#it’s what I deserve. I’ve been here since wizards of waverly place

[tallmadgeandtea]

Crazy that Gregg Sulkin is doing two (2) period dramas this year and one of them is MASTERPIECE while my man Seth isn’t on one…

[simplylove101]

Influential TV Shows

Okay this is kinda random and why I prob won’t tag the shows I list cuz this is more just something I wanted to get out of my head after watching J&J’s latest podcast where they were talking about this topic. They kept it to 7 shows each and while that would certainly be interesting to try, that’s kinda hard. lol I went about grouping some of them - shows that shaped me growing up, shows that impacted me/stuck with me, comfort shows/watch with the family, taught me about fandoms, etc. And saying something about each of them. Anyway, this is stupid but here we go lol:

The Shows Growing Up:

Sailor Moon: Okay, nobody make fun of me. lol This is the first show I remember really watching as a kid that wasn't Barney or whatever, something I decided to watch by myself and it actually had an ongoing story. And ofc it took time for me to realize that this was just an English dubbed version that they would play on Cartoon Network. Looking back on it, it’s a little cringey (the voice readings, Serena being a bit of a crybaby) but seeing girls, even if it was animated, kicking ass over evil as a group made an impression on me so it’s no wonder I would watch it religiously after school and was sad when they stopped airing it. And ofc I watched all the movies too. I was a shameless fan. lmao I also eventually read the manga and appreciated it.

Hey Arnold: As a kid, I would watch Cartoon Network & Nickelodeon (& eventually Disney when I got a little bit older), and I think one of the Nickelodeon shows that really stuck with me as a kid, like Rugrats, was this one. It had a wide range of really distinct characters. It was genuinely funny. And I did love the dynamic between Arnold & Helga (who was interesting & sometimes they would let her be the protagonist of an ep instead of him, like the therapist one which is a def fave) even if her crush was kinda as stalkerish as you can get why maintaining innocence. lol And you know what? I did totally watch the recent movie they did where it tied up loose ends like getting these two together and allowing her to grow as a character. Gotta say it was rewarding after all this time. lol  

All That: I feel like I gotta put this here because I watched this show all the time as a kid. And I think it’s something that really taught me about comedy. I had seen things from Saturday Night Live growing up cuz of my parents but this was my Nickelodeon version with people that weren’t much older than me at the time so I could really get what was going on/enjoy it. It’s also the first place where we saw people like Amanda Bynes & Kenan Thompson & Kel Mitchell (which is partly why I later watched things like The Amanda Show and Kenan & Kel) What can I say? As a young person, it was just really cool seeing kids being funny. Yeah, there was some cheese but I didn’t care. It stayed with me.

Boy Meets World/Sister, Sister/Lizzie McGuire/Even Stevens: I kinda cheated here and bundled these shows because these are four of the shows I watched on Disney growing up (Disney showed reruns of Boy Meets World & Sister, Sister for the record) There were others like That’s So Raven, Suite Life, Wizards of Waverly sort of, Proud Family to name a few but these shows I picked have such iconic episodes that I still remember well and love. Like Even Stevens - musical episode hands down Idc. Boy Meets World - Scream-inspired Halloween ep for sure. Yes, there was cheesiness with all these shows. Sometimes very after-school special, but they shaped me I think. Also gotta mention, I remember thinking of Hilary Duff as my idol. lol

The Ones I Watched With the Fam:

That 70′s Show: Now the thing with my family is that we were one where for a time we would watch tv while eating dinner and my dad would have control of what channel we watched. It was always this way, which meant it would either be Law & Order or Seinfeld (the second one I was cool with and I almost included it on here cuz it’s such a staple comedy but eh,,, I appreciated it more later on. It felt more forced on me at the time) This is probably one of the only shows I can say my whole family truly agreed on watching all together tho, including my sister who generally watches trashy reality shows. This show will always remain one of my faves, because it was hilarious. It got a little weaker towards the end (We do NOT speak about Season 8) but I loved how it was a true ensemble sitcom where everyone brought something to the table and enjoyed the different dynamics between the group. The funny running gags, Jackie & Hyde still remain one of my all-time otps, and Kelso is probably the funniest & lovable dumb character I can think of (If nothing else, Ashton Kutcher was meant to play this part ok) It was nice to have something my whole family could enjoy together. It was a rarity so this show has a special place in my heart for that alone.

Joan of Arcadia: Another show that has a place in my heart, despite it only lasting 2 seasons and it ending on a bad note (major cliffhanger, still never fully making things right w/ Adam after destroying his character, ultimately S2 was problematic but still) because this is a show that I watched religiously (pun not actually intended here lol) with my mom every Friday it was on. What I loved about it was that the concept is centered around Joan talking to God yet it generally wasn’t being preachy. Joan wasn’t always willing to do what God wanted her to do, and things didn’t always turn out how she wanted. It was a kinda perfect blend for me and my mom to watch together. After this we were more willing to watch stuff as a pair cuz we were close but this started all that. I remember always being curious how God would appear to Joan cuz it was always changing, but there were some fave recurring ones like Cute Guy God, Goth God & Old Lady God to name a few. heh Joan was played wonderfully by the awesome Amber Tamblyn who could always make me cry (naturally she played my fave Tibby in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies too lol) and she had awesome friends in Adam & Grace (who were my faves) and family. I rewatched this show and you know, I’d say S1 holds up and even the first half of S2. Heck, the episode where Joan & Adam break up towards the end of it, while totally heartbreaking and PISSES me off cuz bad writing for Adam, was solid simply for the acting so there’s that. lol

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Putting this show under this category because this was a show that I mostly got into because my sister loved it growing up. I was really young when it came out so I mostly remembered bits & pieces when I later watched it when I got a little older. It stuck with me tho cuz ofc the awesome Sarah Michelle Gellar playing badass Buffy (she was my sister’s idol) and it was a genuinely funny and smart show. It also got dark too. It wasn’t always solid towards the end, but I think it mostly nailed the actual ending (why Anya had to die tho... Spike I got but ugh) Anyway, this was kinda a big deal cuz it was the only thing my sister and I really watched together that wasn’t bad reality television or me barely paying attention to Dawson’s Creek at the time lol This showed that my sister could have taste when she wanted to (lmao sorry)

The Carol Burnett Show: I had to mention this show because this is one that got me, really my family, through dealing with my mom’s dementia. We chose to care for her at home instead of putting her in a nursing home. We did this for 2 years until her death. And the one thing we (excluding my sister cuz her & old stuff don’t mix) could always count on cheering us up was this show. My dad told me that my mom loved this show growing up and that’s why we turned on for her. So luckily memory or no memory, she still had a sense of humor and she knew when to laugh. And with good reason. This show is hilarious. So iconic. Carol Burnett was/is rightfully loved dearly for this show. I wish I had more I could say, but this was truly a comfort show when I desperately needed it so I am forever grateful that it existed.

Honorable Mention: Young & Hungry - another show that got us through that dark period, my dad actually really enjoyed this, despite seeming skeptical, and eventually started calling it the “Josh & Gaby Show” lmao Only thing is we never finished it together so oops. Not so much influential maybe but worth mentioning it felt like since it was underrated, got me thru a tough time, was hilarious and I loved that cast a lot. Emily Osment deserved to be the lead of her own show. Comedy queen.

The Ones That Brought Out the Fangirl In Me AKA The Teen Years:

The O.C/One Tree Hill/Gossip Girl/The Vampire Diaries: Another category where I’m just grouping them up together cuz ultimately it wasn’t about high art with these shows. They were the staple teen shows that everyone was watching and well, I was one of those people. lol It all started with The O.C. It was one of those ‘at the right time’ kinda things cuz I just went into the 6th grade when S1 started and it was such a big hit that everyone was always talking about it and there were even shirts involved (I never went that far lol) but this is where my need to explore YouTube came and then I was making fanvids. Gossip Girl is the one where I actually inserted myself into a fandom for the first time. My goodness the cringe that came with it but it gave me two of the longest online friendships I’ve ever had so I don’t regret it. (Shoutout to @backtothestart02 here as one of them) And well, three of these shows taught me the toxicity that can come from fandom. So I’ve been less vocal/more aware with other shows because of it. There’s problematic stuff in all of these but they were entertaining most of the time despite frustration (lol) 

Honorable Mention: Teen Wolf - Had to mention this one cuz this was a show where I had a group of friends who all watched this together and we talked about it til the end (even when we weren’t happy with it lol) I was never really vocal in the fandom cuz by this point I was wary of them (fandoms I mean), but it was nice to share a show with people who felt similarly about it. As a show, I truly loved it up to 3B. Some of my favorite episodes were the ones that almost felt standalone-ish (3x06 AKA Motel California still remains my fave to this day) Lastly, it’s because of this show I was introduced to Dylan O’Brien who I always refer to as my ‘always & forever’ guy so yeah lol

Maybe Superhero Shows Are Worth Watching lol:

The Flash/Daredevil/Cloak & Dagger/Runaways: So I’m someone who growing up, beyond Spider-Man and Batman, never really jumped at superhero movies. I still don’t to an extent but I’m more willing to watch stuff now. I think because when it comes to TV, I’m willing to check out at least an ep. I got into The Flash because my friend Lauren was really into it (and still very much is now) and wanted me to check it out so I did. I sorta watched Arrow before it until a point so I’d seen Barry’s appearances on it and remembered thinking he was precious so I wasn’t surprised that I liked him as a main character. I do think these later seasons have lost some quality but I think the earlier ones were very solid and Grant is perfect in the role. Daredevil... R.I.P. That show was so high quality so the fact that Netflix cancelled it is just rude. Now... Cloak & Dagger has been one of those surprises for me cuz it was such a slow burn that when it really got going it left me wanting more. That S1 finale was so solid. Cannot wait for S2. Love the dynamic between Ty & Tandy. Now Runaways isn’t perfect but it’s my biggest fandom right now and I’m proud of that fact. It’s a show that highlights diversity with 4 PoC leads & 4 kickass ladies (Nico & Gert are my bb girls), healthy ships including an LGBTQ couple currently as the main one (tho it is Gertchase that owns my heart), and overall a pretty great cast that meshes well like the thrown together family they portray. It even got me back into writing fanfic again. A miracle tbh. lol

Overall Just Amazing:

This Is Us: I just think that this show pulled me in the second they revealed that first plot twist in the pilot. It surprised me and then they kept doing that a bit after. Now it’s more about how it has the ability to make me cry every ep and feel things. It doesn’t always touch me the same it did in that first season (it was an emotional year for me tbh) but it does have a class act cast who can always pull at my heart strings.

Boardwalk Empire: This technically could have went under something I sort of watched with my dad, but it is kinda a weird show to share I guess. We didn’t usually watch it together (saved some awkward convos sometimes lol) but always talked about each episode weekly and it was kinda fun cuz it was usually in-depth. My dad still quotes things from it to this day. He also once said that he considers S1 the best TV season he’s ever watched. I agree that it was great. For me, the first 3 seasons are solid while the last 2 felt different but still pretty good. There was such quality to it. Great acting headed by Steve Buscemi. What can I say? I have a thing for gangster stories. I could say more but I’ll stop. lol

Stranger Things: The show that really turned me into a binge-watcher. I had just gotten Netflix and what show did I decide to watch on my birthday? This show. I had seen things in the media about the kids from it and I was like, they’re adorable!! And ofc I got hooked when I actually watched the show. It just has everything in it that I like: mystery, thrills, humor, hint of romance, awesome acting, music moments, nostalgia. This was my obsession for a while until I got into some other things but if you don’t think I’m totally pumped for S3, then you best believe I’m watching it all in a day if I can. lol

Community: This is a show that reminded me how a show can think totally outside of the box and still have a lot of heart with its comedy. I love situations where a group of misfits come together and become a family. I love that this show celebrates being different. Troy Barnes remains one of my favorite TV characters ever (& omg his friendship with Abed is pure goals!!) and Donald Glover played him perfectly. And Alison Brie is just adorable as Annie. Love this group of weirdos. The quality was different after S3 but I still adore it.

Into the Badlands: Have to mention this show because what it has been doing action-wise is just incredible. The fighting sequences are out of this world. I’m always excited to see how they top it. Also, an Asian male lead? Go dude! The whole cast is wonderful and everything is just high quality, ok? Also, that cinematography!! Can’t believe it’s ending when it comes back. Sadness.

One Day at a Time: This is more of a recent discovery for me (had friends who watched it and knew it was good but only decided to check it out not too long ago) but it’s already made its impact on me. This show has so much heart to it. The writers put so much care into their work when they bring up these controversial issues in the episodes. All while being totally hilarious (but also trust me, I manage to cry at least 1 or twice an ep lol) A show centered on a Cuban family, plenty of good rep for LGBTQ/non-binary people while also handling things like depression/anxiety, addiction, immigration, etc. It’s definitely making its mark on TV. Also, Rita Moreno is a living legend who I adore. I love this cast so much.

12 Monkeys: I. loved. this. show! I still think it had the best series finale that I have seen in a while. It wrapped up things so well that I was smiling for a while after watching it. I couldn’t believe that of all shows this one gave me a happy ending. lol Casserole remains one of my all-time ships because they were truly epic and pulled at my heart strings so many times. Jennifer Goines was my queen. But seriously, a show about time travel that managed to make sense? So impressed. And the visuals? gahhh

Friday Night Lights: Last, but most definitely not least, this show is just up there as one of the all-time bests IDC. The fact that at first glance the show seems centered only about football and it got me to keep watching definitely says something. lol This show had so much heart, the cast was excellent, an ending that was pretty much perfect. Coach & Tami Taylor were relationship goals. Honestly one of the best portrayals of a married couple I’ve ever seen because they were very much a team (while yes there was the occasional bickering that you gotta love) and it just felt real, you know? Also, it’s a show that proved that you can come back from a sophomore slump (yeah S2 was the worst season) and continue to be great.I can’t decide if it’s my favorite show of all-time but it’s certainly one of the first ones to come to mind. So glad I decided to give it a chance.

There’s probably a couple other shows I could list here but some I haven’t finished yet and don’t feel ready to put them on here yet. This is just what I could come up with.

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: in fire, in ice by moirariordan

fandom: Wizards of Waverly Palace

pairing: Justin Russo/Alex Russo

word count: 25k

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Like fire

It’s an on-the-run story! Where they get fake married! For real this fic is #sibcestgoals. It’s justifiably the most widely read and influential fic in the fandom, whose influence transcends the fandom itself: the tagline ought to be “come to the dark side, we have incest-flavored cookies.” Say you had a friend who had never read a word of fanfiction in their life. For a starter pack you would hand them something like The Shoebox Project, right? Something accessible, for a pairing that’s ludicrously shippable, something that would rip their heart out and leave them aching for more. That’s what this story is. I would have no qualms recc’ing it to anyone on the street. Just look at the testimonials on Fanlore or on the TVTropes rec page —these people can’t all be incest shippers right?

Wizards of Waverly Place was a teen sitcom that aired from 2007-2012 on the Disney Channel, starring Selena Gomez and David Henrie as the titular brother-and-sister wizards. They have parents and a younger brother too but for shipping purposes Justin/Alex is the six-ton orca whale in the room. Justin is two years older, boring and responsible; Alex is the wild child. There’s a lot of banter and a lot of snark and it’s that dynamic where the older male does everything by the book and the younger female character categorically refuses to even crack open the spine of a book. There was a made-for-TV movie in 2009, and 87% of people who caught it while channel-surfing came away under the impression that the male lead was Selena Gomez’s boyfriend. I know this because I conducted a highly scientific poll, obviously.

Let me say upfront that I love this story but every time I read it it’s like I just watched Schindler’s List. It’s literally a story about a wizard Holocaust.

It starts with an old man who accidentally torpedoes the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (or the in-universe equilavent). It’s important to emphasize how he gives the game away, which is by conjuring a specter of his dead wife, one that unfortunately winds up outliving him; when the police broke his door down they found her weeping over his corpse. He loved her so much he preferred a flimsy facsimile over the lack of her. Or is it that he loved her so little he would settle for a cheap echo? Either way, love is the downfall of the wizarding community. The tension between love and magic is at the heart of this fic, for love is about sacrifice and at its root, so is magic.

The muggles’ initial reaction is consternation. The dead old man was unfortunately in possession of an extensive and illegal magical library, and pretty soon “every New Age hippie who ever read a deck of tarot cards” descends on New York City to pore over it. Consternation turns to fear turns to anger/mistrust turns to outright persecution of wizardkind.

Alex keeps waiting and waiting for someone to do something, to stop it, to make it go away, but nothing happens.

Alex is still in high school. There are people out there every day braying for her blood and calling for her family’s heads on spikes. Plot happens.

“Is this a good thing?” she asks, because Justin always knows what’s good and right and what’s not, and she really needs to know. He’s silent for a very long moment. “I don’t know,” he says, and for some reason this is more terrifying than anything.

She’s relied on Justin all these years to be her moral compass and when he admits he’s at a loss her whole world crumbles. They’re not canonically codependent, I think, but Alex does a lot of shit she wouldn’t otherwise if she wasn’t relying on Justin to bail her out. Likewise Justin resents how Alex’s raw gumption allows her to brazenly bluff her way through stuff he has to work his tail off for. I think Justin gives himself less credit than he deserves because Alex is right, he is insanely smart and talented. There’s an actual no-word-of-a-lie witchhunt going on and Justin still manages to graduate valedictorian.

There’s an underground railroad of sorts that smuggles wizards out, endowing them with new identities and new memories. The Russos grow desperate after Justin and Alex’s mom falls pregnant, but for plot reasons they can’t all be relocated so Justin and Alex stay behind. There are tearful farewells. The plan is to wait until Alex finishes high school, then rejoin the rest of the family. Things get even darker, but Justin “makes her smile like it’s his job.” LIKE IT’S HIS JOB. My friends, this is the good shit right here.

They eat in his room, most of the time, and do homework. Alex knows that he finds it soothing.

It’s a ritual, don’t you see? Other people meditate; Justin does homework. Alex does it too to keep him company. In fact Alex spends a lot of time in Justin’s bed. She’s always falling asleep there or waking up there and it’s not sexual but it gives you an idea of where her head’s at. Once, she slams out of the living room during an argument, and after a disorienting moment realizes it’s not her room she’s retreated into, it’s Justin’s. Her subconscious has obviously decided Justin’s room is the safest sanctuary there is.

Justin takes her out to dinner to celebrate her grades

IT’S A DAAAAATE only neither of them know it yet haha!

When Alex’s lifelong BFF announces she’s joining the Youth Nazi and invites Alex to join up with her, Alex runs away to a bench in Central Park. Justin shows up in short order:

“How’d you find me?”

“Are you kidding? You always come here when you’re upset.” He sits next to her. “Remember the time you ran away when Mom and Dad wouldn’t let you get a ferret?”

Nobody is conflating the pain of being denied a potential pet ferret to the pain of being deemed subhuman by one’s best friend, but the point of this scene is (1) that Justin gets her, in all her melodramatic over-the-top pettiness, and (2) Justin notices and remembers which bench she prefers — it’s a big gorram park after all. Eventually the political situation comes to a head and Justin and Alex decide it’s not safe to stay in New York City any longer, and they gather up their cash and bounce. Once they leave they have no way of getting back in touch with their parents but they have no choice; it’s too dangerous to stay:

They sleep in cheap motels and pay in cash under fake names, staying under the radar as much as possible because they’re not sure what else to do. They run out of cash in Maryland and get a decent hotel room under the fake account name.

They stop in Indianapolis to celebrate Justin’s twentieth birthday. Alex scores some champagne with one of the fake IDs she’d snagged before leaving New York and they drink it in a hotel room, the TV off and knees touching on the bed

They make it to Denver and get a small apartment and tell everyone they’re newlyweds and Alex dyes her hair red

OMG THEY’RE FAKE MARRIED I AM DECEASED

p sure there was also blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bedsharing in the hotel room

Alex’s hair color is a solid proxy for her state of mind

They save half their money each month in case they have to run again, and for a little bit, things are kind of nice. After her shifts, Alex will walk to the library where Justin works and sit at a table behind the corner with him, reading history books and novels.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you Alex Russo, the girl who a few months ago wouldn’t know which end of a book was up. She learns to love BOOKS and LIBRARIES on JUSTIN’S account and that is everything. Well, this is a nice respite but it doesn’t last and they have to keep running because Alex is assaulted at her waitressing job by a creepy customer who won’t take no for an answer. It’s a highly unrealistic stranger-in-a-dark-alley attempted assault situation but I will let that slide because the point is she instinctively spews magic in self-defense, which of course will bring the authorities down on them in no time. She’s scared shitless and she runs straight into Justin’s arms, the only place she feels safe:

Justin nearly freaks when he sees her, dragging her into the back office and touching her face, her arms, over and over as if to reassure himself that she’s okay. He sees the scrapes on her back and frowns, pulling off his soft cotton jacket and wrapping it around her as she explains what happened in a monotone voice. “We have to go,” she says, “tonight.” He nods and kisses her nose. “You did what you had to do,” he says, and something tight unravels because he’s not mad.

There is so much tenderness in that nose kiss. I feel like they’ve been partners for a long time but this is where it really clicks that Justin’s not “in charge” anymore, he’s not the older brother who knows best, they’re just two teenagers clinging to each other on a life raft because they are everything the other has left.

“The baby must be three years old now,” Alex muses. The champagne they’re drinking isn’t nearly enough to get them wasted, and she suddenly wishes that they were the type of people who get drunk. “Max is fifteen. In high school.”

This made me so sad, how they used to be a five-person family unit and now Alex and Justin are cut adrift and they’ve formed a unit of their own but they’ll never stop missing the others.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you with straight hair since New York,” he says when she emerges from the bathroom. He flicks her bangs away from her face. “You usually look like a street urchin.”

All the hairstyle changes for disguise purposes but she’s still his sister underneath. He’d know her anywhere. Here’s the scene where they first kiss — they’re standing on their own doorstep, having gone out to celebrate his birthday, and Alex (as you would expect) initiates it:

He narrows his eyes at her and she looks, looks, because she can’t have read this wrong – no, she didn’t. There is nothing in the world that she knows better than Justin – his face, his body, his head, his mind, his heart.

Yesssss I need it like air. Later:

(They don’t talk about what happened on his birthday, but they’ve started asking for single rooms.)

Eventually they settle in rural Italy, which I guess doesn’t have the same 24-hour surveillance panopticon that we have here in the USA so it’s easier for wizards to slip through the cracks. I like to imagine them in in the Tuscan hills. Justin is a schoolteacher and Alex a graphic designer. They remain for many years below the radar, until Alex is recruited into the Resistance to help smuggle other wizards out through the Underground Railroad the same way she and Justin were smuggled out. She feels a moral obligation to do it, even if it kills Justin to watch her diving repeatedly into danger and him unable to follow.

She’s never been that great at protecting people, she knows. When she was seven and Justin was nine, there’d been a bully that lived in the apartment  building across the street who used to try and steal her lunch money every day, and every day she would offer Justin’s in return for her own relief. When she was twelve and he was fourteen, they broke Theresa’s glass statuette from Barcelona during a fight and she blamed him without a second thought, and when she was seventeen and he was nineteen, she let him pass up freedom in order to protect her and she will never forget all that he gave up the day he made that decision.

Alex’s great grief is that Justin has given up an assuredly brilliant future, in which he would have shone as a superstar and had his pick of careers, in exchange for being hers.

“You’re so smart, and grown up and good and – and handsome, and I’m irresponsible and immature and –“

She sees his being with her as a sacrifice. She doesn’t know anything about sacrifice yet. She finds her parents living in the same apartment in New York they fled so many lives ago. They’re waiting for Justin and Alex to come back, or send word, or something. It exposes them to an acute degree of risk, of course. Alex orchestrates the Resistance mission to evacuate/relocate her parents, but she does not reveal herself nor reconnect with them. She lets them go. It’s unclear why, although I suspect it would be tough to have a relationship with them without dealing with the elephant in the room, the fact that she and Justin are now together. Yet I think it was important for her to see her parents one last time, because it gave her closure. After she returns to Italy she and Justin welcome their first child. The baby is a mini-dynamo and a nexus of magical potential, sending up trails of rainbow sparks even in utero, so Alex makes the painful decision to give up her powers for good. This means she will be mortal, and so will the child, and any future children or grandchildren. It also means she and Justin will be allowed to stay under the radar and hang onto the life they have painstakingly built. Remember how I said that the root of both love and magic is sacrifice? This is the sacrifice that defines Alex Russo, that she was willing to give up magic -- the thing that has shaped her identity for twenty-odd years -- in order to be with Justin.

[thecrookedgavel]

The Black Box Readings - Ep 3 Transcript

Here’s the transcript for episode 3 of The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down.

See Other Episodes

An: Hey, all! And welcome back to The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down! I’m your host, An Capuano. So episode one released and I was very happy with how people responded to it. I got a lot of messages saying how raw the experience was, or how happy they were to have the chance to listen to a queer experience. Usually it was from queer people, but sometimes it wasn’t! 

Though responses were positive for the most part, the podcast did get some negative attention too. Ignoring all the stuff that wasn’t constructive, there were two main criticisms of the show. The first was actually surrounding its premise. People were concerned that it was unethical to put something that was deleted back onto the internet. Even if it wasn’t deleted, isn’t it essentially stealing to use it in a podcast like this? Ok, so I understand the concerns and I guess I wasn’t clear enough to begin with. I received permission from the original author of the material to use it any way I’d like. Probably something I should have said originally, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. As for whether or not I’m just copying someone else’s work, I believe that The Black Box Readings count as a transformative work, and therefore it’s protected under fair use. There’s more than enough “Me” in this podcast that it’s really become something more than just the original “text”. 

The other problem some people had with the podcast was that Emmy didn’t seem like a trans girl at all to them, and they felt like I was grasping at straws in my explanations pointing out trans aspects. Well, I do understand that there isn’t anything that outright says Emmy is trans within her posts in the first two episodes. But what you have to remember is that I actually knew her, and even though it’s sort of a spoiler for this episode, she did come out as trans on her blog. Look, I’m trying to present the posts I chose in chronological order to make a coherent narrative. Even so, it felt too weird to hide Emmy’s identity until this episode, when that’s largely the reason I’m doing this podcast in the first place. 

So with all that aside, I’d like to get into the episode proper! Today’s episode is largely a feel-good one. It’s got a lot of positive energy, and focuses on the budding relationship between Emmy and EmeraldSkies. In case you don’t remember, the two of them met playing Overwatch and became fast friends. At this point, Emmy has been posting about their interactions on her blog, and it’s official now that Emmy has a crush. *laughs* it was really cute to watch her navigate through her feelings, but I didn’t want this episode to be… you know, two hours long, so I’ve come up with a few posts that best illustrate an already-established connection. To start us off, here’s one entitled:

“I Told Her

I know I talk about her a lot, but -”

Oh, *Laugh* I guess it happened again. She used EmeraldSkies real name, and I’m really not comfortable saying it in the podcast for privacy reasons. Let’s see, given that EmeraldSkies is Latina, let’s go with Selena, like our favorite wizard from Waverly Place. *laughs*

“I know I talk about her a lot, but Selena is just so cool! I’m sorry if it’s getting annoying to anyone, but I’m not going to hide how I feel either. This is my Tumblr, after all, I can post what I want. Anyway, today I finally told her I was deaf, and that’s the reason we don’t do voice chat. She understood completely, and told me that voice chat wasn’t something she liked doing in the first place. Ahhh, She’s so cool! I’m lucky to have her in my life! I was so scared that she’d see me as weird or broken or something, that’s the usual reaction I get anyhow. But not with her! I’m so happy right now!

Selena has been continuing to share her poetry with me, it’s really good! I feel so at home reading it. It’s such a personal look into her soul, I’m glad she doesn’t feel too vulnerable letting me read it. It’s especially helpful that it’s a medium I can fully understand. Honestly, I sometimes feel a little lost when watching tv, even with captions on. It’s sort of an incomplete experience, you know?”

I find the sort of “sorry, not sorry” attitude Emmy has here to be a big step up from previous ones. She exudes a bit of confidence here, not caring if people unfollow her because she’s talking about a crush. It’s nice to see Selena bring that out in Emmy. It’s also really heartwarming that Emmy didn’t receive the usual reaction she says she gets when telling people about her disability. Selena seems like a very accepting and kind person, and I think Emmy deserves that in her life. Also, I want to point out that Selena is averse to using voice chat. There’s a reason for that, and you’ll probably be able to guess it by the end of the episode.

Also, Selena is an amateur poet! I feel I should point that out, because it’s immediately relevant in our next post, which is Emmy talking about a poem that Selena wrote especially for her. 

We don’t get the poem itself, just Emmy’s interpretation of it, which does give us a fair bit of insight on to what the poem might have been like.

The post is called: “She wrote a poem for me??

I’m so excited you guys, you have no idea! Selena wrote me a poem! And I’m swept off my feet by it. She says it was nothing, but I don’t think so! She called it “Flowers Down by the Lake” and it’s beautiful! Like, I don’t want to read into it too hard, but I think this means she likes me back?? And not just because it’s a poem that she wrote for me, but because of what’s IN the poem, guys!

It’s about two flowers that are more beautiful not in spite of how they’ve been damaged, but because of it. And how they’re both really different, but they’re even more beautiful because they’re side by side. So. Fucking. Romantic! I love this poem, it gives me so many feels. 

Maybe there’s something to this whole ‘fate’ thing after all”

Before getting into the meat of this post, I’d like to touch on the last line. This is where Emmy first publicly posts about the idea of fate starting to appeal to her, though I imagine that she has been playing around with the idea of it for a while now. I’m not personally sure I believe in fate myself, so *sigh* I’m not entirely sure why this seems so important to me? So, I like to look at the universe as truly random, and because of that, two people finding each other amongst that randomness is the most beautiful thing imaginable. So whether it was just the randomness of the Overwatch matchmaking system, or fate itself that brought these two together, I think that’s something really special. 

Anyways, I’ve never gotten the chance to actually read this poem, but it sounds pretty spectacular. The message that Emmy sees is one that we can all take to heart. All of you are beautiful in your own way, and it’s in part because of what you’ve been through. You’ve been shaped by your hardships in a way that makes you more of a person, and the people around you that are enriching to your lives help you to “bloom”, so to speak. 

Although I am partial to getting all sappy with you folks, we do have an episode to get through, and so we’ll be moving on to our next post. 

And what a post it will be! This is for sure the most important post in this episode, perhaps the most important one so far. I alluded to it in the beginning of the episode, and I’m really excited to finally share it with you all. I can’t hype it up enough, but I am certainly trying *laughs*. It’s called:

“I Have Something To Tell You

I don’t want to waste any time, so I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m a trans girl! If you don’t know what I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain, but I’ll try to. 

“Trans” is short for transgender, which means that I don’t identify with my birth sex as my gender. So I was born a boy, but I feel like a girl on the inside. Gender is just different than sex. Period. It’s complicated, I know, since we use similar words to talk about them, but it’s true. 

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of interactions with kids my age, because I was homeschooled. A lot of interactions were through reading books. I found myself enthralled with stories about girls, but less interested in stories about boys. When I did read stories about boys, I’d latch onto female secondary characters and see the world through them. Some examples of female characters I saw myself as are: Clary from Mortal Instruments, Katniss from Hunger Games, and even Hermione from Harry Potter. 

When it came to video games, I found myself picking female characters when given the choice. I even do it in Overwatch! I’m a Mercy main, after all.

I used to tell myself that it was because the books were just that good, or because the video game characters were cute, but I see now that was only half of the truth. It’s really because I saw myself in those characters, that’s the kind of soul I have, you know? 

There are other, more private reasons surrounding my body I won’t get into here, as well.

I guess I realized what I was feeling because, well, Selena is a trans girl too! I guess I found out when we decided to swap pictures of what we both looked like. She prefaced her’s by saying that she might look a little boyish, and that’s because she’s trans! I was happy that she felt close enough to me that she could share that, since she’s more private about this sort of thing than I’m being. I’ve never met a trans girl before, especially not in real life, so that’s why it took me so long to figure out. Plus my Dad is very “traditional”, so I’ve been conditioned to hide who I am throughout the years. I doubt he’d embrace me as his daughter with open arms, so for now, it’s a secret I’m keeping from him. If he thinks I’m going to go to hell for it, then fuck him. I don’t care what he thinks about me anymore. 

Thank you for reading to the end of this post! I hope I made sense.”

So there we have it, official word from Emmy that she is trans. Not only that, but Selena is trans too! There’s a lot to unpack here, so we should get started. She gives a good explanation of what being transgender means for her, even if it contains a few pieces of old language, like being “born a boy.” It’s generally best not to say that about someone else, fair warning. It’s good that she had that sort of “aha” moment when Selena explained what transgender means. 

For me, my Aha moment was in the form of a rather… outdated term, I think it was “Male identified lesbian.” *laughs* Ohh, well… I guess I had some suspicions about myself, and so I did some googling. And I found this term that sounded so much like me. It had a bunch of bullet points like, attracted to lesbians, identifies with women over men, stuff like that. It was actually kind of problematic, looking back because it was really steeped in men sexualizing lesbians, but it was a stepping stone for me when I was 20ish. I don’t think that website is still there all these years later

Definitely something that I did when I was younger that affirms my trans identity looking back was wearing dresses. Not an Aha moment in the slightest, though. Well not for me, but probably for my friends *laughs* When I was 14, my friends put together a murder mystery party. It was a pre-written story, and there were roles to assign to everyone. And I got assigned the mother of the victim. My friends just thought of me and said, you know what would really suit An? Playing a woman. Heh, And I rocked it, too. It helped that one of my friends brought a dress for me to borrow during the party. Though I wore it so well and was obviously so confident wearing it, that she let me keep it. I’d use that same dress to play a woman again in a play, but maybe that’s a story for another time.

Back on track, Emmy talks about playing video games as female characters being a big indicator looking back, and I really feel that one. I remember specifically choosing Talim and Tira from Soul Calibur all the time and being like, it’s obviously because they’re fast characters, and that’s just my playstyle. But naw, it largely had to do with me seeing myself a certain way. Like, I remember specifically one time I looked at my stats in Left 4 Dead, a game I played all together too much of, and noticed that I picked Zoe to play as like, 80% of the time? Like there’s 4 characters to choose from, all the same stat-wise, and I picked the girl more often than not. It sort of shook me to my core when I realized this, but I didn’t know what it really meant until a few years later.

Also, to preemptively answer any concerns about Emmy realizing she’s trans because of someone else, don’t worry. I don’t think she’s like, copying Selena’s identity to fit in or something like that. The thing is… seeing a trans person as just that - a person - can be a trigger to figuring out who you really are. Like, this was the case for my ex who I was dating at the time I was finally able to call myself a woman. No name change, no pronoun change, or anything like that, but I had admitted it out loud by then. It sort of had a reaction in him to call himself gender fluid, and I think that was really important for him. In this case, it was a stepping stone to realizing that he was a trans man, but that’s still valid, right? It’s ok to change your identity as you learn more about yourself. Labels can change over time. For Emmy, Selena was probably the first instance of positive representation that she ever saw. Anyways, even though my relationship kind of exploded, I talked with him at a later date, and we expressed how important being instantly supportive was to each other. We lost contact since, but I honestly hope he’s doing alright out there.

That’s probably enough about me, sorry. *laughs* This post just sort of pulls it all out of me, you know? 

Either way, we should probably get back to the posts at hand so we can end this episode in a reasonable timeframe. So I messaged Emmy to congratulate her, and I know she probably saw it, because she references something very similar to what I wrote to her in her next post. I don’t remember what exactly what I sent, just that at the time, I recognized what I sent in her wording. Also in the post, there’s another section that reminds me of the frequently asked questions about being disabled. Though this time around… well we’ll talk about it after I read it to you.

“Thank you and Fuck you!

Sorry not sorry about the title, but don’t worry, you know which one you are if you recently sent me a DM. First of all, thank you for all the kind and supportive words you all had to say! Coming out is really hard, but you made it worth it! I feel so loved and valid, it’s been great to have you all in my inbox!

However, there were other people in my inbox that I appreciated a lot less. Lots of transphobic assholes messaging me about needing mental help and how I’m going to hell now. Dicks asking me if I want to chop off my dick now, and of course, fucktards telling me to kill myself. Many of you said you’re unfollowing my blog too. So, all I have to say is fuck you!!! That’s all.”

I feel like we should talk about the second part of the post. I honestly believe she has a right to be angry here, and lashing out is perfectly natural. So I’m not saying she’s not allowed to tell transphobes off. But if you notice the last time she got a lot of upsetting messages in her inbox, she handled it with grace. There was a “fuck you” for sure, but it was implied, rather than… you know, in the title? And I think I know why there’s such a difference in tone here.

When you come out like this, you’re telling your truth for the first time. Everything feels a lot more raw and vulnerable for you. She’s probably used to the dumb questions about being deaf, so she’s developed a way to politely answer the grosser questions. But here, it’s been like, a few days? She’s going to feel like she needs to go on the attack here. 

Coming out as trans for me was really hard too, and I didn’t even do it on an online platform. I’m even hesitant to talk about it now, because of how deeply personal it is. But I think it’s important to give you context to why Emmy would want to say “fuck you” to so many people.

So the first person I ever came out to was a friend of mine from high school. She was… not a great person. She was a complete narcissist, she lied to me constantly and ended up using me for sex. That and she was deeply transphobic. Honestly, I could talk about that whole situation forever, so I won’t get started. What’s important is that when I told her I felt like a girl on the inside, she told me that was weird. And that really hurt my personal growth. It put me back into the closet for a few years. I didn’t tell anyone again for a while. The screwed up thing is that she was queer herself, and she was dating someone who would later come out as a trans guy. She didn’t support him either. I remember her telling me that it was stupid that he changed his name, and being impressionable at the young age of 22, I believed her. Even after I came out to my family, I didn’t change my name for a good while after that.

Oh, speaking of my family, coming out to them went very, very poorly. *sigh* I was having dinner with them, and I had decided earlier that day that today was the day. I finally brought up enough courage to finally say that I was a girl… and they all laughed at me. That was about 5 years ago, and the laughter is still something I never got over. After I clarified I wasn’t joking, they took it really badly. I was told later that I had almost given my dad a heart attack when I clarified that I was not only a woman, but a lesbian too. There was a lot of yelling at the table. They still have some trouble with my name and pronouns these days, but they honestly try really hard, and I really appreciate that about them. But the initial experience? It was extremely traumatizing. 

Coming out is something that you never actually get to stop doing, and I could tell more horror stories, but I think I have given you enough of an idea of why Emmy felt so many raw emotions when writing that post. 

Next up is another special post that continues the trend of being a big turning point in Emmy’s life. It’s in the form of an announcement, and I feel like I should mention that the overall time lapse in this episode is rather large. Obviously she has been posting a lot about Selena and they’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know each other. In the interest of brevity, I’m only touching on the major points. That may make it seem like things were rushed, but please note that they weren’t. She starts things off with:

“I have another announcement to make!

Many of you have been DMing me asking about me and EmeraldSkies, and saying how we should be together. Well I have good news for you! We’re official! We’re in lesbians together, lol. We’ve known each other for months now, although it feels like I’ve had a thing for her forever. Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to try and make it work long distance, and I did! So I said yes! I’ve never been happier! Also, I convinced her that her poetry is totally amazing and she needed to share it with the world. Don’t just take my word for it, check out her new Tumblr!”

And there was probably a link to Selena’s Tumblr if you clicked on the last sentence. Now, I never personally messaged Emmy about this, but I did ship them very hard since the point where Selena wrote her first poem for Emmy. It felt so wholesome to see this announcement, and not just because my ship was confirmed. Emmy said right there that she had never been happier. She was finally feeling fulfilled for the first time in her life, and I think that had a lot to do with coming out, which had a lot to do with Selena in the first place. So seeing them together was such a treat.

Alright! Last post of the episode. Here we have something a little different than what we’re used to. It’s not a post that Emmy has written, but a post that she reblogged. Since she put it on her blog, it counts for our purposes, especially since it’s about her in the first place. It’s a poem about Emmy written by Selena. And it’s titled:

“Free From Tyranny

Although you still feel trapped, you are now free,

It may seem like you are damned by the followers of God,

Stuck under the rule of a not-so-heavenly father, 

But it is all an illusion, completely superficial.

For you see, you have been freed,

Freed from fear, denial, and self-loathing,

These are the metals that form the bars of the true prison,

The prison of the mind, the prison of the self.

You have bent these bars, they are nothing to you now,

So even if you still feel the tyranny from the outside world,

Know that you are finally free from the tyranny of yourself

And you are so beautiful for it. “

It’s quite a lovely little poem, and I do love the themes and the message. It’s just that, *sigh* I don’t know if I can agree with it fully? Yes, for sure, that being free to be your true self to yourself is magical. It’s something that was a huge turning point for my own personal growth. But whether or not that makes you truly free? I can’t say for sure. A terrible environment can really hurt a person’s sense of self. I worry that after a while of it, even folks with the brightness of convictions might willingly go back into their own prisons, so to speak. I do really enjoy how it’s written though, and my view of Selena as a poet isn’t hurt by my worries here.

Anyways, Emmy posts a little reply in her reblog that I find pretty funny,

“I love this poem, but I wonder who it’s about”

As if you don’t know Emmy, stop being silly *Laughs* 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Black Box Readings! Thanks again for all for your feedback, supportive or constructive, it honestly all really helps! I went really deep with the anecdotes today, I hope it wasn’t too much. Follow me on Twitter at TheCrookedGavel to stay up to date on this and other queer podcasts. Feel free to contact me there as well. This is An Capuano, signing off!

[forgivedreamers]

I feel like I should insert the Space Jam theme song here, simply for the “Y’ALL READY FOR THIS?”

I've always been very good at keeping secrets. I know some of you might find this hard to believe, considering how quick I am to share a good/bad day I've had or the abundance of feelings I am feeling at any given moment in great detail. But there is so much I haven't shared with you and so much I've wanted to say for so long but simply could not.

A big part of my life came to an official close today and the only thing that sucks more than processing the residual sadness I have is feeling like I can't talk about it. That bottled-up-taboo-topic feeling makes my skin itch. It makes it hard for me to breathe. And more importantly, it pumps my feelings with steroids, giving them more power than they deserve. It makes them feel like something I should be ashamed of. I know we live in a time where acting unaffected and emotionally checked out is cool, but we all know that has never been my brand™. I want to strip this situation of all the power that I can. And pulling back the curtains is the most effective way I can think of. I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve told about this, and half of those people only know very small fragments of the story. This was a very precious thing I felt I needed to protect. And so I did. To a fault, some might say.

I have nothing to lose now. He used to read here (and I’m assuming send a fair amount of the “anonymous” questions I used to get) fairly often, I don't believe he does anymore. It's been over a year since we've even spoken. It feels okay to talk about now. So here is a very vague post about someone I loved for a pretty decent chunk of time and how he just married the girl who came after me. I am fully romanticizing a lot of our past. Looking through his tag, half the posts are me feeling sad and unfulfilled in some way. Everything was weird but felt so kismet in it's prime. We've grown apart in so many ways since our weird thing I have so lovingly labeled our "almost". In fact, I don't believe the people we've grown into would even be friends anymore, let alone anything else. More so on his side than mine (no shade, just honesty. Our political opinions could not be more opposite now. Most of our opinions are pretty opposing these days. Please note that this was a change on his end, it’d be a damn day in hell that I fall for a sexist, mildly homophobic republican. Ooops. Okay, maybe a little shade. Just let me have something, people.)

I want to free myself of this weird secret life I was never able to talk about for years. It was important and I suppose happened for reasons I don't personally understand yet. But I'm sure down the road I can look back on the connected dots behind me and know why this was something I had to be a part of. Why that had to happen and the specific ways they bettered my life. It wasn't wasted time. That's what I keep telling myself.

Life is so funny. I don't know the punchline yet, but I can just tell it's going to be a real knee slapper.

Anyways. All my best to David and this new and exciting chapter of his life. He seems genuinely happy and that makes me genuinely happy for him. Though my feelings for him have changed over time, my wish to see him happy and living his best life never will.

I am ready for this chapter to be closed and for my energy to be put toward something new. I’m ready to not feel connected to this anymore. I am ready to feel free again. The only times I’ll think of him from now on is when I listen to Greg Laswell or see a kid with a very outdated Wizards of Waverly Place t-shirt on at work (Yes, there are kids still wearing those. And I have to see his face more often than I would like to because of it). But that’s it.

This will be the last post I ever write related to him and whatever we had. And that is the best fucking feeling ever.

I’m probably going to delete this post or private it at the very least. So if you’ve read this in it’s entirety, thanks. And congratulations on learning about one of the weirdest parts of my life. This post was for me and only me, but sending it to the ether to die sure does feel freeing. Onward and upward, friends. xoxo

An update: This is gonna sound salty as fuck, but can I just say that I am so glad I didn’t end up being the girl who had her wedding reception on a Trump golf course and had my husband call the most d-list paparazzi company to capture our day and sell it to tabloids? Okay, I’m out. *peace sign emoji*

[thecloserkin]

book review: Sleeping Dogs by Sonya Hartnett (1995)

Genre: YA

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Nope

Is it shippable: Not particularly but there are interesting facets to their relationship

Bottom line: Borrow it from the library but don’t pay cash money for it

The Willow family lives on a farm in the ass-end of nowhere and it ain’t no picturesque farm either: “Farms are places for working, not preening.” They work from sunup till sundown and they none of them have friends but they do have a pack of dogs. The day Michelle Willow turns twenty-three, her brother Jordan slips into her bed at the crack of dawn:

She knows that Jordan is here stealing time, has planned and plotted this moment of quiet between them, and she curls her hand around his, lets his hair tickle her face without becoming cross for it. He lies still for a minute or more, and then sits up on an elbow so he can kiss her and look at her face and touch her closed eyes. He whispers, “Happy birthday, Michelle.”

This is such a tender stolen moment between them. If only the whole novel went on in this vein! All too soon Jordan has to leave to help their older brother Edward slaughter a sheep. Edward more or less runs the farm; as far as I can tell the only thing their father is good for is yelling at the lot of them for being a pack of lazy layabouts. The only one he abuses physically is Jordan, but all five children come in for their share of emotional abuse. Their mother has long since noped right out of there and now all she does is sit in her chair like a vegetable. And the entire town gives the family a wide berth:

In the shop the chemist is watchful. He does not like the Willow children and thinks them dangerous, delinquent. He asks them what they want and Michelle says, “I want to know why chemists are always old.” She sprays perfume and samplers up and down her arm and in her brother’s face. Jordan retreats outside and leans against the window to wait. He watches the people who pass but drops his gaze if they look back at him.

There is a dynamic here that may strike you as familiar, the nerdy or socially inept brother versus the glamorous sister with a temper to reckon with, a la Justin and Alex Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place. In this incarnation it’s a very unhealthy dynamic — everything about the Willows is unhealthy actually. Into this closed loop arrives an outsider, a would-be painter who overestimates both his native-born artistic talent and his appeal to women. He immediately develops an infatuation for Michelle and can’t understand why she doesn’t reciprocate his interest. Inexplicably one of their younger siblings, Oliver, takes to following this man around like a puppy. Or maybe not so inexplicably:

Although Oliver loves his siblings dearly, he is not yet old enough to consider them friends. He is no loner, and would call himself lonely.

In his eagerness to please, Oliver winds up revealing far too much to the not-particularly-astute painter, such as the fact that Jordan draws for a hobby. The walls of Jordan’s room are papered with drawings, and they are — untutored as he is — much better than anything the painter has ever produced. This hurts the painter’s pride almost as much as Michelle’s rejection does. Oliver makes another very telling observation, which is:

“What you were saying the other day - I’ve been thinking about it - “

”What was I saying?”

”You know, the stuff about kids in a family having favorites … Edward is Speck’s favorite. And Michelle is Jordan’s favorite. Michelle is Dad’s favorite, too. Everyone knows that. He thinks she’s wonderful. He lets her do anything she likes. He never yells at her.”

I love this, I love it when you have a big family and everyone has their own favorite and they all know it but refrain from discussing it. The Starks, for instance: Bran is Cat’s favorite and Jon is Arya’s, that much is canonical but I could sit here all day speculating about the other dynamics. Eventually Oliver lets slip something he really shouldn’t have and that’s when the shit hits the fan: SPOILERS AHEAD

”Michelle doesn’t like other boys. She only likes Jordan. She’ll tell you to go away, because she’s only ever liked Jordan.”

Even someone as thick as the painter cannot possibly miss the implications of that. A sibling conference is hastily convened in which they all close ranks in order to confront the threat of this outsider having such blackmail material in his possession, and the instant sibling solidarity warms my heart. They resolve on a plan of action to drive him out of town. The plan results in the painter peeing his pants as he’s savaged by the Willows’ hunting dogs, so to the extent it chastened and embarrassed him it worked; but on his way out he leaves an unsigned note for their father tipping him off about Michelle and Jordan’s relationship.

”Daddy!” she pleads, “there’s nothing - “

”Liar!” he spits. “Don’t you lie to me! Someone says they’ve seen you, out there in the bush, like animals! Animals, Michelle!”

I do think we are supposed to read possessiveness and jealousy in the way he’s thrashing Michelle here. She is, after all, his favorite. He’s incensed that she prefers Jordan (his least favorite child) as much as by the revelation of their “sin.” Eventually Michelle breaks down:

”Don’t throw me out, Daddy, don’t make me leave. It was Jordan, he made me do everything, he made me, it wasn’t my fault, don’t hurt me.”

Having got what he wanted, he leaves Michelle weeping on the floor, picks up his rifle, goes into the garden and blows the head off of Jordan’s dog before shooting Jordan next. You could interpret it as he wanted to get rid of the dog so it wouldn’t attempt to protect its owner, but to me it looks like he wanted Jordan to suffer by watching the dog die first. And if you didn’t see that ending coming a mile off you are probably new to reading stories about incest.

This novel falls squarely in the category of “books where the incest is a byproduct of abuse/neglect,” of which there are already too many. And unlike, say, Flowers in the Attic, where there is also abuse & neglect galore, it doesn’t frame the central incestuous relationship as a romance. This is primarily a story about an abusive family, and only secondarily about Michelle and Jordan’s bond, which anyway strikes me as uncomfortably uneven. I mean he worships the ground she walks on while she straight-up admits that she’ll probably date other men at some point. I do want to emphasize that just because their father favors Michelle doesn’t mean she’s not a victim too — everybody in an abusive family is a victim simply by virtue of witnessing the abuse and being forced to modify their own behavior accordingly to minimize the chances of abuse. It still kills me that when their father hurts Jordan it is always his left hand, his drawing hand. I don’t want to leave you all on a depressing note, however, so here are some of the shippiest passages:

It is not something they often talk of: they know what they do is said to be wrong and yet certainly it appears to hurt no one. It causes no trouble and no great punishment comes down from the sky to blight them. Griffin hitting Jordan provides the penalty they don’t want but know they probably deserve despite everything they endure, the monotony, the seclusion, the occasional misery of the farm. Denied the chance to do so as children, they are now both incapable of making outside friends: their closeness brings them solace and companionship and seems only just.

Omg they think they deserve to get hit. Because their love is ~wrong. Goddamn it hurts so good.

She leans her weight on his chest and he smells her: she always smells nice to him, like something brand new. He sighs but there is nothing wrong. No other body could be as harmonious to him as Michelle’s, no one would ever fold around him so comfortably, none could wrap him so perfectly, for Shelly and he are made alike.