups. I do know it was some tarantula species for sure, though. Who was the first person to break your heart? My dad. Obviously not romantically, but him just splitting on the family with no proper communication absolutely broke my heart for years. First person to give you flowers or candy on Valentine’s day? I'm sure that would be my parents. If you exclude them 'cuz that's kinda obvious, I believe it was Aaron, my first boyfriend. I'm pretty sure we were together on Valentine's Day, because I remember getting him a giant Hershey's Kiss. First band you obsessed about? I wasn't truly obsessed with any band 'til Ozzy in middle school. Can you do a backflip? No; I've never tried and never will. I was and still am too afraid of breaking my neck. Like I have a MASSIVE fear of paralysis, particularly from the neck down; that fear is actually the biggest one that keeps me from driving, fun fact. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Of the two, definitely a pessimist, but I at least think I align most with being a realist. What’s the biggest lie you’ve told someone? I'm unsure. Have you ever been hit on by someone of the same sex? Yeah. How many doors are in the room you’re in? Just one. Have you ever been engaged and broke it off? No. Has anyone ever drawn a picture of you? Tyler once drew a picture of him and me. It was cute. That guy still dove in WAY too fast. Have you ever dated a redhead? I haven't, but I love redheads. Natural red hair is just gorgeous. What are your thoughts on facial hair on guys? Historically, I seem to generally like some, but it really depends on the guy's general appearance. I can like none at all or a full beard and mustache, it doesn't really matter to me. Did you go anywhere today? No; my mom is in Florida with her brothers totally cleaning out Grammy's house, so she's not here to take me anywhere. Do you have any nieces or nephews? Oh yikes, I have a lot. I honestly can't count because I've lost track of how many boys and girls Katie has. You have a choice to shoot your father or die, what would you do? Jesus. I'd rather die; some things just aren't worth living after, and I'd have no desire to keep going if I killed my father. Did you ever cry at the end of King Kong? I've never watched it, actually, but I. LOVED. The video game. I haven't played it in years and only faintly remember how it ends, but I don't remember crying. Are you in any amount of pain at the moment? Quite a lot, actually. It's kinda a TMI subject so I won't delve into it, just know I'm hurting like a bitch. What was the last sugary thing you ate? I snacked on some chocolate chips earlier today... which I really shouldn't have done, but I think I had reasonable restraint and didn't totally binge. When was the last time you did something extremely stupid? Who knows, that's not a rare occurrence, it feels like. Have you been to any parties lately? Only my niece's bday party in February. Thankfully it was kept pretty small, given Covid; not that anyone in that family besides my sister gives a flying fuck about precautions, though... Can you touch your pinky to your thumb around your wrist? Ugh, no. Close, but not enough. I still have thin wrists and hands, but yeah, yay for being overweight. If you were to start a charity, what would you call it? I'd hve to put more thought than I'm willing for one survey question. I'd have to decide what KIND of charity I want to start first, which I'm unsure of. Probably something related to animal wellfare and conservation or something similar to the Trevor Project. Maybe LBGTQ+ youth disowned by their families... I dunno. There's so much good I wish I could do. Are you comfortable with your body? Holy fuck no. It's only gotten worse since I started gaining weight again and almost entirely erased all weight loss progress I'd made. What is your recent inside joke? Most recently made? Idk, man. I don't make those often. Would you rather be a human, vampire, or a werewolf? Er, I'm good with being a human. If I was a vampire or werewolf, I wouldn't exactly be very welcomed, I'm sure, and both have seemingly painful traits to cope with. Are you good at giving directions? It is absolutely impossible for me. I have NO sense of direction, like, at all. I don't know highway names, local exits, etc. etc. etc. etc. Why did you last curse? Pain when readjusting myself due to aforementioned issue I'm having. What is your purpose in life? I hope it involves animals and spreading words of peace and an appreciation for art. What is one of your weak points? I'm very, very, very dependent on others. I'm really working on trying to correct that. I can barely do shit on my own as is. Who was the last person you heard snoring? My cat, haha. Would you rather shower by yourself or with another person? 100% by myself. Another person would just get in the way and make me VERY self-conscious of my body, even if it was my romantic partner. Just please leave me alone to hate myself for 10 minutes. :^) What was your last addiction? You could say my current one is John Wolfe, a really funny let's player I've gotten into. Been bingeing some of my favorite games he has playlists of for a few weeks now. You are in a tank full of spiders, what do you do? Well one, I'd like to know what kind they are. Venomous? Harmless? You gotta give me the details. If I don't have any, then I'm admittedly freaking the fuck out, even though I know I should stay very calm when trying to get out. Fear would win, though. If killing yourself meant saving the world, would you? Saving the world from what? But odds are, yeah. I don't cherish my pretty damn mediocre life more than I do the lives of what, 8 billion people? Have you ever stayed up all night just to talk to someone? Yeah. When was the last time you eavesdropped someone? I kinda do that sometimes when Mom's on the phone and I can hear her from my room, and if they're on speaker. Particularly if the subject is me. When was the last time you went to a club? I've never been to one. How have you been sleeping? Poorly. Are you adopted? No, I'm not. Do you like scrapbooking? Not really, no. Do you collect anything valuable? "Valuable to me." <<<< This. Nothing of great monetary worth, though. Have you ever been beaten up? No, thankfully. Do you know anyone with an eating disorder? I don't think so, in my personal life. What was the last thing you killed? An ant. Have you ever used someone for money? I never could, no. When was the last time you went to the zoo? Sigh, it's been many many years. I'm so ready to get my goddamn legs back in shape so I can go again, this time with a REAL camera, too. Last time I went was when I still only had a Kodak EasyShare; I have a professional Canon camera now with much more education on photography too, so I would be in absolute heaven with at least twenty memory cards in need, haha. Maybe next fall... Is there a teacher you hate more than anything? I actually never had a teacher I hated in my entire school career. It really, really is as simple as just being a respectful student. In most cases, I should emphasize, because I do understand some educators just suck. Now I had some teachers I wasn't very fond of, but most certainly none that I hated. Do you own colored eyeliner? No. Do you have manners? I honestly think I'm very mannerly. When was the last time that you had a pet that died? We last had to put my dog Teddy down; he had cancer and was literally withering away. I knew in my very core that even if we didn't bring him to the vet to euthanize him, he would've died naturally in a very short period of time; I doubt he would've survived another night. Now I'd like to move on. What is your favorite medication that you take, and why? The combination of Vraylar and Lamictal is the reason I'm alive. It keeps my bipolarity and depression under control. Do you decorate Mason jars? No, but those are some of my favorite crafts visually. They're very pretty and cute. Can you see the mountains from where you live? Oh hunny, I wish. Did you ever play pranks on April Fool’s Day? As a kid, yeah. I don't anymore. I'm not really even a fan of April Fool's Day as an adult because of how cruel some jokes assholes play are. Which instrument would you play if you could learn to play one? Maybe violin. Do you part your hair on the left side, right side, or in the middle? The left. What are some names you like that start with the first letter of your name? Uhhhh Bianca, Braelynn (look I know it's so stereotypically Southern but it's pretty)... and idk from there, those are the two that come to mind first.

[livlepretre]

So what happened with the ghosts? If you want to share. 🙂

at first I thought you were asking about one of my fics and I was like ???? but now I realize you are asking me about my actual terrible time living in a haunted house in good old Dublin. 

okay. so, to begin, I’m not particularly skeptical about ghosts. New Orleans is a really haunted city and my grandfather’s house which I spent a huge amount of my childhood in was pretty haunted-- newspapers mysteriously sitting in the foyer in the morning even though the doors are all locked and the alarm is on, hearing your name being called all throughout the house and it turns out you’re there alone, a gardener who used to never go out at sunset because there was a man in a planter’s hat who would walk from the corner of the house to the pecan tree and back every night at the sun was going down-- honestly I knew A LOT of people with similar experiences growing up so I just,,,,,, accepted that ghosts were pretty much a benign part of life sometimes. (and there may have also been an incident where that same gardner pulled up an old flagstone and a woman popped out of the ground and he came inside white as a sheet, but my grandfather’s house pre-dated the civil war so it didn’t surprise anyone that it was super haunted.) 

well. when I was in college I had a JYA in Dublin, and I moved into a townhouse with a group of other Americans. something like day 3 or 4 in the townhouse, I knew for a fact I was the only one home, but I had this intense feeling standing in the upstairs hallway that there was someone standing right behind me. I can’t describe it as anything other than absolute certainty that there was another presence in the home. at the time, I was like, chill, there’s a ghost. and I went on with things and didn’t worry about it, as my own personal experiences with ghosts were pretty much that sometimes they’re just their and they’re harmless, and I kept this insight completely to myself since  I also suspected that my roommates were likely to be skeptics and I didn’t want to come off week 1 as Ghost Girl. 

Well, end of week 1, little did I know, but the gang who lived on the 3rd floor of the townhouse (I was on the 2nd) decided to make a ouija board on a lark. I have no idea where this idea came from, since I specifically did not mention the ghost to anyone... other than obviously it was on a lot of other people’s minds as well. well. they do the ouija board. the power cuts off in the middle of their fucking seance. it comes back on after a few minutes, and they decide to be done with trying to contact anything, but that night all of my roommates who were involved with the ouija board incident had.... like,,,,,, suicide fuel nightmares. like the worst most vivid nightmares they had ever had in their entire lives. 

that was also the night that the fire alarm started going off at 3 am. each floor had this old fashioned red metal bell with a mallet, and it would go off 3, 4 times a week for no reason at all... it was one of those things where at first we just chalked it up to an annoying old building. 

but there were a number of weird things that happened-- door slamming shut by themselves with no possible explanation, the fire alarm bell going off all the time, a mysterious fire that none of us could figure out, just a lot of little things that were interesting to me and which I was like ghost! I was super interested in the ghost and talked about it a lot because I was fascinated. Big mistake. 

I didn’t understand at the time that some ghosts are malevolent. I didn’t understand that there were times where it’s best to ignore the ghost and pretend it doesn’t exist rather than to talk about it where it can hear you. 

we had this big heavy mirror that hung on the wall at the top of the stairs. big sturdy thing, weighed a ton, must have been hanging there forever. 

one night I was standing under it talking to one of my roommates and the thing came off the wall and nearly landed on my head-- I was really lucky that I jumped back in time. The whole thing shattered. It probably could have killed me. I was freaked, so I went back to my bedroom, where my laptop was open and in the middle of my queen sized bed. I remember that it was in the middle specifically, because I had noticed it was sort of weirdly slipping off the edge of the bed for some reason when I had it over to the left, so I put it smack in the middle of the bed. well, I walked into the bedroom immediately after the mirror had nearly fallen on me, and honestly describing this still nearly breaks my mind. literally less than two minutes after the close call with the mirror my laptop gets hurled against the wall-- like four or five feet-- to land smashed up on the ground. 

At that point I realized that I had been talking about the ghost and it had noticed me and my only hope was to shut the fuck up right that second. 

I never talked about the ghost where the ghost could hear me again. 

Not to say there weren’t still ghost issues. The fire alarm continued to go off at the witching hour all the fucking time. There was an incident where my whole bedroom started to mysteriously v i b r a t e ??? Like, thundering. I thought that the gang was upstairs in the bedroom above mine dancing or something, but they were all on the other side of the house. (I later found out the fucking ouija board had been long-term stored directly above my bed, w o n d e r f u l ) 

There was also the time I was sitting on the floor in my friend’s room down the hall from mine, and I said to her, “why is there a pillow stuffed up your chimney???” naturally, she was like, “what the fuck” -- so, slowly, we pulled this throw pillow out from the chimney (realizing that the pillow was the one missing from the sofa upstairs??) and there, on the throw pillow, was a bird with a broken neck. 

there’s probably more that I can’t recall anymore because it’s been like a decade. I mostly remember being really afraid a lot of the time, as were like half of my roommates who were feeling similarly.... oppressed by the ghost, and being kind of helpless about it because I was a poor student and honestly that ghost wrecked me financially that semester when it wrecked my laptop so maybe it did get the upper hand at the time. idk. 

fun fact I actually met my husband because he was one of my roommates during all of this, so there were positives?? he’s a very rational person though so he just stuffed a book between the bell and the mallet on his floor so the fire alarm couldn’t torment him and ignored the ghost. 

I’ve had a couple of other ghosty experiences since then, but this is the one that stands out as the most personally harrowing. it was pretty wild to realize that some ghosts mean harm and that this one had it in for me in particular. I had a friend (actually one of my roommates who drew the fucking ouija board back in Dublin) go through something much much worse that honestly I can’t talk about, but has decently fucked me up for life just knowing about it. The funny thing is that he basically didn’t believe in the ghost back in Dublin (I think he was blacked out most of that semester though), but he reached out to me about his frankly horrific situation all because he remembered me flipping the fuck out in Dublin. 

Anyway. that’s the story of how ‘don’t talk about the ghost where the ghost can hear you’ became one of my lifelong rules to live by. 

[saybees]

Some rather personal and tmi stuff, but I feel like I need to get it out somewhere and I don’t have anyone I really feel I can talk to about this now. It’s very long.

I’d like to start by saying that if you’re reading this please don’t tell me to just dump him. It isn’t that simple and it just isn’t helpful to say that to me.

So Jon and I have had issues in the past with porn. Jon has a porn addiction. I didn’t discover this until maybe a year into our relationship when I walked into the bathroom one day and he was watching porn and masturbating. At first I was more shocked than anything and didn’t know how to react, but it quickly turned into feeling really hurt.

I tried to talk to him about it and told him that it bothered me that he was doing that and it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and our sex was too boring for him. It made me feel so inadequate that he had to go somewhere else for that stuff. He didn’t see the issue with it and because porn has become so normalized in our society and he has maintained that he doesn’t understand why it’s an issue for me, despite that I have explained to him many times that it really bothers me and makes me feel shitty. It feels like cheating.

Eventually I asked him to leave the bathroom door open when he goes in there because I didn’t really trust him. That didn’t stop him, however, and he continued to masturbate to porn in the bathroom even though the door was cracked open. I caught him and was really upset. It hasn’t happened again since I caught him with the door open.

I can’t even count how many times we have had this conversation/argument. It just hurts a lot and I really am so tired of having this talk with him. I asked my therapist that I used to see if I was being unreasonable and she said I wasn’t. She fully agreed with me that I wasn’t asking too much of him to stop doing it.

He doesn’t do it at home anymore, but I’m pretty sure he does when he’s at work. He’ll take a washroom break and very likely will do it then because he accidentally let it slip recently that he still masturbates. He tried very hard to redirect and I pretended I didn’t notice, but it’s been eating at me.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if he didn’t have a porn problem. I just feel like he doesn’t find me attractive or sexy. We don’t have sex very often at all and I pretty much always have to initiate it, which reinforces those feelings that I’m not what he wants. I don’t feel sexy enough or pretty enough and I’ve always had issues with feeling like I have an ugly face so this really makes it worse.

He used to follow lots of Instagram models, but has since unfollowed a lot of them, although there are still two at least that I’m pretty sure are Instagram models. Their accounts are private and I’m not going to follow them to find out what’s up. I’ll only hurt my own feelings even more than I did just going through the list of people he follows on Instagram.

I know I should talk to him about it again, but I am just so sick of having this conversation with him. Neither of us want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to because he feels guilty about it (obviously, since he has been hiding it) and I don’t want to talk about it anymore because the whole thing just makes me feel so terrible.

There was one incident where Jon had downloaded Tinder behind my back and he was showing me something on his phone when a notification popped up and it turned into me feeling like he was cheating and I cried and then he cried and it was a whole thing. He deleted it and hasn’t done anything like that since, but he didn’t include on his profile that he was in a relationship and wouldn’t give me an explanation as to why and he just wouldn’t say much other than that he wanted to make friends and talk to people, but it was just horrible and traumatic for me and for some reason I let him convince me that he was genuine and I stayed, although I really question that decision sometimes because it still deeply bothers me and I’m not entirely convinced he wouldn’t cheat on me after that. I just have a very hard time trusting him after the Tinder thing and the porn stuff. And I just feel like we didn’t really get to the bottom of that whole issue, but it feels like it was too long ago to talk about it again despite that it still bothers me.

I know we have to talk about it more, but I just don’t want to fucking do this anymore. I’m exhausted.

We might be moving to a different place in town here at some point and if he does end up buying another house I’m going to have to talk to him about this and if he isn’t willing to give up porn completely then I won’t be moving with him and I’ll stay in our current rental and we will be done because I know I will not be happy being with him for the rest of our lives if he can’t quit porn and I’ll always have to worry about it.

I did some googling and found countless articles of women (and others) saying they felt shitty that their men/partners watched porn behind their backs. So many other people who feel the same as I do and have been damaged by this kind of thing. It’s good to know I’m not alone in this, but it’s so terrible that so many people feel like this. It hurts a lot.

I’ve done some light research on the negative effects of porn and it really does seem to be very harmful, particularly for relationships. And I know he has been watching porn since he was very young, he’s talked to me about it before. I do truly believe porn is incredibly harmful and it is FAR too easy to get access to it. I feel like porn has hurt our relationship and our sex life a lot.

For our anniversary one year I even did a boudoir shoot by myself at home and made him a little book with sexy photos of me and gave it to him and he said he loved it, but he hasn’t looked at it since I gave it to him. That’s a real punch to the gut.

There was one other incident where our one friend, a lesbian, sent him and a few others a snapchat video of her making out with another girl that he used to hang out with when they were younger and they weren’t wearing tops (this girl is wild and does all kinds of stupid shit when she drinks, which is all the time) and he saved it for later. I found out because she had called him crying because someone she sent it to recorded it and sent it around to other people and everybody found out about it and this other girl had a boyfriend, but anyway he told me what was going on and he went to pull it up to show me, but she had deleted it and he told me he had saved it. I asked why and at first he lied and said he saved it so she could see it later and maybe think about what she had done, but I saw through that pretty quick. Eventually he admitted to me that he had fantasized about a threesome with those two girls and that’s why he saved it. This was not too long ago. Like late 2020. I was mad and needed some time to think and told him we would talk about it, but eventually I just told him that I didn’t want to have this discussion again (which I shouldn’t have done because I let him off the hook basically) and that if he felt like he needed to hide something from me that should be enough to know he shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. With that he said okay and we never talked about it again.

I just feel like I’m putting a lot into this relationship and he isn’t being considerate of me here. He makes excuses as to why he feels like he has to get off all the time and that it helps him wake up in the mornings or that he functions better once he’s done it (untrue, he functions the same no matter what) and it drives me up a wall that he will choose that over having sex with me?????? Like, hi hello I am a human woman(adjacent) and I am willing to have sex with you literally whenever you want!!!!!! And you’ll still choose watching porn and jerking off instead??????????????????????! Yeah, I totally feel like you want me. I totally feel loved and feel like you find me attractive. Yep. You watch porn of women who are a million times more beautiful and sexy than I will ever be and they do things I could never do or just don’t want to do and you’ll choose that over ME and tell me that you do think I’m attractive and sexy and that you love me, but you hardly actually prove that to me.

He doesn’t call me pretty unless I basically ask him to, which sucks because if I ask for the compliment it doesn’t feel real, but if I don’t ask I’ll never hear it. He is quite affectionate with me generally, cuddling up and stuff, holding my hand sometimes when driving, that type of stuff, but I almost never hear him, unprompted, tell me I’m pretty.

I don’t know, it just really bothers me and of course I have to be feeling like this right in the morning when I have a ton of school work I should do. I just feel really sad now. I don’t know how to handle this anymore. I don’t know who to go to for advice. My best buddy Ryan is having kinda the same issue with his girlfriend, but they both watch porn (they don’t live together like Jon and I do) and she has been feeling insecure about Ryan’s porn habits, but she also watches porn and I know they had a talk about it all the other day, but I don’t feel like it’s any of my business to ask how it went or anything because it just straight up isn’t, but Ryan is who I have primarily talked to about this whole thing and he’s been very sympathetic to me about it and idk I just don’t know what to do or who to turn to. The last time I talked to my therapist it was about this whole thing and she basically told me to do my own research and that she didn’t have anything else to say to me about it (because we had talked about it multiple times) and that felt really shitty and like I wasn’t allowed to still be having this issue so I stopped going to her and haven’t seen anyone else since.

I love him a lot, I really do, and we get along really well, usually, but this just hurts a lot and I know I should never have put up with as much as I have. I should have set more boundaries and been firmer with them. It feels so fucking bad that he’s done this time and time again and gone behind my back with this shit and I keep talking to him about it and it keeps happening.

I’ve mostly avoided talking about this here because it feels so personal and gross and like I shouldn’t talk about it (that’s that Christian guilt). I hate that society makes sex and related issues to be such a dirty topic and that we can’t talk about it because I feel really alone and shitty about this. I try to push it down and ignore it, but it’s so hard to do and I’m just really sad...

[anyu-blue]

~

I'm just venting here cuz I don't have anyone to really vent to right now.

I know I'm being 'too much' and 'over the top' again... I know I'm throwing a hissy fit I don't need to, and I recognize I'm hurting at least one person with it.

But God damn I'm pissed and I guess I want to be pissed.

There's so much I want to do and so much I feel obligated to do and more... A lot of what I want to do... I just don't have the energy for. I wanted to make all these custom cards for my family since I should be able to ship stuff out this week... But I pulled Everything out and found... I just really didn't want to put that effort in..I mean I REALLY do... But just... Everything was turning out terrible. I'm honestly shocked I managed the 14 for my ex's family for Christmas... I want to do it... But at the same time I don't.

Cuz what's the point? All that effort.. all that care.. when I could just buy them a stupid card instead. So I'll go buy them a card... Because my eldest and younger sister decided to head to the grocery store without me and now I have to steal the car right when I'm off work to do my own necessary shopping anyway (or risk not being able to go at all this week). All because they were nearly out of toilet paper and Tevie wanted to get me cash for her car insurance bill...

Now I wouldn't be so mad except... They didn't even ask if I had extra toilet paper in my bathroom, which I do. AND I told Tevie that she didn't have to worry- I have enough to cover the insurance for her car.

But no. She just HAD to go today so I could have the money by tomorrow when it pulls!!! Um... Tomorrow (technically today, now) is SUNDAY. How the FUCK am I supposed to deposit the $ into my account like she wants when it's a freaking Sunday?! Or or at all when uh.. she has the car until like... 7pm every day anyway?!

Uuuugh... I already told her too, I'm not depositing Anything unless I absolutely need to either. Which I don't cuz I just got paid. AND I told her her insurance will be a part of what she pays me (if she does) for all her other bills!! If I got it I got it. What part of that is so hard to understand?

Apparently all of it...

Or none of it, but it doesn't matter because she doesn't pay attention to stuff like that anyway. Literally just does whatever she wants.. and you know what? I know that's absolutely fine. Sure it inconveniences me because, well, I needed to go to the store too (and told her as such), and had nothing for dinner while they fed themselves again (didn't even ask me AND used a service I have/can get free stuff with if they use my account like I've asked EVERY SINGLE TIME we've EVER used it!!!). (Why did I EVER cook and feed them so much? I was 100% right in that they have no interest in doing the same. They BARELY cook for themselves!! And you can probably already guess what I'm going to say about it... It's all JUNK!!! Cheeto mac and cheese, ramen, air fried chicken and fries, microwaved meals- you should see our pantry right now. Almost entirely instant meals and it makes me want to vomit. What's not instant is the stuff I picked out/ingredients that have just sat since I stopped cooking.. you should see our FRIDGE right now!! Not a vegetable or fruit in sight!! It's all warm fruit cups for Tevie and idek what W0lfie eats to get her vitamins and nutrients- cuz the vitamins I bought haven't been touched except for by me, Though I told them it would be a good idea of they took some each week too.. I'd wager she doesn't!! And that's partly why she's so gd MISERABLE all the time!! She doesn't take care of herself!!)

But in reality it's whatever. Technically Tevie did nothing wrong. She's just living her life how she wants to live it. Who cares about wasting more gas? Apparently not Tevie even though she told me she did... Apparently that's out the window. Who cares about my needs? Apparently not Tevie Though I've been fighting with our property managers and walking her through every gd adulting problem she has (I'm even supposed to help her with her taxes AGAIN cuz she can't do it) and taking care of the house and all the paperwork and all the phonecalls and everything... So it's not like I've been looking out for her and our little sister at all 🙄 or thinking of them and trying to make THEIR lives easier or nothing.

They don't owe me anything obviously... Not even the requests I made of them to do particular adulting tasks on their own (like put in a simple maintenance request, or cover up the open window downstairs, or even buy the materials so I could take care of that stupid problem better than I already have with the shit we had on hand).... It's up to them if they want to follow through. And they don't. Like ever. Because it'll just be done by me because I actually DO care about how much our power bill is.. Tevie sait she does and then pulls that shit. W0lfie says she does and then pulls the shit like letting her room get ULTRA cold- which guess what happens when she opens her door for the day? You guessed it. The temp of the house goes down and the heat/furnace churns and chugs to make up for it.

I'm so FUCKING DONE.. but guess what? I CAN'T be. I'm not even supposed to be pissed about this stuff!! I'm the bad guy!! Because I'm mad!! Because I can't just let it go or deal with it quietly. Or not be a bother.

GOD DAMN IT I AM SO SICK OF BEING/GOING QUIETLY

I HAVE BEEN QUIET AND CALM AND SWEET AND WORKED MY ASS OFF IN THE WAYS I CAN FOR SO FUCKING LONG

I AM THE REASON THEY HAVE THE SHIT THEY DO!! THE ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS, TEVIE'S CAR, LOWER BILLS (not just because I pay my part, but because I literally put in all the work to make sure stuff is taken care of and that I don't use excess/as much as I want or need sometimes), PAID BILLS (EVERYTHING comes out of my account. I've asked Tevie to do it. Several times. To set it up or to even just pay it once or twice... Has she ever? No. Not even when I showed her how and offered to write it all down for the future- and still she comes back at me like 'well you put them in your name' like, bitch... The water bill HAD to be in my name because at the time they only set it up in person!! Doesn't mean you can't pay it!! All the information is RIGHT THERE!!! You have my permission!!! In fact I've ASKED you to!! And the internet- we switched it to my name so it would lower AND give us a better speed!! And autopay gives us a discount anyway- Something YOU approved of!! And GUESS WHAT? The power ISN'T in my name!! It's in yours!!! Why on EARTH do you still expect me to pay it every single time?! It's not even on autopay!!! And the car insurance.. well SORRY if you have a wreck on your record that would make the premium double or triple what it is now!!! I did that for you!! I even called and asked and compared and did EVERYTHING FOR YOU YOU WOULDN'T/COULDN'T!!! And the cellphones are in my name because years ago when we GOT the plan you didn't have a credit score which was REQUIRED... Guess who did?! ME!! So guess who did all that and set up autopay so we wouldn't get charged $20 more a month?! It's not like we COULDN'T change these things, YOU just DON'T want to deal with it OR you want those discounts and agreed to it in the first place- so your 'well they're all you're responsibility Because they're in your name' is BULLSHIT), EXTRA MONEY EVERY MONTH, EVEN TEVIE'S BANK ACCOUNT, EVERY DOCTOR/DENTIST/SPECIALIST SHE HAS EVER SEEN AFTER OUR MOTHER WAS KICKED TO THE CURB... Even W0lfie is not exempt... Because what I don't do for her, she goes to her mom to take care of. And she's told me things and I've had to ask why she hasn't taken care of it. Well. She either doesn't know how (and in some instances refused to learn cuz it happens again), or was just going to suffer through it because she assumed that was what was right (without asking anyone or even GOOGLING the information)... Gods... Half my 'knowledge' comes from google and checking at least two or three sights and sources before I act... I feel like I'm the only one in my house who has that skill despite the top-notch cellphones and computers and shit laying around everywhere. Despite my little sister literally building her computer... Can't adult life at ALL...

And I just... I just...

I'm so mad and upset.

I want to have the carefree lives they have some days... But then I realize someone wild have to be doing all the shit I do for them for me... And then I get depressed Because literally no one would or will. Even Lon didn't... He took care of his bills sure... But everything else? Well.. unless I asked him to step up, he never would.. and he to never would more than the day I asked. Another red flag I shouldn't have let slide...

No matter how sick I get. No matter how crazy I go... It's still all up to me. I don't have people I can go to to ask to do these things and know they will... I have tos er Everything up and do all the work or it never happens. Especially not more than once.

I hate nagging... And I'm just the bad guy if I try anyway.

Idk what the point even is anymore. I hate my life.

I want so badly to love it and be happy to be around... But I just want to disappear and see what happens when that happens. Would they step up? I mean they'd HAVE to and then I'd be the bad guy again... But ugh...

None of this is easy. None of this is easy especially when all alone.

Few people reach out to me... The ones that do are just as overburdened as I am and can barely talk too because they're so busy... But we try...

I appreciate every one of them/you and I feel awful I'm so drained I can barely say thank you or reply.

I know what it's like... I do... Maybe I don't 100% know the specifics of the reasons behind what you're feeling, but I can feel it with you.

I'm trying. I'm angry. I'm tired... But I'm trying my best.

[scholarhect]

2 3 15 babey

HI BRO ILY

2. what’s your taco bell order

crunchwrap supreme. maybe a burrito, idk. i had a bean burrito today but i thought it was gross. plus the red freezy thing (starburst flavored, i think). except today i had baja blast and it was pretty good

i want you to know that this question is the entire reason i made this post. this was the germ, the mustard seed. “ask game: what’s your taco bell order”. and the rest was history

3. tell me about that one thing you wish someone would ask you about

(spoilers for tma if anybody’s gonna listen someday, i guess. literally major spoilers for seasons 1-4. turns out i don’t know how to shut up. thanks for indulging me)

okay. okay i’m gonna talk to you specifically. listen to me, i am talking directly into your ear now. i wish for the opportunity to tell you about ms melanie king. you’ve already heard about her as the inspiration for my haircut and also my fishnet outfit from that time i dragged you to that thrift thing, but she is such an icon. first of all she’s a YOUTUBER. (not like a vlogger, i guess, she hosts a show on youtube. but a youtuber nonetheless.) she hunts GHOSTS. on YOUTUBE. so, she shows up at The Magnus Institute, London, to tell them about that time she saw a ghost (but it was like ... a weird ghost. not a normal ghost. you know). immediately she insults the guy’s shitty old tape recorder that she is expected to speak into, in the year 2016. so they get snippy with each other and end up in a full-blown “The Girls Are Fightinggg” passive aggressive argument because they both view each other as pathetic, fake, not-respectable paranormal investigators. (and they both have A Thing about being respected & taken seriously.) like it turns out that the institute has a fucking laughable reputation in The Academic Community because they’ll just take a statement from anybody about their supposed supernatural experience. meanwhile jon thinks the people on ghost hunt shows are charlatans because their goal is entertainment and, yes, they “do ham it up a bit for the cameras.” ANYWAY. she’s all dragging the magnus institute and he’s like. “but you’re here.” it’s very funny. turns out she can’t tell the Serious Academic Community about her experience because it’s so wild that they’d laugh her out of her career. so she’s here. so she’s got no choice but to tell her story. so the episode continues, and ends, okay, and you’re like, “wow that was a fun and iconic one-off character. right?” WRONG.

season two... she’s BACK baby! after her experience at the military hospital, she wants to do research on War Ghosts, but the magnus institute wouldn’t let her in bc she didn’t have the Academic Clout for it, so the only way is to get an employee to vouch for her. so. she goes to jon like “please you’re the only friend i have here i need help” and they DO fight again but he does agree to help her (because they’re the same person. they are *spiderman pointing meme*). so, later, she’s back. she did some research on War Ghosts and broke into an old train graveyard (which is a thing apparently) and got stabbed by the ghost of an army medic and she got caught and arrested and she was screaming about how She Got Stabbed By A Ghost and somebody took a video and posted it online and then she BECAME A MEME for a couple days and nobody wanted to associate with her anymore. rip. but now she likes jon and she’s here to say goodbye (because she’s going to india) (she also sets off the climax of the season because she just happens to be that one person who can see that the monster pretending to be a major character is not, in fact, that character. she’s like “oh, which sasha? the new one? or the old one?” and jon’s like “what the fuck” and she’s like “there’s definitely two sashas. are you trying to gaslight me.” but whatever)

ok this is literally less than half her arc (i’ve covered. three episodes.) but this is long as fuck so i’ll wrap it up. “what a cool reoccurring character,” you may think! “i hope i get to see more of her!” well GUESS WHAT. she comes back from india (she’s been SHOT BY A GHOST) she wants to talk to jon but he’s not there (he was unfortunately in very close proximity to a murder and he’s on the run so he doesn’t get framed. double traumatic experience, very fun. anyway he’s staying at melanie’s friend’s house, whom she has conveniently namedropped a couple times so far (in the last episode she was like “she actually has nice things to say about you, why didn’t you tell me you knew her” and he’s like “we didn’t part on the best of terms”) because she is his ex-girlfriend, so, though he literally was just pretending that he didn’t know her, he now knows that she doesn’t hate him so he shows up at her place and she hides him from the cops because she’s literally the only person he knows outside work. but this isn’t about him.) so melanie has no job so elias is like “you want a job” and she’s like “sure?” so now she’s an archival assistant at the magnus institute (i realized i had to explain that. i don’t think you even know who elias is. head of the institute, everybody’s secretly evil boss, currently lowkey framing jon for the murder he committed. but lowkey) her coworkers don’t want her there because they’ve realized that their job is evil and they Physically Cannot Quit so they’re like “great now she’s stuck here too” but she doesn’t know that so she’s just like “why does everybody hate me. are you misogynists” because her Disrespect Alarm is going off in her head. and then they have a Department Meeting where jon comes back with an open knife wound on his neck and demands elias tell everyone about the TWO murders and then there’s a standoff situation where somebody wants to shoot elias but he’s “knife cat”ing at her and very dramatically forces her codependent friend slash partner (in the cop way not the gay way) to sign a contract as an archival assistant so that daisy (the cop with the gun) can’t hurt elias because, oh yeah, if he dies supposedly they all do too. so melanie is ... thoroughly disillusioned. and she becomes sullen, too, kind of. and she begins to try to murder elias. queen

things get worse (in a supernatural way. she gets Angry Knife Powers. there’s a Ghost Bullet from India lodged in her leg pumping murderous energy through her body and while she’s asleep jon removes it, it’s all very terrible.) but then she starts going to therapy because she wants to get better and she ends up making the difficult journey to Being Okay. (she also literally blinds herself to escape the institute, and that doesn’t really sound analogous to therapy out of context but it is, okay) and her arc is over and she’s the only character in the story who is currently Okay. we’re proud of her. her last appearance (so far. who knows what s5 has in store. hopefully not much) jon, who is in some deeeeep shit by this point, shows up asking for help, and she’s like “i can’t help you bc i can’t get dragged back into all that, but you’re always welcome in my life as a friend” which is not great for him at that point because he is kind of having a breakdown, but it’s still <3. much better than the beginning part of s4 when she wanted to kill him on sight. also she’s dating jon’s ex now lol

15. if somebody irl you didn’t know asked you how you feel about mcr what would you say (this question isn’t quite asking you how you feel about mcr, but it’s not not asking that)

i’d be like “yeah they’re pretty cool. i like them”

[redsdawn]

( jessica chastain. forty. cis female. she/her. ) in stratford, dawn wright  is more commonly known as red. they’ve been living in stratford for thirty years and currently work as a nurse. some say they are malapert  & rancorous but i’m more inclined to believe those that say they’re ballsy  & dependable. if you walk by their house, you can sometimes hear cloudbusting by kate bush playing from their window. ( the sting of comments better left unsaid, driving with the windows down, subjecting oneself to the unknown, and never knowing when to stop. ) 

hello, all! i’m dee, your local goblin whose hands are shaking as they type this! :-) i hope everyone’s having a good evening / morning / day. here’s to writing some good shit together! 

disclaimer: i have dawn’s stats here, which hopefully gives you all the need-to-know info at a glance. the second section has death & suicide mentions, so please steer clear of that if need be. 

if dawn is anything, it’s restless. she’s always felt like a bird about to take flight, or like she’s looming on the edge of some great cliff. it’s like some current flowing through her bones, or some itch that can’t be scratched. she yearns for more & hates that nothing is ever wholly enough for her. 

dawn grew up trailer trash & she still was trailer trash when she moved to stratford after the death of her mother. her dad, nathaniel, was a drunken tradesman who'd never known what to do with the life he’d been given. he was hardly a father when diane was around & even less so after her passing. despite their blood relation, however, he & dawn were more akin to roommates than anything else. nathaniel provided the “essentials” [ bits of clothes every couple of months, piss-poor cooking, a place to sleep ] and little else. he wasn’t warm or particularly kind--not like he was to the girlfriends that’d come in and out of their lives. he didn’t know how to speak to children or how to be the mentor that dawn needed. he’d tried, but it wasn’t like dawn knew how to be the daughter he’d wanted either. she wasn’t diane. she wasn’t warm, obedient, and kind. she was gritty & spoke back, even when it wasn’t smart to. 

growing up, dawn was hardly ever home. a majority of her adolescence was spent being a wild cat. as a kid, she’d get up to shenanigans with other kids from school or the neighborhood. she was a tomboy through-and-through, covered in various scars and bruises from climbing & doing things she shouldn’t have. she was an okay student, but her report cards always made a note to mention attention + behavioral issues.

as a teenager, she was even worse. it was then that she learned the careful craft of chasing cheap thrills. always slipping from crowd to crowd, dawn was a social butterfly. she’d slip her way into any group that would have her, reveling in any and all attention cast her way. 

dawn was poor-poor. like, having frequent sleepovers at friends houses, because you want an actual real meal levels of poor. 

above all, dawn’s childhood taught her how to be hungry & that feeling’s never left her.

it was a particularly persistent set of teachers that really pushed dawn to be more than what she was setting herself up for. her chemistry teacher really made a point to speak to her in frank terms + helped her fill out college application forms when that time of year came around. at the time, dawn had brushed it off, as she did with most things, but she’s always been grateful. it was nice to feel seen for once. she kept in touch & got their recommendation when admissions opened up for nursing school. 

going to college & being in a new environment really forced dawn to get it together. she couldn’t just be a little shithead anymore--she had actual responsibilities & appearances now. she mellowed out some afterward, doing everything that she thought people were supposed to do. she got her own place, paid her bills, & worked like she actually cared about what she was doing--which she did, for once. 

somewhere along the way, getting stuck in that grind & facing the fears that rose from losing her father started to really get to her. that restlessness had come back in full force, & dawn didn’t know how to handle it. she fell into a bit of a destructive rut that resembled that of her teenage years, and sought help only when her boss gave her an ultimatum. she’s better now, but not quite how she was. 

dawn is unflinching. it’s extremely hard to unsettle her. are your guts falling out? is someone throwing shit + breaking chairs? is there a literal fire happening? well, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at dawn. she loves fixing things & finds it really easy to keep a cool head when shit hits the fan. she’s focused & nonjudgemental. she won’t question why you look like shit or why she has to stitch up a stab wound. 

dawn yearns to feel needed & is uncomfortable when she isn’t. that want is what fuels her friendliness. she wants to be in a group, she wants to be something to someone. she goes out of her way for others not out of an innate altruism, but as a result of her deliberate choice to be good. she wants people to feel that she cares for them, so they may in turn care for her, too. 

that being said, dawn’s decision-making isn’t immaculate. she has a blinding rage that’s a blight on her progress. it’s regressive & ugly & irresistible. dawn takes things too far sometimes & keeps pushing. she digs her fingers into wounds she knows are fresh & always keeps her knives close. she’s capable of a lot of good and love, but she’s also capable of a very white-hot rage. 

some random bits are that dawn is a karaoke queen. she’s a heavy-weight, but doesn’t like alcohol. she’s an excellent hugger. she has an excellent memory & remembers the little things that people tell her. terrible at accepting gifts. she takes life one day at a time. total chatterbox. thinks she has a great pokerface, but her eyes are a straight window to that which lies behind. she’s definitely not a very good driver. writes notes on her hands and wrists. 

some songs that make me think of her are

rock city

i bet on losing dogs

disorder

hounds of love

some wanted connection ideas !

a childhood memory -- maybe these two were a couple of ragtag misfits up to no good. maybe your muse’s parents felt bad for dawn, and would invite her over for dinner, regardless of how your muse felt about it. maybe they grew up in the same trailer park. maybe your muse’s mom dated her dad at one point. idk!! 

teenage escapades -- did they used to drive around without a care in the world, swearing they were gonna live forever? did they try to use their fake id’s to buy cheap liquor & then haul ass after the cashier wasn’t having it? did dawn manage to weasel her way into your muse’s life & fuck it up somehow? 

it’s a sibling thing -- are they related? no. does that stop them from acting like actual siblings? also no. dawn would do anything for this person, including, but not limited to, annoying them to death. silly, serious, and self-less. 

frenemies -- they say you should keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. either way, these two are relatively close. do they even remember why they sometimes-kind-of-but-not-really-but-also-kind-of hate each other? maybe, maybe not.

best buds -- everyone needs a best friend &, believe it or not, dawn has a lot of love to give. being her best friend includes unlimited venting sessions, on-call assistance, & free snacks. truly a once in a lifetime deal.

playing doctor -- listen, dawn doesn’t wear those scrubs because she thinks they’re sexy. she knows her shit & who else are you going to call at ass o’clock because you’re bleeding all over your carpet floor? besides, at least when you call her, you don’t get reamed with a 2k bill after.

we don’t talk about that -- sometimes, dawn is off being a lovey-dovey bitch, which is embarrassing, but when she’s not? well.. she wouldn’t be opposed to a rebound, or one night stands that maybe never should have happened to begin with. 

BUT REALLY I’M DOWN FOR ANYTHING AND THIS IS ALREADY SO DANG LONG SO IM GONNA END IT HERE AND SAY THAT ILY AND WANT TO DO ALL OF THE PLOTS WITH EVERYONE THANK U BYE SMOOCHES

[hdnprplflwrs]

(1/2) So I’ve been getting into Miraculous Ladybug,

And let’s rate some ships, shall we? These are just the ones with the most material to work with and are the most interesting and are (as I see it) canon to the show. I’m not including ships where, canonically, one side actively dislikes the other or there was no interaction or a clear definition of a friendship between the two parties. This list also does not include polyamorous ships because there are no polyamorous relationships canonically.

1. Adrienette: Marinette kind of flickers between seeing Adrien as a friend and as her numbero uno, especially as the series progresses. Currently, with season 3 finished, she sees him as a mix of both but would still rather see that he’s happy and without her than with her and unhappy (example: her letting Kagami be with Adrien — also showing that there’s no beef between her and Kagami !!! kinda). Adrien, on the other hand, is such a confused boy™️ about his feelings and him stating ALL THE TIME that Marinette is “jUsT a FrIeNd” is very infuriating, but he never actually sees Marinette as more than a friend because the moment he starts developing that crush he’s already with Kagami and she’s already with Luka. As a ship, they just have terrible timing and they are great friends, but we all know they’re endgame (somehow). 5/10.

2. Ladynoir: Everyone and their grandmother knows that Chat Noir loves Ladybug (as if that isn’t mentioned every two episodes); Ladybug, in the other hand, sticks to the superhero code and firmly roots herself in the friendzone. I know there’s a lot of debate within the fandom about whether or not their relationship is toxic because they both don’t know each other’s true identities and, consequently, the complete picture of themselves. However, in the Oblivio episode, we see that Marinette and Adrien have an incredibly strong bond, as superheroes and as their normal selves. Because they were relieved of all the baggage from their past history (because hello, they forgot it all), they were able to build that relationship rather quickly and show a version of what could be. But in the Timetagger episode, Bunnyx mentions that their relationship is basically all over the place. Maybe with the added complications of Luka and Kagami in the mix, Ladybug and Chat Noir go on a wild adventure through the years, also not finding the right timing like Adrien and Marinette. But Timetagger implies that Ladybug and Chat Noir are endgame because Bunnyx has only seen their relationship up until Timetagger in her present, because she is sent back to the past (this time stuff just makes everything confusing), so she wouldn’t exactly know Ladybug’s and Chat Noir’s future until she’s back in her Burrow with the fixed Bunny Miraculous, and even then she can’t tell them exactly what will happen. As of the S3 finale, we know that Chat Noir and Ladybug are still partner-in-crime goals. However, Marinette is kind of moving on from seeing Adrien as a crush with Luka, and we all know Chat Noir will always love Ladybug, so it really depends on their decisions on who they want to pursue a relationship with the next few season to determine their future. 7/10.

3. Ladybug and Adrien: THIS IS TOXIC. LET ME JUST GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM. Ladybug and Adrien both see the other as without fault even though they aren’t perfect. Ladybug has her moments where she’s star struck by Adrien, and Adrien has his moments where he’s star struck by Ladybug. In the Christmas special, Ladybug causes Santa Claus to get akumatized (but she also made the wrong assumption that Chat Noir was protecting Adrien from a baddie) because she attacks first and asks questions after. Her crush on Adrien got in the way of her usual analysis of the situation: if the Santa was akumatized, why is he delivering Adrien to his own house? Her views of Adrien and Chat Noir also affect her decisions this episode: the thought of Adrien being Chat Noir doesn’t even cross her mind because her perception of Chat Noir is so different from Adrien that she doesn’t question why there’s a Catacylsmed object next to her gift wrap and can’t put together that Adrien is Chat Noir. (Idk how exactly to explain it. Does this even make sense?) On Adrien’s side, his desperation for Ladybug to like both Chat Noir and Adrien Agreste can complicate things further. In the Desperada episode, he doesn’t stick to his guns and refuse the Snake Miraculous in the first place because HE ALREADY HAS ONE; instead, he spends MONTHS subjecting himself to saving Ladybug because he wants Ladybug to like Adrien, which is not how the Snake Miraculous should be used, as Master Fu describes. Basically, Ladybug’s and Adrien’s idolization of each other leads to them making extreme decisions regardless of the consequences to others; really this ship is just extremely toxic and I don’t like it. 3/10.

4. Chat Noir and Marinette: Probably the most wholesome out of the Marinette/Adrien/Ladybug/Chat Noir square. It is essentially the complete opposite of Ladybug and Adrien because neither have feelings for the other (in the sense that they won’t admit it). Marinette can see through all of Chat Noir’s bullshit because as Ladybug she’s spent so much time with him; Chat Noir gets to know Marinette better than Adrien could get to know Marinette because she doesn’t know he’s actually Adrien. Marinette also gets to know the sides of Chat Noir he would never show Ladybug as we see in the Glaciator (or something like that) episode; she also gets to know the extent of his love for Ladybug and acts upon the knowledge that she doesn’t want to hurt a friend as Ladybug. Chat Noir is able to get to know Marinette and you can kind of see that he’s began to crush on her (possibly because she so much like Ladybug except without the teasing **coughing fit ensues**). I mean, you saw that eye pop in Evilliustrator, don’t pretend you didn’t. He shows Marinette the surprise he planned for Ladybug, which is already, like, dambro. I honestly don’t think he would have shared that with anyone else. In Frozer, he ditches Kagami for Marinette and he’s getting more concerned about her well-being as time progresses. Chat Noir and Marianette is also when they found out about their secret identities in the Chat Blanc episode, so there’s a strong chance this relationship is going to play a part in the future. 8.5/10.

5. Kagadrien: This is another ship where the fandom is divided. Kagami receives a lot of hate for preventing the Adrienette ship from occuring as well as directly competing against Marinette for Adrien. However, I find her character intriguing. Her mother is incredibly strict and demands a lot from Kagami; she is a master of fencing and I assume she is also a master of everything else Kagami can do while blind, upping her anti. Because of this, Kagami grew up without true friends and into a decisive and brutally honest character. Her mother probably helped enforce this mindset of black-and-white, that if you aren’t right, you’re automatically wrong. Adrien is the first to offer her friendship and their shared experiences of growing up in a restrictive household without any friends allowed for a common ground. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Kagami is outgoing because that implies that she knows how to talk to people; her interactions at the beginning of the Ikari Gozen episode with Marinette demonstrate her isolated childhood as she doesn’t know how to comfortably converse with Marinette. On Adrien’s side, Kagami is one of the few people who look past his model career and pretty face and is the only person who can relate to him and his life. Kagami is also the only person his father has no qualms about him hanging out with and as fencing partners, they build a level of comradeship that Marinette and Adrien (if they never received their Miraculouses) couldn’t necessarily replicate. Kagami has already chosen Adrien and I think she lowkey blames Marinette for Adrien not being able to pick her or Marinette, but in the Captain Hardrock episode, Alya brought up the point that Adrien (Luka doesn’t really count because we all know he chooses Marinette) has a choice to make as well. Really, the only thing keeping this ship from happening is Adrien’s conflicting feelings for Ladybug, Marinette, and Kagami. If Adrien does choose Kagami, their parents would approve of the union as it combines their two strong families (GoT vibes anyone?) and their relationship would be able to flourish. The only other downside as a whole is that neither of them have a healthy relationship to model theirs off of as Adrien’s mother is missing and Kagami’s father isn’t even mentioned at all, but it creates an interesting dynamic of them learning how to navigate a relationship with another person. 7.5/10.

I got five more, but this is already pretty long. I’ll post the next five soon, but thoughts on these so far?

[silverbastardgoldenfool]

Realm of the Elderlings Ask Meme Thing

Created by @hermitknut and brought back by @elderling-magic

Thanks @blackandwhitemotley for tagging me :) this is gonna be unnecessarily long because I’m a messy bitch with too many feelings and not enough brain cells

Favourite RotE Book: God it’s impossible to choose properly so let’s just go with the one that always gives me flashbacks when I see it on my bookshelf: Golden Fool

Why: I was already deeply obsessed at this point and had laughed, cried and panicked countless times throughout the series BUT Golden Fool stands out because of the Fitz/Fool confrontation which all but gave me a panic attack. Sure, I’ve been overly invested in book characters my whole life but the fact I was like physically fuckin sweating just because these guys were having a verbal fight, which had nothing to do with the actual plot, is fuckin wild my dude. Also despite my distress I was thrilled in a way because I never expected Robin to address the homoerotic tension in the actual text - and I was even more impressed that she makes the Fool the winner in this fight. You feel for him (ouch!!!!!!!!) but he gets the last word and the whole time you’re on his side and wishing Fitz would just keep his goddamn mouth shut (unless he’s gonna use it to kiss the Fool). She makes you empathise with the Fool without compromising his dignity, without making him a pathetic pining gay stereotype. He is hurt, he is human, but Fitz is the fool in this exchange (forgive the unintentional pun). It’s crazy how this one scene defines this whole huge book for me but it overwhelmingly does. Man it fucked me up.

Top Three Favourite Characters: I’m excluding Fitz, the Fool and Nighteyes cos that’s just a given honestly and there are too many incredible characters to choose from. Also I’m going to choose three characters I think are exceptional on a technical level since that’s the easiest way for me to pick a few out.

1. Burrich - Forever fascinating to me because I disagree with him probably more often than not AND YET I love him so much. It’s seriously like I have the same relationship with him that Fitz does - and/or the same relationship many of us have with father figures. That weird thing where you can fundamentally disagree on some pretty important stuff, and he makes a lot of mistakes and probably irrevocably fucked you up in a lot of ways but you can’t help but love him because you know he’s not doing anything from a place of malice or pettiness or selfishness. He simply knows what he believes and is righteous to a fault. He’s always doing his best - whatever that looks like to him. There are so many things he says or does that make me amazed that I don’t hate him. I think in another series he is the kind of character I would hate. The fact that Robin makes me love him - and conflicted about that love - is a marvel.

2. Malta - I won’t harp on about this too much because we all know the deal. Malta’s early POVs were a tween nightmare. I had to skim them because they were so viscerally irritating. I guess it’s a huge testament to the writing that it really did feel like you were stuck in a tween girl’s head; the problem is that is the worst hell imaginable. It’s an even greater testament to the writing that, through some of the most masterful character development I have ever witnessed, you actually end up loving this girl.

3. Kennit - He’s such a monster that I hate actually saying he’s one of my favourite characters but it’s true. Especially from a writing perspective; it’s fucking witchcraft how Robin has you judging everyone around Kennit for falling for his charms even while you are in some way charmed by him. He’s intelligent, charismatic, enigmatic. You know he’s not a good person yet you enjoy spending time with him, you’re kind of rooting for him just because he’s interesting and you want to see what he’s going to do next. You even know - the narration straight up tells you - that most of his successes are down to pure dumb luck yet we still kind of buy into this persona of his. Absolutely brilliant writing. Not to mention his backstory, which is so tragic and compelling, and manages to explain his actions without excusing them. Without a doubt one of my top five favourite villains of all time.

Top Three Least Favourite Characters: Okay so again going for the writing angle; characters I just felt weren’t handled all that well on a technical level. Keep in mind that this is suuuuuper subjective. Also I can only think of two.

1. Molly - I’ve seen a lot of people assume that people who dislike her feel that way because she “gets in the way” of Fitz/Fool but that’s not true for me. I’ll try and keep this shortish because I have way too many feelings about this topic lol. Having read the whole series I wouldn’t change anything, but for a long time I really felt like the story would have been better if she wasn’t in it, or especially if she had not come back after Assassin’s Quest. Maybe that’s harsh, but I honestly just generally dislike the whole “first love, last love” trope (and in my personal experience have found it v toxic). I never found her character particularly engaging, but by the end of Farseer I had made my peace with her role in Fitz’s story; the way I saw it, she represented the life Fitz wanted but could never have. Of course you could argue then that it makes sense for Fitz to get her back once he is allowed to have a window of normal life - and that would be true EXCEPT the whole reason I saw her as a symbol and not a real love interest was because their relationship was TERRIBLE. It was seriously toxic and literally based on lies. I really felt what would have been healthy for Fitz at the end of Tawny Man would have been to find peace in realising that Molly was his past, not his future, and that what they’d had was teenage lust and not the stuff of soulmates. I don’t like the implication that Fitz was right to idealise this tumultuous, dishonest, immature relationship he had as a teenager all these years. Honestly this is why I was FURIOUS when I finished Fool’s Fate lol, even though I knew this wasn’t the ultimate ending. Now that I know where Robin went with this and that Fitz wasn’t really fulfilled in his life with Molly I don’t mind it as much but I still don’t love it. There was never enough of an honest, genuine, selfless connection established between the two of them for it to feel like anything other than an unhealthy fixation that Fitz projected all his unattainable fantasies onto. He never seemed to see Molly as a fully realised person which made it hard for me to do so. Also seriously, if I had been pining after my high school fling for the last ten years everyone would agree that the best thing for me would be to move on, not get back together with them. I’m not saying Fitz didn’t deserve his little bracket of peaceful years, but it just didn’t have to be with Molly. Sometimes not getting what you thought you wanted is the happy ending - I guess it’s just really jarring in a series that’s generally so subversive to get a standard fantasy trope like this. I really truly was shocked when Fitz got his feelings back from the stone dragon and his realisation was not “Molly is kind of just a girl I used to know a long time ago and our paths have long since diverged” but “yes no actually that girl I haven’t talked to in over a decade is my soulmate” like, wig in the worst way. ALSO SHE WAS FUCKING HIS DAD ALL THAT TIME. SHE BORE HIS DAD CHILDREN. HIS DAD HAD TO DIE SO THEY COULD BE TOGETHER. BRUH. Seriously it did feel like Burrich was sacrificed solely so these two little shits could get back together, and again, that was so infuriating and so not like these books. This and Burrich not being canonically in love w Chivalry are the only two points I actually get riled up about from a writing/critical perspective lol, every other flaw and quirk in this series I will absolutely pardon but for some reason these just get to me dude.

2. Starling - Promise this one is simpler lol. I always found Starling quite irritating “as a person” but didn’t mind her as a character. What I didn’t love was the way her lifestyle (promiscuity, independence, nomadic etc.) was kind of justified when it didn’t need to be, with the typical explanation that she’s only like this because she can’t have kids. It just felt really unnecessary, and it was even worse when she did get pregnant and basically just became a completely different person. But I’m generally touchy when it comes to female characters and fertility/pregnancy storylines as I just feel like they’re rarely done well. And I just really don’t like it when infertility is implied as a justification for character traits (usually traditionally male traits) that don’t need justifying.

Favourite Ship (of the floating kind): Paragon of course, we love a problematic fave.

Top Three Favourite Ships (of the people kind): Fitz/Fool, Sedric/Carson, Althea/Brashen (the only heteros whomst deserve rights)

Would you rather be Witted or Skilled: Honestly wouldn’t want either but if I had to choose I guess the Wit? I’d much rather be inside an animal’s head than another human’s no thanks bb

If you were Witted, what animal would you bond with?: If I’m still living in my current situation in this hypothetical then I guess a house cat. If I really get to go wild then I am absolutely bonding with a big cat, like a tiger or a panther IMAGINE THE SNUGGLES.

Would you rather live in the Outislands, the Mountain Kingdom, the Six Duchies, Bingtown, the Rain Wilds, Kelsingra, Jamaillia, the Pirate Isles, or Fool’s Homeland?: Dude I am so bad at visualising locations so idk lol, I guess queer utopia Kelsingra although obviously it has its drawbacks.

How were you introduced to the books? My mum had been telling me for years that if I liked A Song of Ice and Fire I would like Realm of the Elderlings. I was putting it off because there are so many books and I also knew how much she loved them so I was worried I wouldn’t like them and she’d be let down. But I eventually got so close to rereading ASOIAF (which I swore I wouldn’t do til Winds of Winter is released) that I decided to finally give RotE a go in its stead.

Share a quote you love: I don’t have a book on me rn but that part in Fool’s Errand when Fitz is talking about how the Fool has wandered into the place he’s been living for years and immediately, effortlessly made it a home is TENDERNESS BEYOND COMPARE ARE YOU KIDDING.

Tagging: if you see this and haven’t done it yet, consider yourself tagged!

Take the thing, copy and paste it into your own post, tag it “elderlings” and then tag as many people as you can that you know in the fandom.

[mautadite]

december book round up

happy new year’s everyone! i had a pretty good book year this year; completed my goodreads challenge and surpassed it to boot, with a total of 148 books read. 10 less than last year, but still pretty good! :) i read 15 books in december that i’ll talk about now; i’ll hopefully post a yearly round up talking about the best and worst of 2019 some time today. also i’m not sure why goodreads has ballsed up the order but chronin was my last book of the year, not mstsk.

gideon the ninth - tamsin muir ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ very good, just, really good, i had a GOOD TIME with this book. very appealing to me specifically in the way stories about deep loyalty between two people often are. i loved all of the houses in some way, but especially i love gideon and her two lesbian brain cells. a reread is probably necessary for me to wrap my head around all of the world-building/magic/necro stuff but it was all very good. really looking forward to the sequels.  

being hers - anna stone ⭐️⭐️ lesbian bdsm romance between a grad student and a high-powered businesswoman. wasn’t particularly good, but also i didn’t hate it.

introducing mr. winterbourne - joanna chambers ⭐️⭐️⭐️ reread from earlier this year. really cute story of historical romance with a couple who have great chemistry.

mr. winterbourne’s christmas - joanna chambers ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ lysander and adam’s story continued a year or more later. i love house party stories; the ensemble cast thing really works for me somehow. this was super fun, really cute, and the women who i thought were lesbians turned out to indeed be lesbians. yaaaaas.

how to blow it with a billionaire - alexis hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reread in preparation to read the last book of the series. now that i’ve read them all i think this is definitely my favourite, just for how tender it is, and the time they spend getting to know each other and how fucking nerdy caspian is.

how to belong with a billionaire - alexis hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ last book in the series. THEY GET HEIR HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!! i have to reiterate that billionaire romances aren’t my thing, and it’s only because i like alexis hall so much and i trust him that i gave this a chance. i’m glad i did. this third book took a few turns i wasn’t expecting, and the long periods of separation made me SO SAD. i loved what it said about abuse and recovery and kink. i just hated that the abuser didn’t die lol.

underground airlines - ben h. winters ⭐️⭐️⭐️ dystopian novel about a timeline in which abraham lincoln was assassinated way before he actually was in real life, and slavery was never abolished in the us (or other places? the book was very NA centric). now, in the 21st century a group of southern states known as the hard four still have legal slavery, and our protag is a black former slave working as a bounty hunter for the gov’t to capture runaways. my biggest problem with this novel is that it seems to cast ol’ abe as The Most Important Reason Why Slavery Was Abolished and because he never got the chance to do what he did then we’re supposed to think it’s completely believable that it never got abolished countrywide. i’m simplifying a lot of things in the book of course, but man, i couldn’t get over that. otherwise: neat premise, skilful writing, tender in unexpected ways. couldn’t help but headcanon the protag as queer.

life in bits - harper bliss, t.b. markinson ⭐️⭐️ contemporary lesbian romance. a successful photographer returns to her home town to convalesce after suffering a stroke; has a fling with a cute nurse that quickly turns into something more. i... didn’t really like it lol. :/ and i usually like harper bliss books a lot! idk how the authors handled the co-writing, but i didn’t like the writing style, and the main character just wasn’t appealing. and she was a grumpy older dyke which is usually CATNIP to me!! i just wasn’t interested in them as people, or in their relationship.

his cocky valet - cole mccade ⭐️⭐️⭐️ contemporary m/m romance about a spoilt rich kid who’s suddenly propelled to the top of his father’s business empire under traumatic circumstances, and the valet he hires who helps him keep his life on track. tropey as heck, but in a good way. got super intense kink-wise, in a way i didn’t exactly enjoy, but i think it was a good read overall

fake fiancee - clara reese ⭐️⭐️ f/f romance, two friends pretend to be fiancees but then fall in love for real. dawn needs to keep her uncle’s inheritance, which will allow her to open a home for battered women. her contractor gina has a sick brother who needs surgery. they pretend to be engaged to satisfy the will, and profit! cute, tropey in exactly the way i like, but the writing just didn’t have anything to recommend to it. hot tho.

borealis investigations 1-3 - gregory ashe ⭐️⭐️⭐️ two best friends operating a private detective agency that specialises in cases that involve the lgbtqia community. the best thing about this series was the chemistry between north and shaw. it was SO GOOD and the slow burn that moved them from best friends to lovers was CHEFS KISS so good. and all the delicious mutual pining. the mysteries in all three books were competent enough. kept me guessing. and i like ashe’s writing style and humour! but there were so many irritating things. an almost all lily-white cast in the first book (which is fine! write what you know!) with one single black character who was of course, predatory, evil and lusting after the innocent white boy. lots of little “haha sjws” moments (mostly involving pari, their indian temp whom i loved, but man she got done dirty) . making fun of neo-pronouns. fights about nothing to induce drama. and the writing style started to grate on me at some point. it’s frustrating because i could have so easily LOVED these books. instead i just liked them.

my sister, the serial killer - oyinkan brathwaite ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ mystery/thriller set in nigeria. korede is the quintessential long-suffering older sister to ayoola. ayoola is beautiful beyond words, gets all the attention, and everyone thinks she can do no wrong. but korede knows better, because ayoola has a bad habit of killing her boyfriends, and calling korede to help her clean up the mess. oops! the book starts with her third murder. i loved this; predictable in some ways, but well written, wsitty, and very engaging because of the culture and these terrible wonderful characters.

chronin volume 2 - alison wilgus ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ conclusion to the chronin two-parter; a fun time travelling romp that grabbed me by the whole heart. mirai struggles to confront the events that have transpired in this new past, has some revelations, and saves the damn day. i’m so glad this was my last book of the year, purely for how HAPPY it made me. i read the last forty or so pages with my hand on my heart. 

and that’s it for december, and 2019! it’s been an up and down year for me personally, but it’s been a good year in terms of books. really happy that i’ve been able to continue reading a lot; reading was the love of my teenage years and reconnecting with that, with just the love of getting lost in a book for a few hours... it’s great. admittedly i read a lot of schmoopy gay romance but hey guess what? romance novels are good actually.

for 2020 i hope to read more of my two other loves, science fiction and fantasy. and if i can get scifi and fantasy that’s also gay, even better! like i said i’ll post my yearly round up later today hopefully, but if you’re interested, here’s my year in books from goodreads in the mean time.

currently reading my first book of the decade: a land so wild by elyssa warkentin.

[asteria-rainbow]

Ascension Diary 1

I decided to keep a diary online to everything that's happening to me spiritually speaking during my ascension.

1. To keep some track

2. To express my emotions

3. To share it with whoever reads it

Going through the ascension and a spiritual awakening in general is a big deal, a lot of things gets stirred up and I think it's nice to talk about it and to be honest, I need it because I have too much to say.

Since october, as I was going about my ascension journey in a pretty fast pace but normal way, things got completely out of control.

I developped clairaudience/telepathy and clairsentience from last Mai and started using it on a daily basis. I already have clairvoyance but not as developped, I can see the astral realm, the energy floating around, I can get flashes, images, I can see lights of being floating around but I've never tried to open my third eye more specifically for clairvoyancd because I think it's a natural process and to rush it would be reckless.

But I focused a lot more on clairaudience (I will call it telepathy from now on) for a while and started communicating with guides and lightbeings and earth elementals and all sorts of energies, it was awesome !

However things got pretty messed up after a while.

I was attacked by many beings at once.

The thing is, I think for all those months the beings I was talking to that I considered my guides weren't all guides at all.

I was tricked. A classic.

I believed in a very naive way that I you have the "right" vibration, loving and open and light that what would come in return would be the same, if you have good intentions then it's alright. I tried not to be scared of the unknown too much even if I knew there were terrible stories but I tried not to think about them at all and start my ascension journey with an open mind.

I held on to my beliefs.

Yet it wasn't enough.

You see my body held karmic stuff that I didn't know about.

Actually in a parallel life (not past as I consider them simultaneous) I was tricked by a witch to do sex magic to turn into a portal to help very very low density beings to come into this dimension.

You fucking read it right.

I am not even kidding.

So the thing is, it was happening in let's say in the X life, and I am in the R life.

That life where the "main event" was happening had a ripple effect on my current life like a rock thrown in water.

So I relieved the same event at the same time.

Except, the witch in my present was actually my twinflame, a witch not incarnated from the 6th dimension that was living inside my own energy field.

(Did I think I would be discovering such things when I started meditating a year ago ? Fuck no.)

So the "story" repeated itself (more happened at the same time) where I got tricked by "guides" I don't know who the fuck they are to perform some "sex magic". (I don't even do real magic, never done a ritual or anything or maybe one when I was 13 but I always tried to stay away from magic because it doesn't interest me).

But I didn't even do real magic. And it was my own idea I once in july tried to use kundalini energy (sexual) to manifest something but it was like a try to see, and I did it ONCE. I followed a normal spiritual tutorial on how to do it I had no idea it would be considered sex magic and it wasn't weird or didn't include other beings.

ANYWAY.

My clairsentience got wild in october I started feeling my own auric field. I could feel my chakras and connect to energies of pretty much anything to get a feel of it I thought it was cool and tried to learn how to live with this. I could feel energy flowing in and out of me, from the crown to the bottom of my feet. My chakras rotating and opening.

I lived in the mountains and meditated 1-2 hours a day doing all sorts of fun things. I felt I was training since I wanted to become professional in spirituality I really wanted to get into it. I'm a very focused person when I want to be so when I have a goal you know.. I didn't know in which field yet so I wanted to experiment. I precise that I was doing things intuitively from my higher self and with some advices of my guides. (hum)

So here comes october.

First I started hearing my ancestors and feel them in my teeth energically and I started talking with them, it was weird but fun and I didn't know what to do with it.

I understood that some clairaudience things I heard and some repetitive thoughts pattern came in fact from them and not me. So that was interesting.

Then one day out of the blue, around halloween, a lot of deceased people came around me and were starting to use my field as portal to pass on to the other side.

Guides and beings around me were talking with them for the procedure and all and I was like ???????????? Ok so I tried helping but you know nobody gave me a manual ? And I had to control my thoughts because everything was happening telepatically but I never properly learn so I let things slip up like "I'm sorry you are dead" to people who didn't even know they were dead so they got distressed and I was ? Fuckkkk. Honestly it was a mess and too much for me for a first time so after a while I said stop to all of it I said I didn't want to do it right now maybe take it one step at the time but then things got messy.

Low dimensional beings followed me around for weeks and started harassing me about responsabilities and I tried not to be scared but didn't know how to deal with it on a daily basis ?

So I went to a friend of mine who teaches all sort of spiritual fields who knows a lot about beings (he wrote books and all) and asked him for advice.

So he told me that I couldn't fight it and that I had to "take them" one by one to see what each had to show me about myself to work through. He told me to be firm.

Except there were 15 of them. I was like ok I can TRY I mean what choice do I have ?

So I was at my house sitting by my kitchen table and I asked them to get in line and to patiently WAIT for me to see them one by one.

(oh yes because each of them were eating bits of my energy and I could feel it the 15 at the same time so that was a ride)

So at first they got in line but some of them were terribly angry (I may have said some words at some point I mean they were fucking hurting me who can stay still and say nothing ?)

So I tried. When the third came the others lost their tempers and they all came at me at once.

In the mess my witch twinflame came in the mix (and she was pretty terrifying) so what did I do ? Obviously ? I started fighting. All of them.

How ? I don't even know. I did everything I could think of. Salt baths, prayers, mantras, I went to a guy who sends them off somewhere, I tried lightlanguage (SO VERY BAD IDEA NEVER EVER DO IT) because I thought it was coming from my heart so like a disney movie everything would be alright again. (I promise I really believed that haha I didn't know what to do) but in fact it was like an incantation but I didn't even know. So it was like magic. So I messed up without realizing what I was doing.

I wanna laugh know.

Sooooooo when I realized it wouldn't work I went back to my friend and he managed to get "rid of them".

For a moment.

But no it wasn't the end at all it was only the beginning.

I got a day or two to breathe and then well I don't know who the fuck came (the witch was there) but there were it seemed like many, MANY beings coming.

What did I do ? Well fight obviously because I never learn.

Ok so picture hell right now (I don't even believe in hell ffs) well it felt like I was there.

They talked all at once saying terrible things about me. They knew EVERYTHING I once believed or thought or wanted to do. They were doing a sort of game of fighting with me when every other minutes another being would pop up and come fight me.

My auric field ? My chakras ? A mess. I FELT PHYSICAL PAIN. How just how I didn't know it was possible, is it because I believed it ? Perhaps.

Anyway that's when I lost touch with reality completely.

Completely. It turned in some sort of psychosis schizophrenia you name it but it wasn't regular spiritual stuff I was completely off touch with the ground.

So much that I felt my auric field kind of leave ? LEAVE ? Like go up into the sky.

I tried to stay here I tried. I stayed one entire day near a tree to try to stay grounded but it wasn't enough it was SO INTENSE.

Like a bad bad spiritual fever.

Obviously in my stupid fight I tried once to raise my frequency ? Because why not ? Idk. But it attracted MORE beings but high frequency this time (with some ETs that weren't nice AT ALL)

Ok so began weeks of torture of all kinds. All kinds. Mind games. Physical pain. Delirium.

They indeed used me as portal to make enter bad things into this dimension. And I couldn't even control it. They were using my emotions.

When I had an emotion like sadness, some terrible being entered through my own field (how is this even possible I don't know). So they were torturing me but I was trying not to feel not to make enter anything, and I had to control my thoughts because at the same time they were all tricking me to make contracts.

Yeah contracts. I didn't know but apparently that's a thing in some realm. Soul contract.

Apparently they got to use me as portal because of a contract. Ok ok so WHY NO ONE TELLS US THAT WE MADE CONTRACTS BEFORE ENTERING THIS EARTH AND WHICH AND WHY NO ONE TELLS HOW WE MAKE THEM (apparently a single thought was like "I sign !!! " when ??? No ???)

So I made so many contracts without knowing that some contradicted each other. It made absolutely zero sense at the end.

Anyway.

So the one of the most terrible thing was that one being.

Because I actually saw with my two eyes it's shadow on the wall falling down from the ceiling (he passed through me). Then, he began torturing me. Like it felt like it was eating my brain. A real life horror movie.

But he did that you know how ? In a time loop.

I REPEAT, IN A TIME LOOP.

You must think I'm mental lmao but I'm not joking.

I experimented a real life time loop.

It's real, it exists. It's like in the movies.

I relieved the same torture scene over and over again for... How don't know how long ? It's even difficult for my brain to comprehend. There was no time.

I got off the time loop when I realised there was one. I got out of my room the second I realise there was one.

To this day I have no words. No words.

???!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!

WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL WAS THAT.

Ok so the concept of time we understand and then when you ascend there is no time because you are always in the now moment that's something you can grasp in your mind but THIS. This was some next level bullshit us humans shouldn't experience. This should not happen. This is ?? Not ?? ok ?? Not natural. We're not in a sci-fi movie ffs but apparently yes I got stuck in a torture time loop thanks.

Jesus CHRIST I still can't believe it. Did I hallucinate ? It sure didn't feel like it.

Anyway so that was a thing.

So as you can see it got way too much, waaaay too much and I decided to got to the hospital because I was having chest pain and so much stress I was about to faint ?

But they couldn't find anything. So they advised I go to psy. I went out of despair ? I did 29377382 holistic therapy that helped a bit but seriously the beings were still torturing me and being in my head 24/7 so I thought I had nothing to lose.

What a terrible mistake.

I was locked up in a room with nothing but myself and this nightmare.

Those 4 days were interesting to say the least.

I got spiritually raped multiples times stopped praying after a while.

I begged. I asked for help. I prayed everyone and everything I could think of. I tried protection stuff.

Nothing really worked there were too many of them and I was like a little lamb unknowingly giving away my light and serving as portal for those creatures.

Joy.

I couldn't even cry because another terrible being was coming everytime.

They broke my mind. I broke my mind. I lost touch so much I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror.

They brainwashed me, reprogrammed me. Used the subconscious for reprogramming so yeah apparently that's another thing.

You know when you are trying to reprogramm yourself for manifesting for example well reminder that other consciousnesses can do it to you too so you have to be EXTREMELY aware of what's yours and what's not.

It was a huge thing to make me do all sorts of stuff but since I could tell the difference it didn't work because it's something I learned beforehand.

The key is not believing it and it's even easier when you know it's not from you.

Their programms are still in me today they pop up from my subconscious mind sometimes but since I know they are not mine I live with it for now.

So they were trying to get me to say yes to something (I think it was for posession) but I kept saying no over and over again.

ET's/lightbeings did stuff in within my brain (and I never would have thought I would see the day when I would be saying this, so this is my life now apparently ok)

Anyway. I'm not describing in details because it's too long and honestly I don't want to relive it again once was enough for a lifetime.

I was broken so was my mind and my heart and everything.

I had no options for it to stop, I wasn't even fighting anymore I was just trying to make less damage and not let enter anything else. But it was no use I didn't control anything. My field was a mess everything was blocked there were leaking all over and well I didn't sleep for days and my energy was very low I made 22927354 contracts, was raped, reprogrammed, experimented on and all of this within a single fucking month.

I didn't see any other choice than to take meds.

To numb the clairaudience and clairsentience.

I knew it wasn't a solution and that it wouldn't make them "go away" but at least I didn't have to feel or hear anything consciously.

It's difficult to write about it honestly but it makes me a bit happy to be able to share and not keep it all to myself.

So I took meds for 2-3 weeks and it numbed the clairs but I could still feel it and hear it a tiny bit I knew it wasn't gone. But I got time to heal a bit and get my mind clear again.

I did a quantum healing session with a wonderful lady who saw everything that happened, knew about my with sister and everything she did a tremedous work where she got rid of all the contracts, removed the ties with some entities, spoke to me about the time loop (so yeah apparently that's a real thing for real ? Wow) and did some work about my twinflame witch sister (she cut the cord we had where we needed to reincarnate together and she left my field to go back to be incarnated if she wanted). I had a sigil of magic on me I didn't even know about. Probably from a past life or from my witch sister. Oh and apparently those beings put me implants. Etheric implants yeah apparently that's a thing. Because everything that I was feeling in my clairs felt real but I KNEW that something was off. Something felt.. Like unnatural.

I was right.

Idk who but someone put me an implant to modify my perceptions, so my clairs ! What I was feeling/hearing/seeing may have not been the actual truth of what was happening. AND I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT WAS OFF. But still IT'S MAD THEY CAN DO THIS. They can implant things to modify perceptions ??? Who the fuck did I attract ?? What kind of lightbeings ? It's INSANE.

So the lady got rid of some of them but not all, we scheduled another appointment on friday but this woman gets month of waiting list because she's the real deal I'm thinking of taking a class with her but anyway. We managed to close me as portal. I am not a portal anymore, yaye ! 😐

Things got a bit quieter afterwards.

That was super nice.

I got to breathe but I was still heavily traumatized like someone coming back from war, always stressed than anything will happen you know it took me a week or two to let my body relax for a second.

I quit the meds a week ago.

I don't want to put my head into the sand and not face anything. I knew my clairs would be coming back but I have a new approach now that I have my head a lot clearer and I am slowly getting back to myself.

I decided first not to fight no matter what I hear or what I feel. I know not all the implants are gone so my stategy is to remain calm. I still feel some weird things over my head energically since I quit my meds beings came back to taunt me a bit but I didn't response.

I learned that with all that I became some kind of medium actually. It wasn't intended but ok. So my new techique, instead of meditating to get to higher states of consciousness or other realm or inside myself I meditate to stay right here right now. I use mindfullness to stay in the now moment. It allows me to hear less since my attention is on the touch or my real eyesight.

Staying present. Staying present. Staying present.

I have no other choice. Otherwise the minute my mind goes somewhere else I have thoughts and people answer my thoughts. I am never alone in my head anymore and I honestly don't know how to deal.

I still have the repetitive thoughts of the programming. But it's getting quieter when I don't think.

So I don't think and I don't listen.

It's extremely difficult but with training I believe I can do it.

I can't really apply the ascension process anymore in the way people put it because for me it's a bit more complicated now I can't even really think.

So Imma try to stay right here right now and see how it goes.

Get rid of the remaining implants. That's it.

Proctecting yourself is useless. If you take a hit you take a hit. The bubble of light isn't enough.

There are things out there more complex than we think. I almost killed myself but I am still alive so I guess what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ? They can't kill anyone unless you let it happen.

The trauma is there but I'll get over it.

I was a victim but I won't take this from a victim pov, I attracted this when I blindly trusted any being passing because they seemed nice and from the light.

I did everything from the book, never did anything weird, always stayed in the light, controled my thoughts to remain as much as possible positive, did the protocoles of protection and what did I create ?

Chaos. And pain and suffering.

So guess what I think there's nothing to control if stuff happens it happens. This much pain was hard to accept at the time but I will get there for it not to get stuck I don't want to repeat this again I think I learned my lesson.

Now I'm enjoying the sensation of my couch under my fingers and listening to the radio and looking by the window to the plants outside. I feel a weird thing over my head but try to focus on the sunlight outside not on this thing and focus my consciousness on the ground under my feet.

I think it's my life now but it's ok. I still get to see what's right in front of me. It's often nice especially when there's sunlight.

Thank you if you read, you are even madder than me.

I'll see how it goes after the implants are removed.

Maybe I will feel less weird stuff ?

Meditate they say, go beyond the veil they say.

Maybe what's already there is perfect enough and it's ok if we don't do it and we go slow and we don't unlock everything and not open every chakra ? And not try to connect somewhere and just stay right here ? Being fully present ?

I think it's ok. Let's enjoy the sunlight for a while.

✨

[rgr-pop]

LONG POST AIRING GRIEVANCES ABOUT DUMB SHIT IN BEAUTY COMMUNITY!! 

oh my GOD. okay, so, small youtuber who is climbing. beloved by many small youtubers because she is a regular girl and very nice and FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK and has social justice interests, she also posts a lot of drama content and some people (including me tbh) really like the way she kind of ~~democratizes drama content. don’t @ me it’s whatever. reddit HATES her because her mother buys her a lot of makeup for her birthday (literally) and she is not into self-punishing no-buys which is the only thing people like right now very coincidentally (going on a no-buy is apparently how you end landfills).

this youtuber is fat and not conventionally pretty--I really hate even saying the latter because it is objectively not true and also an evil thing to say even nicely, but for example she is always talking about how she doesn’t really care that her lips are small and is not interested in overdrawing or “fixing” them, and getting flamed for it. in the community (the respectable arm of it, which is the rddt, where we are ostensibly not allowed to be like “she looks terrible”), where there is smoke there is fire, and “not skilled at makeup” + maybe some nebulous complaints about whininess = she is a fat girl, end her. (”rude” = black youtuber too much power, end her.)

i’m talking about sm*key gl*w whose name is hannah, hannah #1, i think it is interesting to contrast her with the other hannah that i talk about sometimes--i try not to talk about her too much because we sort of teechnically have real world social connections and, also, i just feel bad for her. i feel desperately bad for hannah #2, because she is in her thirties having lived in art communities and global urban centers but for the first time in her life having to reckon with things like--”it is not appropriate to talk about calories at dinner, etc.” that is the second hannah, and while she is sweet and interesting to many in the small youtube community precisely because she is very alien to them (has mfa), it’s very difficult to watch, and sometimes i think she is the most “toxic” youtuber i follow. she is not an originator in any way, but she found herself in the center of a so-called anticonsumerist movement in small beautube that is kind of taking over, which is related to but not exactly minimalism--you have probably heard me talk about this already, at length. a good example of this is that second hannah recently said in a video that she was thinking of doing a shopping “fast.” i don’t know how she became this person, and how she held onto this kind of personality in spite of being in lots of communities that i am also in or have friends in where i know that if you talked this way about dieting etc. at a social event, someone would probably softly scold you. she somehow insulated herself from this kind of learning, i don’t know, then she threw herself into beautube where a woman who maybe sort of likes art and writes poetry and has heard of “fair trade” before is an absolute anomaly, but that community--like literally, where people do liposuction and skinny teas!--has only encouraged this absolutely unreal nasty and BAD behavior. etc. i have a lot of feelings about this.

so first hannah is a fat girl who is not rich--we will get to that!--but spends her money primarily on makeup. people HATE her. second hannah is thin, possibly rich in family origin (i think she is) but basically your average working artist in life. she frames her so-called overconsumption not even precisely as an addiction but specifically as a lack of willpower that she also struggles with when it comes to sometimes eating sugar (really). both of these hannahs consume and talk about quite a lot of luxury makeup--second hannah is very openly committed to luxury purchase as part of her self-conception. second hannah sometimes goes on “shopping diets” though, so people praise her! it is evil. 

above is the shit i hate day in and day out but the points below will have more to do with the screencap +...upstate new york, i guess. henceforth we are only talking about first hannah.

so this girl is from some kind of small town around rochester or syracuse--something up there. iirc she goes to a suny school i had never heard of (i looked it up and it is a “suny comprehensive college,” though i can’t remember if she transferred out of this school to a bigger school. but, as many of you know, sunys are cheap as hell and should be protected at all costs, this school costs well under half what my state school did, for residents anyway.) she is in her mid-twenties and not graduated yet, due to struggles she has had (and spoken openly about) as well as having gone to community college. they LOVE to bring up how she is too old to be a college student! she’s like...idk 24 or something. she is going to school to be a social worker in one of those accelerated programs, which she has found quite difficult (again, spoken openly about this) and which also requires, as many of you know!, lots of extra work, unpaid and paid. she said somewhere that she does not have student loans, but i don’t know if her parents paid for her college or just shouldered loans, or if she paid for it, or if it is all financial aid. (”not having student loans” is something that enrages people, ESPECIALLY when someone doesn’t have loans because they got need-based aid.) again, she probably had some financial catastrophes due to school failures (speaking from experience here), but: sunys is cheap as hell and there are a million reasons why someone could go to one and not be struggling with loans!

where was i...her parents. watching this has fascinated me! her dad was a school teacher and her mom is a social worker--absolutely public servant middle class. i thiiink (could be wrong) that her father retired already and ended up retiring from a principalship, so they were probably extremely comfortable by the time she was in college, but they are definitionally middle class. the biggest controversy around this youtuber is that for birthdays and christmas her mother goes fucking insane--probably spent two to four hundred dollars on her for her birthday. she talks about this all the time: her mother and her are very close and their hobby is shopping. people treat this like the bougiest fucking thing on earth and it is ba nanas. straight up, this girl has probably never even HEARD of anthropologie. listen, i can’t afford to live like her either but i recognize poor shopping when i see it. working class people like to blow their money on bullshit and to take issue with that is demonstrably racist and classist! i will not hear this conversation over again in 2019. for example, hannah made a video about her “high end bag” collection, in which she said she got a bcbg bag on sale for like $30 but had never heard of the brand before. she had once been gifted a kate spade bag and her DREAM was to purchase one on her own. she buys coach at the local coach outlet, which is a regional attraction. THIS GIRL IS NOT BOUGIE! THEY ARE JUST MAD THAT SHE OWNS CLOTHES AND IS ALSO FAT! she did a closet tour where she talked about how she has like 50 crop tops, they were ALL like forever 21. they are just mad about fat girl in crop tops. there is nothing to see here! does she have too much shit, and shop too much? sure. welcome to flyover country you dumb bitches. that is what I think about that!

so, she definitely makes money on youtube, but mostly enough to sustain youtube and makeup buying (possibly some savings? unsure. i know she said this in a video but i forget.) she has lived with this boyfriend of hers for a number of years and they are building a life together that doesn’t immediately include marriage, probably largely for financial reasons. i get the sense that his jobs pay a lot of their bills, but he just finished getting a teaching MA of some kind (i think he is a math teacher? i already forgot) and is entering the regular teaching job market. based on some of the following i think his parents might be wealthier than hers but i think they might also be teachers. as you can see in the screenshot above, people are enraged at this girl for apparently being a gold digger for getting a house with him before they are married! 

people are SO pissed that she was “able to buy a house” at age 25, but they did not watch the video! in which she said that they had been dealing with the death of her bf’s step grandpa all year, and the family had decided that they should take over the step grandpa’s house. (step grandpa’s family does sound “richer” because, according to her, this house had been owned by a GREAT grandparent and paid off decades ago.) her descriptions of this house are confusing to me because she keeps referring to it as both “old” and “from the eighties,”; I think it is an actually old house that had not been “updated” since the eighties. seems like the family did not “gift” it to them as much as sign it over to them in exchange for them being the ones to take out the renovation loans, which allegedly she said are $50k. unclear to me if she and her bf got approved for that loan--probably not, I think it was taken out in the family’s name. ($50k is too much to put into a house in rochester imooo but I am reserving my judgment there! rochester has a very flyover housing economy, much like ours, but with a much higher end, I think?)

so anyway, these vultures are sociopaths. “ Who gives someone a house no matter how much they like them? That seems wild to me” ...p-parents? dead grandparents? is your will gonna be like “my kid has to buy their OWN house like i did!” who are these people

YES SOMETIMES YOU STOP NEEDING YOUR HOUSE, WHEN YOU DIE

anyway I’m done. I just thought this thing would be of interest in particular to the upstate new yorkers. the whole condition of the indebted working-middle class is just like inconceivable to people who consume only ideologically pure content by wealthy west coast whites all day long