#learning you ruined nirvana if anyone cares

[cassmouse]

Damn tryna play songs on the piano is HARD man. Like. I've played so much more complicated than this but because I'm tryna sing at the same time I just fuck up CONSTANTLY it's incredibly frustrating

[notbang]

the pursuit of happiness

or, an examination of happiness and the chase as recurring motifs in the character development of Rebecca Bunch and Nathaniel Plimpton

rethaniel appreciation week day 2 → pursuit

I could write a small novel cataloguing the endless parallels between these two—I have, in fact, thought about attempting it many times—but honestly the list is so long and varied and sprouts off in so many different directions that I’ve yet to think of a logical way to go about it. Which is why for the time being, I’m choosing to focus instead—in some degree of detail—on this particular mirrored thread between them.

As our protagonist, Rebecca functions as a major catalyst for change in West Covina, and just as surely as she stumbles along in her journey we see the (for the most part) positive effects of her friendship on those around her. With perhaps the sole exception of White Josh, all of the characters end the show as happier and healthier iterations of themselves, with many of the major aspects of their growth traceable to their involvement with Rebecca in some way. Nathaniel is no exception to this rule; arguably, his development, more so than any other character’s, is directly tied to Rebecca’s influence on his life. The main difference here lies in the fact that he moves to town good a season and half after her—putting him that much further behind in his inevitable development.

One of the major, ongoing setbacks Rebecca faces over the course of the show is her tendency to conflate happiness, or personal fulfilment, with romantic love, and more specifically, for the first half of the series at least, conflating it with a single person. Nathaniel, by comparison, at the time of our introduction to him, has little interest in the concept at all, something Rebecca is quick to sympathise with in 2x09—‘You know Nathaniel, I used to be a lot like you. Ruthless. But then one day I was crying a lot, and I decided to flip things around. Decided to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ Nathaniel doesn’t verbally dismiss the sentiment, but the wealth of facial expressions he supplies in response suggest what he thinks of that: happiness is frivolous, and he doesn’t have space for it in his busy schedule.

Nathaniel, probably: Sounds fake but okay.

In the season two theme Rebecca declares that as a girl in love, she can’t be held responsible for her actions, and the sweeping duet Nothing Is Ever Anyone’s Fault follows a similar thread of eschewing culpability. While this certainly works to help dismiss a season’s worth of questionable behaviour from the two of them—including, but not limited to, infidelity and conspiracy to murder—I’m not convinced the touted concept behind the song—that Nathaniel has learned the wrong lesson from being in love with her, as explained in post-finale interviews at the time—flies in the face of our understanding of Nathaniel’s character thus far. As a rich, straight, white, cis male whose privilege the show has only made clumsy attempts at dismantling, a disregard of consequence seems a lot less like something he needed to be taught by anybody and a little more like something that was probably ingrained in him at birth.

If we want to talk about misguided takeaways within their relationship, though, their relationship to happiness is the perfect place to start. Nathaniel begins the show with no concept of the pursuit of happiness, so it makes sense that when he does adopt an interest in it, he takes a page right out of the book of the person that introduced him and pins it all in the one place. Unlike Rebecca, though, Nathaniel’s preoccupation seems to be less wilful delusion and more of a case of ignorance being bliss—being with her feels good, so why change anything or interrogate the situation any further? For all his earlier talk, he is quick to give up the thrill of the chase under the hedonistic guise of contentment. Unfortunately, what he lacks is the emotional intelligence to navigate the implications of Rebecca’s disorder, highlighted by his belief that the mere fact that he and Josh are two vastly different people is reason enough for him to be able to dismiss her obsessive behaviour as ‘cute’ and ‘flattering’. Rebecca’s recent breakdown and consequential suicide attempt can’t exist as warning signs in their (what he perceives as superior) relationship because he isn’t planning on leaving Rebecca at the altar; he isn’t privy to the realisation that it ‘wasn’t about Josh, and maybe it never was’.

Nathaniel: I don’t want to get in the way of your therapy thing, but isn’t the point of all this to be happy? We’re happy. That’s what matters.

It’s a shame because despite there being so much more going on with Rebecca than Nathaniel is capable of comprehending at this point in time, he actually, perhaps entirely by accident, manages to get a few things right—he checks in with her about her therapy when her appearing on his doorstep contradicts the information she’d given him earlier (even if he is, at this point, all too easy to convince), counters her suggestion that they play hooky at Raging Waters with the compromise of a more sensibly scheduled dinner they’ll both enjoy, and, when they do come in to conflict over her obsessive behaviours, takes some time for himself before having a serious conversation with her. Though it’s certainly naive of him to think it’s a problem as easily solved as getting Rebecca to promise she’ll never do anything like this again, it suggests the capacity exists (given, with great guidance) for him to approach Rebecca’s mental illness within their relationship in a thoughtful way.

(This of course completely ignores the inherent issues in their boss/employee relationship, which come to a questionable forefront when Rebecca makes the decision to return to work after having broken things off, but we’re starting to get a little off-track from the intended scope of this discussion.)

The idea of romantic love as a chase—if not already sold to us by Rebecca literally moving across the country in pursuit of Josh—is hammered home most effectively in episode 2x11, but Nathaniel actually brings it up in the episode prior; before Rebecca and Josh leave for New York, at the same time as setting up the whole ‘man of my dreams’ idea that also carries on into the next episode, a sweaty Nathaniel beseeches Rebecca to imitate a land-based predator so he can amp up his workout under the threat of chase. Within this alignment, Josh, who ends up proposing to Rebecca at the end of 2x10, becomes even more clearly representative of an end goal—love, marriage, and, as an expected by-product, ultimate happiness. Nathaniel, by contrast for the time being, is all about the chase that comes before. After his speech at the beginning of 2x11 boasting of his dogged approach when securing clients, his passionate buzz words begin to permeate Rebecca’s subconscious, with ‘pursuit’ in particular going so far as to in an echo in a similar way that ‘happy’ does in the pilot. Such is the effect of his words on her that she parrots them back to Josh when she tells him she’s moved up their wedding—‘Finally, it’s coming to an end. The pursuit is over and I just want to celebrate that’. The title of the episode title may pose the question Josh is the man of my dreams, right? but in the most literal sense, the star of her dreams becomes Nathaniel, along with his personal brand of terminology.

Where Nathaniel thinks life is all about playing the hunter, Rebecca insists she doesn’t care for the chase, which makes sense—she doesn’t want to be chasing Josh, and furthermore, admitting that she’s chasing him would only be contradictory to her belief that they belong together. She wants her happy ending. She wants to arrive at her final destination—her destiny—because thus far all her journeys (which have in actuality been more of a kind of stagnation) have been left her unfulfilled. However obsessing over an idealised future only postpones her happiness with her inability to focus on the present. Ironically, the point at which she makes an active choice to begin shifting that focus—in 3x07, when Dr Shin encourages her to live in the messy in-between—is right around the time Nathaniel starts buying into her idealisation himself.

In a similar way to Rebecca, regardless of his purported love of the pursuit, Nathaniel’s infatuation is seemingly tied to the concept of a destination—several times quite literally. In 3x04 he’s ready to whisk her away to Rome to evade any obstacles to their being together, and in 4x01 proposes a similar escape to Hawaii, causing him to lash out when Rebecca turns him down—‘I want us to just be happy and be together. That’s what I want. You just said you love me, right? So can you just do that for me? Can you just stop overthinking everything? …seems like every time we’re happy, you try to ruin it.’ He sees their shared happiness as a nirvana state he’s caught a glimpse of that Rebecca is now determined to deny him access to, to the point that he seeks to make their version of a love bubble a physical one, where no outside interference (or, more accurately, internal reflection from Rebecca) can keep them apart. Still degrees behind Rebecca in the parallel arcs of their development, he’s stuck in the mindset that them being happy and in love is the only thing that matters. His behaviour is far from flattering, but with a quick review of his history of being on the continual receiving end of her rejection, it’s not entirely difficult to see where he’s coming from.

(As an aside, Rebecca’s relationship with the destination versus the journey as it pertains to the mural on her wall is something I’ve already discussed in a previous meta.)

When she breaks up with him at the beginning of 3x09, Rebecca responds to Nathaniel’s protest of ‘but we’re happy!’ with the qualifier that she’s ‘happy, but it isn’t real’, which probably isn’t the most pleasant thing to be told, even before you factor in Nathaniel’s implied inexperience with serious relationships. While her behaviour prior to this definitely calls for some self reflection, it’s an interesting backflip from extreme infatuation to sudden dismissal, and while it does align with the black and white thinking associated with BPD, it’s easy to see why Nathaniel feels blindsided and, consequently, spurned. She begged him not to break up with her not only to then turn around do exactly that, but to also (presumably unintentionally) throw in the humiliating implication he cared more than she did.

Dr Akopian: Maybe now you can see that your father’s behaviour in the past has set a pattern for you, seeking the love of men who don’t fully love you back. Who you have to pursue. Men who are taken or emotionally unavailable. Like your father. Like Josh. Like Greg. Like other men, I’m sure.

Nathaniel is an outlier amongst the three main love interests in that, for all his grandstanding about humans being hunters by nature, he’s the one constantly falling over himself to win Rebecca’s affection rather than the other way around; it’s ironic that the love interest that asserts himself as being all about the chase is the one that ends up later having to assign himself the title of ‘king of declarations’ based on his ongoing habit of blurting out to Rebecca how he feels, never achieving the level of emotional standoffishness he hopes to exude. Nathaniel’s unavailability—and subsequent cementing as one of the types of men Dr Akopian calls Rebecca out on being predisposed to pursuing—comes only when he enters into a relationship with Mona, and Rebecca, who supposedly ‘never cared for the chase’, with interest reignited finds a skewed sense of security afforded by the romantic roadblock, something Nathaniel seems to understand on some unspoken level, as hinted at by his eagerness to maintain the fragile status quo of their morally questionable arrangement.

As a result of this subversion of power dynamics within Rebecca and Nathaniel’s relationship, in amongst the many other parallels between them that only serve to support this, it starts to become apparent that, narratively speaking, Nathaniel is to Rebecca as Rebecca is to Josh, something that is visually co-signed by the show during 4x03, when we see the same golden glow of romantic epiphany crest behind Rebecca in the church during her speech at Heather and Hector’s wedding that suffuses across Josh when Rebecca encounters him in the streets of New York.

Nathaniel’s takeaway from Rebecca’s speech is that because he loves her, he should do everything within his power to get her back, which of course leads to his (frankly embarrassing) attempts to manipulate her and win her over in 4x04. (Fittingly enough to this discussion, the opening line of the Slumbered quote he plagiarises is ‘you are the only thing that makes me happy’. The irony of his failed use of her teenage diary to win her over is that I honestly do believe the speech is an accurate summation of how he sees Rebecca, and had he only chosen to put it in his own words, that final scene between them might have played out a little differently.) The part he probably should have focused on, though, is the part Rebecca is currently pouring all her professional energy into (and not so coincidentally, it’s right there in the episode title)—love (and therefore happiness) being about finding your own path.

Rebecca: I don’t believe in destiny anymore. I just believe in taking responsibility for your own happiness.

This is not the first time Nathaniel makes the decision to actively pursue Rebecca while her attention lies firmly fixed elsewhere. In 3x03 and 3x04, he is forced to grapple with his feelings alone when a distracted Rebecca eventually goes where he cannot follow, putting an abrupt end to any potential for chase when she flees back to New York in 3x05. Consequently, Nathaniel embarks on a mini-arc of struggling to accept the idea that Rebecca may never come back—initially incomprehensible to him, owing to the fact that she bears importance to him, personally—to conceding that his (thus far relatively unexamined) need for her to be in his life is secondary to her own wellbeing, something that acts as a precursor to a major thread in Nathaniel’s (often one step forward, two clumsily-written steps back) character development in the back end of the series.

Nathaniel: I just hope wherever she is, she’s happy.

In 4x11, Nathaniel’s dream world amalgamation of Maya and Rebecca begs him to let her be happy, and as the former fades into the latter we get another callback to the pilot—an echo of 'happy, happy, happy…’ reminiscent of the empty shell of New York Rebecca latching onto Josh’s description of laid-back West Covina. Unlike its instance in the 1x01, however, this is a wake up call of an entirely different kind—it is not the blossoming of a brand new delusion but the sobering dissolution of one. And unlike the speech a radiant Rebecca gave at Heather’s wedding about finding the one you love and holding on tight, this particular iteration is here to impart the contradictory wisdom ‘if you really love me, you have to let me go’.

Nathaniel: I want you to be happy, I do.

This moment is arguably the true beginning of Nathaniel’s lesson that his happiness isn’t necessarily (or in this case, due to the current circumstances, can no longer be) inextricably linked to Rebecca—she has the opportunity to find happiness independently of him and that in itself is something that should make him happy, as someone that loves and cares for her. His assertion to dream Rebecca that he wants her to be happy manifests in his concession to Rebecca in the real world—‘I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. And it makes me happy too’—an exchange that echoes two similar moments between them back in season three, during which Rebecca expresses the same sentiment regarding his relationship with Mona, first following the cool down from their 3x10 conflict, and again in the aftermath of their ended affair in 3x13: 

Rebecca: I’m happy that you found someone else. Mona seems lovely.

Rebecca: I’m happy for you… I want you to be happy.

The more interesting callback here though, of course, is to Rebecca’s conversation with Greg at the duck pond way back in 2x02. After finally tracking down an AWOL Greg with the intention of breaking the news of her involvement with Josh, Greg makes peace with the situation by way of reassuring them both that everything worked out fine as long as Rebecca is happy. ‘You and Josh—you should be happy together. You’re happy, right? And he treats you well?’ Rebecca responds to this in the affirmative, though her expression—and the context of the episode—belies her answer. In contrast, her exchange with Nathaniel goes a little differently:

Nathaniel: Because you’re happy, right? You’re happy with Greg. Rebecca: I mean, I don’t know. I’m not there yet. But I could possibly be, yeah.

The evolution of Rebecca’s response is of course evidence of her development as a character and her own understanding of her relationship to happiness, but what I find most noteworthy is not that she lies in 2x02, but that in 4x11 she chooses to tell an unusual truth. She could just have easily have said yes the second time around and it would have functioned as a clear enough juxtaposition of what she considers close enough to happiness; after all, at the time of 4x11 she and Greg believe they are approaching their relationship in a mature and thoughtful fashion, they are warm and affectionate towards one another and, unlike in 2x02, she is not having to compete for her partner’s attention. She would, by all accounts, be completely justified in giving what could be considered the normal response to being posed such a question—that yes, she is happy with Greg. So even though it’s encouraging to hear Rebecca verbalising her newfound knowledge that happiness is so much more than such a simple dichotomy of yes and no, it feels significant that Nathaniel, as a person currently knee-deep in untangling his own complicated relationship with happiness, is the one that gets to be privy to this particular brand of truth.

And while it can be argued that all the strides Nathaniel makes in 4x11 are undone over the course of the following episodes, setting aside the very real fact that human emotions are fickle, and we can’t always stick as completely to our guns as we’d like, his blessing here still comes with a telling caveat: ‘I’ve got to let you go… because you’re happy’. And who shows up on Nathaniel’s doorstep during 4x12 to poke holes in that perceived state of happiness between her and Greg? None other than Rebecca herself.

Rebecca: You just want me to be happy, which is what I want too, and god, Greg… Greg doesn’t know what happiness is.

Such is the shared significance of this concept of happiness between them that the second Rebecca alludes to their conversation in the foyer, Nathaniel’s previously good-natured, albeit slightly confused, response to her drunken presence in his apartment quickly and very clearly dissolves into alarm bells and he eventually sends her on her way. Though he could easily have wielded Rebecca’s visit as a weapon to create dissonance between her and Greg in 4x13, he merely probes for clues by way of a convoluted metaphor, resigning himself to the fact that the issue has been resolved, while Greg, in actuality, is at this point none the wiser. It’s only once Greg himself tells Nathaniel that it is over between him and Rebecca that Nathaniel returns to entertaining his feelings for her.

Though we the viewers are all too aware (and at this point, probably screaming at the TV!) that Rebecca’s happiness is not, contrary to recurring belief, a vacant role that she needs someone to fill; unlike us, the characters have not had the good fortune of being able to watch the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend on the CW network. Nathaniel is still a fledgling in terms of self enlightenment, and it makes total sense for him to be nudged towards into pursuing her again once the clearest obstacle to her affections—her relationship with Greg—is no longer an issue.

When she breaks the news of her decision to Nathaniel in the finale, Rebecca is quick to assure Nathaniel that ‘the times that [they’ve] spent together have been some of the best of [her] life’, which is an interestingly bold statement all on its own, but it feels somewhat satisfyingly like finally giving Nathaniel a real-life answer to the ‘we’ve had such happy moments, you and I, haven’t we?’ that he throws at his Maya-shaped projection of Rebecca in 4x11; affirmation that contrary to what she says in 3x08, something in there between them was real.

‘You only get one life,’ he tells her in return. ‘And you’ve got to live that the way you want.’

Neither of them uses the word ‘happy’ in this exchange, but as we fast forward in time, we get:

Nathaniel: Happy to be here.

Rebecca: For the first time in my life, I am truly happy.

Nathaniel (who in an amusing reflection in 2x09, reveals that he, in a roundabout way, moved to West Covina because of Rebecca—‘it’s kind of your fault that I’m here’) has finally made the actual change that Rebecca taunted him with on their first meeting. And unlike Rebecca, he’s had a chance to interrogate what happiness for himself, removed from another person, might look like before he does so. Rather than starting with a life-altering change, he gets to make incremental changes along the way—which very much are tied to his entanglement to Rebecca—in order to make a more meaningful and deliberate life change for himself later on.

“When you find someone that melts the iceberg that is your heart…” - 3x03

“Provoking me, and zinging me, and challenging my world view. And warming my heart.” - 3x04

“You make me feel like I can be a different kind of person.” - 3x08

“You’ve awakened my heart and unlocked my soul.” - 4x04

“You’ve changed my whole life. Who I am, who I can be.” - 4x11

Rebecca describes her moving to West Covina in Nathaniel’s first episode as ‘[deciding] to flip things around. [Deciding] to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ In the finale, she tells the audience how he, by comparison, ‘upended [his] life’—‘You changed everything. But unlike me, you did it for the right reasons. And I am in awe of you.’ Alongside the nice progression from her proclamation in 2x09 that she ‘came to West Covina to search for happiness’ to her more self-aware announcement at the open mic that ‘for the first time in my life, [she is] truly happy’, (which feels like a subversive callback to a certain infamous butter commercial) we also get a reiteration of the sentiment— ‘I came to this town to find love. And I did. I love every person in this room’—that conflates happiness with love in what is now a healthy and satisfying way. It’s the perfect twist that she’s rewarded with the thing she was searching for all along just as soon as she realises she was looking in all the wrong places, and that the place itself still gets to play such a large part in that. And she is able to see Nathaniel’s journey as all the more meaningful in light of her own missteps along the way.

While I have my reservations on the bow they tied Nathaniel’s arc in for the finale (because despite Rebecca’s realisation that there is no such thing as ‘ending up’, there is in the sense of the scope of this series) being a well thought out resolution as opposed to leaning on a previous gag without laying any actual groundwork, the truth is it’s unclear what the true nature of Nathaniel’s sabbatical is/was/will be—mere extended vacation, permanent new career path, or just the initial spark of inspiration in some extended self discovery. That being said, much like Rebecca evolving towards a point where she can appreciate the interconnectedness of love and happiness in a less troublesome way, it is neat that Nathaniel’s resolution follows on from his tendency to want to escape to far-off destinations in an attempt to control his desired status quo. Though his fleeing town is still inextricably linked to having his heart broken by Rebecca, Guatemala, for once, isn’t about transposing his current circumstance to another place in order to cling to something, but rather a carefully selected, specific site for welcomed change.

Independent of any potential that may or may not exist between them as the show closes out—romantic or otherwise—it’s undeniable that these two characters have left indelible marks on each other, and without their respective involvement in each other’s lives, their journeys—and resulting transformations—would not have been the same.

[just-a-quirkless-loser]

New Beginnings

Part Three: I Don’t Belong Here

Part 2, Part 4

Aizawa had followed Chiyo to her “home.” It was deep in the forest that surrounded the city. She led him to the woods, everything feeling devoid of life. No squirrels or singing birds, no animals or people, just trees. And, that’s how she preferred it.

They finally came across a weathered down shack, barely standing. Moss wrapped around the structure it didn’t deserve to be called a building. At least it didn’t smell that bad. The door creaked in its hinges when Chiyo pushed it open. Chiyo had tried to keep her home clean; there was a largish carpet on the floor so she could keep her feet clean and warm during the winters, a mattress laid in the middle of the floor with a few springs poking out of its sides with a very thick comforter, and a few sets of clothes folded and pushed into the far corner. What Aizawa didn’t see was a fridge, a heater, washing facilities, a bathroom, nothing of necessity.

‘Fucking horrible,’ that’s what Aizawa thought but, Chiyo felt differently. Sure, it wasn’t much to be proud of to most but, to her it was everything. It was a safe haven. It was a place where she could exist with no fear of being hurt. Her nirvana.

“How do you even keep yourself clean?”

“There’s a waterfall a little bit from here. It’s pretty clean and it’s secluded. Every now and then, hikers come so I always make sure to clean myself very early in the morning.” Aizawa really didn’t like this. It burned his blood that there was a possibility for anyone to take advantage of you. There’s no way he could go back without you. You’d have to stay with him in his room till they cleared some space for you in the dorms.

“Come with me,” he watched you plop down on the mattress. “I don’t want you here. “

“It doesn’t matter what you want. I can’t just leave with you,” Chiyo messed with some of the loose thread that sprang from the mattress. She knew that she would eventually want to live with her alpha but, wasn’t this too soon?

“Chiyo, omega, it’s been months since we met. How much more time do you need?” He replied snarkily. He knew that she was stalling for time, that she was waiting for an excuse to disappear from his life. Even if they had bonds, they were flimsy at best, prone to the smallest winds of change. “Are you afraid?”

She nodded her head. Aizawa plopped down beside her and slug his arm over her shoulders. He couldn’t really understand her fear but, he knew something had happened in her past to make he this cautious of others.

‘She’d get along well with Hitoshi,’ Aizawa made it a mental note. Once she got settled into the pack, he’d “slowly” start to suggest to the two that they should bond. ‘That’s gonna be a while from now though. It’ll be worth the wait.’

“I can’t keep sneaking to see you,” the omega’s eyes watered. “I can’t keep neglecting my responsibilities as a hero, even if you do act as my sidekick. I’d never want to push you into the hero world; I know how much you hate the attention. My pack also doesn’t like that I’m staying out longer and getting less sleep, fucking bugs.

I want you to live with us at U.A. I want to protect you and give you the family you never had. I want you with OUR pack,” Aizawa m’s hair lifted a bit. He was prepared to knock her out and drag her home if needed.

Chiyo just smiled. Looks like she was going home with the hero.

***

The silence between Aizawa and Chiyo spoke volumes. Normally, she’d crack a joke or make fun of the older alpha but, she could tell this wasn’t the best time to antagonize him. She stared down at her shoes, refusing to meet the alpha’s eyes. Class had ended for lunch moments ago and the students had walked out past her (most of them not bothering to hide their disdain for her).

‘Everyone’s got their panties in a bunch. It was only a joke,’ again, this was one of these moments where Chiyo didn’t understand her world. Being disconnected for so long had led to the ignorance on her behalf. She didn’t have the same developmental teaching as many of the people in the world did; while they had been learning of their instincts, she was learning how to survive on her own. For everyone else, it seemed like an outside case and attacked one of their own which definitely warranted an ass kicking as far as they were concerned. For Chiyo, it was a relatively harmless act of teasing. Neither side was wrong. Neither side was right.

“I told you not to use your quick,” her shoulders hunched in their own accord. She hated upsetting the alpha. “ I’m disappointed in your lack of discipline. You can’t make those types of jokes in the early stages. How do you expect to fit into my pack if you can barely control yourself without my guidance?”

She didn’t expect to assimilate into his pack. Hell, she didn’t even want to be there. The only reason she had agreed to any of this was because Aizawa had gave her that ultimatum. She didn’t have any hope of having a family. All she wanted was Aizawa.

“What do you have to say?” he tilted her face for their eyes to meet.

“You expect me to change. You want me to be something I’m not. It’s like you want to fix me and you know I’m already broken,” Chiyo pulled her face from his grasp. “Being nice isn’t my style.”

“You’re nice to me, kitten. You just want to be mean to everyone else to see if they’ll leave you but, we both know you’re just a kitty that needs cuddles,” her cheeks burned. “Now, lets move your stuff into YOUR OWN room. I don’t wanna see any more of your bras lying around.”

“Don’t talk about my bras, you shitty old man,” Chiyo turned and walked towards the entrance of the school. Aizawa smiled as he followed behind her.

“Aww, kitty, you don’t want anyone to hear about your purple bras?” He ruffled her hair.

“Don’t call me that when we aren’t alone, old man. Do you want to end up with a broken neck?”

“I’d like to see you try. You’re too cute to do anything like that.”

“Shitty old man,” they both had walked into the dorms. The class had been gathered in the common room, clearly having a discussion that abruptly ended when they walked in. “Old man, they’re gossiping about us...should I, you know?”

Aizawa facepalmed as the omega wiggled her eyebrows. What was he going to do with her?

“Chiyo, we just talked about this. Go get all your things so you can finally move into your own room,” she skipped towards the elevator. Finally, her own space!!!

“She’s staying here!? No, wait, she’s been staying here? You’re not even gonna reconsider this after what happened to Hitoshi today!?,” they could have at least waited till she got on the elevator.

‘And they say I’m the one that’s fucked up,’ Chiyo thought as she rode the elevator all the way to the top to Aizawa’s suite. Part of her began to argue over whether she should stay or leave. They didn’t even want here there. Was she really foolish enough to believe that Aizawa would pick her over them? Someone he barely knows over his family? She didn’t think so.

‘Am I really just gonna stay here and wait for him to throw me away?’ you were so consumed with her thoughts that she didn’t notice Aizawa come from behind and wrap his arms around her waist.

“You’re thinking hard, kitty. Stop that. They’ll warm up to you. I’m sure an apology would help speed that process along,” he gave you a pointed look. You sighed, knowing you were defeated.

“I’ll do it at dinner,” she purred as Aizawa rubbed her scalp. He helped her move her things into her room, noting that she was in a room tucked away from the other girls but, still close enough to keep her connected. She stared at her blank with a bit of astonishment. “Thank you, Alpha.”

“Don’t thank me, kitty. This is what you do for people you love; you take care of them.”

They eventually had dinner, everyone sitting stiffly as Chiyo felt awkward. Apparently, the loud one Aizawa had described to be Bakugou Katsuki was a pretty good cook well a phenomenal cook but she’d never admit that to the asshole.

“You cook good,” she kept her eyes on her food. “I cook better.”

“Shut the fuck up, shitty girl. Your food probably tastes like ass,” Bakugou yelled. If you were anyone else, you’d probably be a bit afraid but, she is sadly insane.

“You’re an ass,” she giggled as Aizawa chuckled. A few people sputtered out the Soba then blonde prepared. “Hitoshi, I may have gotten a bit carried away earlier. “

Silence. Sweet silence.

“My name, to you, is Shinsou,” the alpha said. Chiyo understood she wasn’t going to be forgiven any time soon. “Just, stay away from me. “

“Hitoshi-“

“No, Aizawa, it’s fine,” and it was left at that. You all finished eating, leaving Aizawa and yourself to clean up. Everyone else had gone to watch movies. They laughed loudly, the sound echoing in the young girl’s mind. Aizawa nudged her with his elbows as he tried to beckon her to join the others but, it was no use. She knew if she walked in, the room would grow tense and their fun would be ruined. She felt envious of the pack dynamics. She may have had Aizawa but, this was a different want. She wanted to feel what they felt; to feel normal.

‘I really don’t belong here.’

[yehet-me-up]

Our Firsts / My Last

Pairing: Exo Mall Chanyeol x reader 

Genre: fluff/emo/angst (all the feels)

Rating: PG13 for language and mentions of sex

Word Count: 2,089

Request: fuck can i add 12 to that too. i’m sweating 12. ‘I can still get you wet and I can still make you laugh.’ @yeoldontknow I hope you like your 90s dream husband <3 Also including the “Semi-charmed life” song fic request in here since it’s already a 90s boi smorgasbord!

The first time I saw you it was seven a.m. the morning of our first day of Junior year at Burke, it was cold and rainy. Unsurprising, given it was Seattle, but sometimes the freezing sleet even caught me off guard. 

I was hiding under the cover of the walkway by the gym, making plans with Baekhyun for a back-to-school concert at the fountain when I saw you sprinting through the rain.

I don’t know what it was that drew me to you, even all these years later. 

Was it the way your nose wrinkled with amusement as you stood under the cover of the opposite walkway by the student center? 

Was it the long black coat you wore, with the big silver buttons, that made you look so much older than your sixteen years? 

Was it the way your hair stuck to your face and made me wish my fingers could do the same in that moment? 

Was it your backpack covered with band logo patches that I could see even from across the way?

Whatever it was, it stuck. 

I watched you walk away and disappear through the doors until Baekhyun elbowed me. I had no idea who you were then, had no premonition of how you’d become my everything. I only knew that I wanted to talk to you.

The first time I heard your name, later that day in Advanced Placement Music Theory, I wanted to tattoo it across my forehead. 

From my usual spot in the back of the class I watched you take careful notes of the syllabus. Mine was already crumpled and shoved in my backpack. I’d long ago given up doing anything in school for the grades or the prestige; I did music for the love of it.

It’s still such a clear moment - how I was drumming my fingers on my knee, staring up at the Coltrane poster Mr. Caruso had hung alongside several others. 

But then you spoke, and my world changed. 

All I wanted was for you to keep talking and never stop. You could read the ingredients on a can of soup and I would be entranced. The phone book would sound like poetry in your rich and steady voice.

It was three days before I got my chance to talk to you one on one. After lunch and before class I learned you waited in the music room with your headphones on and your eyes closed. 

My heart jumped into my throat when I saw you sitting there, lost in the music. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other and sat down in the seat next to you.

The sounds of Van Halen coming through were not what I was expecting and I liked that. So many people are predictable, a puzzle that’s too easy to solve - and I was learning you’re nothing like that.

Taking a deep breath I tapped you on the shoulder. I’m sorry for the way I scared you, still. But I can’t deny your shriek made me laugh. Still does.

When you turned those eyes on me, I was a goner. 

When you smiled as me and told me about how your dad introduced you to the band, along with many others, I was a goner. 

When you leaned over and wrote the name of an album I knew, but pretended I didn’t, on a piece of paper, your perfume reached me and I was a goner. 

When you said my name, as more people started filing into the class, you looked so beautiful as you tried out the word on your tongue, I was a goner.

The first time Kyungsoo invited you to Dick’s drive in with us after class it felt so right I had to check myself from reaching for you. 

What would you have done if I’d slid my arm around your shoulders and pulled you against my side? Would you have given me one of those dazzling smiles and wrapped your arm around my waist? Would you have shoved me off and raised a brow?

I can’t know, but I know that night was the first time I realized I wanted to touch you more than I wanted to breathe. You dished it right back out to Baekhyun whenever he made a joke. You and Kyungsoo were friends first and it burned in my stomach for about five minutes until I realized you were really, truly, just friends.

You talked with me about Nirvana until a sleepy Baekhyun made us finally part. As I drove us back to our respective homes I realized I wanted to be yours and I wanted you to be mine.

The first time I touched you, two weeks later at a concert by the Needle, I didn’t want any hands but mine to know how soft your skin is. Baekhyun made us late and we were stuck at the back of the crowd, by the fountain. I held your hand to help you climb up on one of the concrete benches and I didn’t want to let go.

Did you know then, that I was falling in love with you? Is that why you let me hold on for far longer than the situation dictated? Is that why you smiled at me softly through your lashes before turning away suddenly?

When I asked you out a few weeks later, did you know that I was sweating underneath my hoodie? I was sure I’d die if you said no. 

I told you I liked you in every way. You said you felt the same. Nothing has ever come close to how my heart exploded in that moment. Well, nothing until last Halloween when you agreed to marry me.

I realized I loved you the first time I kissed you, in my car after the party. 

As I held your face in my hands and finally, finally, got to taste you, I was ruined for anyone else. 

In all the years we spent apart, whenever I’d see someone and wonder if I should go after her, I’d think of that kiss. 

The way we fogged up the windows. The way you laughed as you climbed over the gear shift and onto my lap so you could ‘get a better handle on me.’ 

The way our make up was absolutely ruined and neither of us cared. The way you were finally, deliciously, absolutely, completely mine.

The first time I told my parents about you, I said you were my girlfriend, but an odd part of my brain almost made me say wife instead. 

It’s funny to think about it, now that you’ll officially be that next week. But in the moment, at seventeen, I was shaken. 

It was like the wormhole in that episode of Star Trek Baek loves. As if the current moment when you were my newly minted girlfriend and the eventual moment in the future when we’d be married smacked together and exploded in my mind.

Did I look like I’d seen a ghost, that night when we went to the movies together? Did I play with your hair too much, kiss your shoulder too much, stroke the skin of your thigh too much? Did you wonder where the intensity came from?

I sat there for hours in the dark. I don’t even remember what the movie was anymore. All I could think about or see was you. I wondered what kind of magic spell you’d cast over me that suddenly I wanted nothing but you. You, my friends, music, Seattle. Nothing else mattered.

I held onto that wild dream for weeks, hoping you wouldn’t realize that I wasn’t good enough for you and leave.

The first time we made love I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Holding you and being inside you was the most vulnerable and raw experience of my life up until that point or since. I know you felt it too, how my heart was yours and yours was mine. How we’d taken our souls and bonded them forever. 

When I woke up that next morning holding you I cried as you slept. I wept silent tears of awe and gratitude and love until I silently laughed to myself and woke you up. I wiped the wetness off my cheeks and kissed you to distract you from the fact that my heart was in my eyes. 

You were a tsunami that came in and swept all else away. All I could do was surrender to the glorious moment and thank the universe for sending you my way.

The first time we argued I almost got on my knees to beg you to stay. It wasn’t even a fight, really. Just me overreacting to the way Daniel Abrams put his hand on your shoulder at the concert my band played, just after New Year’s.

I listed endless reasons why you should stay with me that night. Said that I was the only one who could make you laugh so hard you snorted. That I could get you wet with a look. That I’d never be threatened that you’re going to be more successful than I was. That I was the only one who got your music taste. The only one who would never laugh at you when you cry over how beautiful meteor showers are.

I brought myself so small at the thought of you leaving that it scared me. When you crouched down and pulled me into your arms, when you said you loved me like you’d never loved anyone, when you said you’d never leave, that’s when I finally relaxed.

I knew in that moment you were my home and my family and I’d do anything to protect you.

The first time I lost you, it was my fault. I was terrified of holding you back, of being the thing to ruin your future. I saw the way my parents were dismissive of me and couldn’t imagine anything worse than waking up ten, twenty, thirty years later and realizing I’d failed you, tied you to a life you didn’t want.

It broke me apart to leave and only your faith and trust put me back together again, when you forgave me and took me back. When I woke in the morning after our second first time together I swore I’d never be stupid enough to lose you again.

I knew I’d propose to you eleven months before I did it. At the Rolling Stones and Third Eye Blind concert at the Kingdome you surprised me with for my birthday, I knew that I wanted to ask you on Halloween.

As we swayed back and forth under the lights, surrounded by the crowd, I could already see it. 

I’d be Gomez and you’d be Morticia. I’d set up that sweet gazebo in Baekhyun’s backyard with rose petals and turn on every single twinkle light he had. At midnight I’d take you out back and serenade you with all your favorite songs and probably cry (okay, by now you know I actually did cry).

I’d get down on my knee and take your hands in mine and kiss them and I’d tell you how you own every part of me. I’d tell you there’s nothing of mine that isn’t also yours. I’d tell you I love you wholly and completely, but without expectation. I’d tell you I never want to cage you in, I just want to be the one who gets to fly beside you.

I spent all night lost in the music with you in my arms, planning our future. It went even better than I planned. 

Now I’m sitting here, trying to write my vows, and all I want to do is tell our story to the world. 

About how I was a fool and let the person I loved go to save them, but by some miracle you still came back to me. I’d say that we became even stronger people without each other, and now that we’re together they’ll have to pry me off you with a crowbar. 

How I learned that if something is meant to be, if two people are meant to be, they’ll both fight for it.

All I want to sing is our love story. What else could I promise you that you don’t already have? 

My heart is yours. My body. My soul. My past. My present. My future.

My first. My last. My always and forever love.

My wife.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Interview: Infected Rain “Music, the stage, live shows, this is my therapy.”

Infected Rain have been steadily building a fan base for a few years now. Latest album Endorphin is getting some well deserved critical acclaim. They got a lot of UK fans excited recently when they payed their first visit to the country touring with Lacuna Coil and Eluveitie. Gary Trueman took the opportunity to have a chat with vocalist Lena about the new album, Moldovan roots and why singing on stage can be so cathartic.

It’s your first time in the UK so how have we been treating you?

“Very good actually. It’s sad that London is our last day in the UK, hopefully we will be able to come back next year because we’ve loved it.”

A lot of people won’t know that Infected Rain are over ten years old. Are you still as hungry musically now as when you first started?

“I think even more than before because we get to play bigger venues with bigger crowds and we are just eager for more. We will not stop. It’s like when you give candy to a kid and the kid will want the candy over and over again. Music is our candy.”

You’re from Moldova which for those who are wondering sits between the Ukraine and Romania. How has coming from there been in both good and bad terms when it comes to reaching people musically?

“I don’t know how it is for other bands who come from somewhere else. I do know that our ethnicity and background gave us a lot of passion because we come from such a small and poor country. We’re fighters who never give up. We just work, work, work because we know it’s the only way to get things done.  Coming from Moldova though, there aren’t that many bands hanging in there continuing to do what they love. Sooner or later they just give up, but we never did.”

We mentioned earlier that this is your first time in the UK but you have played all over Europe regularly. Were you afraid we bite?

“Haha, no not at all. Unfortunately we need visas to come and visit you guys.  It’s very expensive and very tricky to get a visa, especially when you are an independent band. We had to be signed and we had to have a lot of people on board that could help us. We still payed so much money to be here. Even then our guitar player lost his passport and now we are without one member of the band. He is joining us for the other shows (in Europe) but it was sad. What if my passport got lost? That’s the only reason we never visited the UK before.”

Your new album Endorphin is a bit of a beast, it’s brilliant. It’s a great showcase for the band as you are now and it’s also a very personal album theme wise and lyric wise. Do you sing mainly about your personal experiences?

“Yes, I am the one writing for Infected Rain so I’m writing about my personal experiences and my personal life and things that bother me or make me happy. Endorphin is very specific and very special for me because in the past year I’ve been through a lot of difficult moments and a lot of emotions that I wasn’t really ready to confront. It did give me good material for Endorphin and that’s why I think the album is very dark. It’s a catharsis listening to and finishing the album. I needed that, and I still do. I’m still fighting with a lot of anxiety and depression because of what I’ve been through, and my music helps me so so much.”

Is it also a cathartic thing to get up on stage and belt those lyrics out and give vent to your feelings?

“Definitely. I go through a roller coaster of emotions on stage and it makes me cry very often. I get goosebumps to feel all these emotions over and over again. But I need it because it’s like my therapy. Music, the stage, live shows, this is my therapy. It’s the only thing that helps me to go on and survive, and believe in myself and be confident.”

Do you find that you get fans saying that your lyrics mean so much to them because they’ve gone through similar things?

“I get that a lot. I know a lot of people can relate because I receive a lot of emails and a lot of messages regarding that. It makes me happy that people can relate to it and that people can find a cure through my words.”

You’ve recently signed to Napalm Records who are very well known and respected. How’s that working out?

“We are very happy about having professional people on board that love us and our music the way it is, and don’t want to change us. Their job is to bring us to a new level and to promote us and they’ve been doing such a great job.”

You’ve said that some years ago you hurt your voice and that you were helped by a vocal coach called Melissa Cross.

“I was self taught in the beginning and obviously just like learning to walk and run you will fall a few times and ruin your knees and bleed sometimes. That’s what happened to me and I know a lot of musicians that went through that. Thanks to hard work and Melissa Cross who is amazing I can control things a bit better and can go on tour for 40 or 50 shows and not care. It still happens sometimes that I get a hoarse voice but mainly because I try to talk to fans and scream over the loud music because I am very friendly with my fans. I have to save my voice after a show but they want to talk and I want to talk to them.”

For any singers reading this what did Melissa teach you specifically?

“Basically everything. She teaches all the technical things but most important she taught me to be more confident and to feel my voice instead of listening to my voice. I was always trying to listen to what was coming out of my mouth but that is a big mistake. She gave me the confidence to feel which is very important because I am a very emotional person and deliver so much emotion through my lyrics.”

In a way the voice is an acoustic instrument isn’t it?

“It is, absolutely.”

Do you think modern metal vocals are often misunderstood by the wider public and even wider music press?

“Yeah, but that was something that was always there. When Metallica started, and then Nirvana. Everything that is grungy and loud is always a little bit underground and not for everybody. Who the fuck cares? There’s a good audience for everybody.”

Has coming from Moldova shaped your music in any way?

“It hasn’t. We don’t have any folk parts to our music. We don’t sing about Moldova. We don’t add any local instruments. So it hasn’t really.”

Do you have any kind of an alternative scene in Moldova?

“Not really. We have a lot of talented musicians but we don’t really have any clubs to play.”

We know you front Infected Rain and that you also model but what other jobs have you done in the past and would you still go back to them at any point?

“I wouldn’t want to go back. I would like to get into publishing some books, maybe lyric books, maybe a biography. I used to be a hair and make up artist for almost 12 years both before the band and during the band. I do my own make up and hair for music videos and stage and things like that. Music has a very special place in my heart and I will do my best to continue doing that for as long as I can.”

If you could perform on stage with anyone living or dead who would you choose?

“If we were choosing living then I would go for The Deftones because I’m a huge fan of them. I’d loive to play on the same stage or maybe even do a song together. If we are talking about people who are no longer with us then Nirvana and Kurt Cobain.”

If you could go back in time and give a 16 year old Lena one piece of advice what would it be?

“It would be simply, believe in yourself.”

[schizo-spoon-blog]

Spoonbender Society: Selected Schizoepistles

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:

We Live In A Society

People say we live in a democracy/democratic republic, a form of government intended to amplify what people think and address problems they find to be important. But it doesn’t ever seem to function that way.

The issue is in voter suppression, but as always not in the way people generally think voter suppression works. The issue is psychic, spiritual, and social suppression of citizens. Systemic over-development of senses of rationalization, neuroticism and anxiety, industrially incentivized narcissism.

People develop a deathly fear of what others think, or may think, or what they may have thought about them or what they think, what they may think, or what they may have thought.

A democracy where we’d rather not hear what other people have to say, because we find their thoughts offensive and retarded. That’s one thing people are happy to share. But because we suspect that there are so many offensive retards in the world, we fear... "Perhaps I’m a retard too?" You wonder that even for just a second in your life, if you have a soul. It’s OK to be a retard really, but you’ll never believe that it’s OK, and that's probably What Your Fucking Problem Is.

The opinions of us purported non-retards, to avoid sounding like complete retards, end up soft, ambivalent and stale, phrased like True Neutral Orgasm in Ego-Death Nirvana, but less Chad, less gratifying, and nobody cums. To not be reminded of the possibility of our own retardation, we like to pretend that if the retards just shut up and nobody can hear them, they go away. If they are Physically Removed from our presence, their evil thoughts and their malicious intentions will go away with them. We win. But they don’t. They never do.

We always fail to Psychically Remove them. We lose.

We can hypothesize a law of conservation of hatred, correlate one too of love, but the truth is banal. How can it be in light of our timeline? Why are these Hate Groups all over the place? Hitler’s corpse is rotting or burned to a crisp, or embalmed in a tomb or made a toilet for Some Rich Dude ((parenthetical removed)). (Or was he cloned?)

Great Fatherland Germany - defeated by the "untermensch" and partitioned like a cheese between rats. That Great "Faustian" and "Supreme" "Aryan" Race is subjugated by the hated "Juden" and all the "vermin" of the world, humiliated, castrated to be reunited a shadow of its former self. Yet the Nazi threat is omnipresent nearly a century later, in an era which may be an alien planet to those who lived in Hitler’s time.

How is it that the Great Allies, our fathers and grandfathers, achieved such total victory over so loathsome a foe, so unsympathetic and vile, only to see his Evil infect their own countrymen and posterity? How can something so thoroughly defeated still persist in what could be our neighbors or our co-workers our bosses or our employees? Each one could be a secret Nazi now. In parenting blogs moms worry that their children are becoming Nazis from goofy men they see in videos on line. Marriages are ending in divorce because the husband or wife is allegedly or apparently a Nazi. How could this happen?

Have you ever seen “The Matrix? Who hasn’t? You know all about the red and blue pills, and all the rainbow-flag DLC that it comes with, black and pink and green and brown and in configurations invisible to the human eye, I’m sure. If you don't know, the pills are portals to different realities. Take the black pill and you only see death, take the white pill and everything’s alright, take the blue pill you vote for Hillary, take the pink you become genderqueer. But this is not about taking any pills. This is about going off your meds. Going straight edge - except for whiskey, cigarettes, cocaine and pussy. It’s about the spoon - no, not for shooting up. It's for bending - with your mind. Remember? That spoon - The Spoon That Isn’t There.

That spoon is a Nazi.

If you are aware that there is no spoon you can tie it into knots. You can make it into a balloon animal. That Nazi Spoon could be a Jewish Socialist from Vermont, or a kosher Brooklyn Zionist, or a Dominican Taxi Driver. It could be an evil copy of your own son from Bizzaro World. It's probably your uncle. It could be Rottweilers, and Chihuahuas. Whether Pitbulls are Nazis or Jews/Blacks is an ongoing debate in the contemporary discourse.

But imaginary shit can be whatever the hell you want. You don’t have to be "The One" to Bend the Spoon. You don’t have to be anyone at all. What was the name of the kid who said the line about the spoon again? Nobody knows, nobody cares, and that's the beauty of Spoonbending.

"The Nazi" is the guy who keeps talking when he should shut up. He might be autistic, but he could just be an asshole. There is a strong possibility he could be both. Why does he keep saying all of this ridiculous stuff? He’s more offensive and more retarded than the usual, but it feels like He Has To Be This Way. Like it’s his curse, He Knows Too Much. He fell down some rabbit hole and ended up gorged on Fascist Propaganda. He mentions some girl named Celine. He rambles on about some guy you’re pretty sure is a Tekken character... the guy who turns into the Devil maybe. He mentions a vacation in Turkey with his family but insists on saying Constantinople and there’s a wild-man tear in his eye. He insists he knows about Atlantis and calls you gay for saying you liked Aquaman. Instead of saying goodbye he says “Subscribe to Pewdiepie.” The Nazi belongs in an institution. You wonder if he has guns and if maybe he should have them taken for a while. He probably doesn’t, but you can’t be sure. He’s 12.

When is it too early to become a school shooter? Is 12 too early to be an incel?

12 is probably the age at which incels hatch from their human hosts.

“Who is Pewdiepie, and how has he groomed my nephew into the Hitler Youth?” many families today are asking. They think they’re looking at a spoon. Conditoning fills your heart with a desperate desire to see the spoon. A fact, pure fact, logical, reasonable, peer reviewed, widely accepted, So True, a Textbook Fact. The spoon. Everyone else sees it too. That goddamn Nazi Spoon.

You ever try to ask this at a party as an ice-breaker and see how the guests react?

“So, anyway, was The Holocaust Real?”

“Excuse me, what?”

“What do you think, was it real, how many people do you think died, don’t the gas chambers sound goofy to you?”

”Um… no… they don’t sound goofy. What are you talking about?”

“You ever hear about the Nazi Roller-coaster they had at one of the camps? They’d put Jews into a roller-coaster except they’d fly off the edge and get splattered. That’s how the Nazis killed ‘em. I swear. I read it in a book by a Holocaust Survivor. Impossible to believe if it weren’t so True. No shit. You hear about that?”

”I’m… gonna get another beer.”

Of course there’s a Correct answer to that initial question. It’s also the Right answer. Who would ever get this wrong? It's the 2+2=X of History. Well…

Pop-Quiz, Random Nazi Check, Anybody here Hate Jews? You a Groyper, Son? What’s so funny? You think the Cookie Monster committing genocide is a laughing matter boy? We don’t take kindly to your kind around here.

Maybe you should give the Nazi-check thing a try, it’ll separate sheep and goat real easy for you.

If you do this everyone will think you are The Nazi.

The Nazis hated Jews, but did they hate real Jews as Jews exist, or did they hate the Fascist Propaganda Jew who was a work of fiction? On that note, were you in love with your last failed relationship, or just pretending you were? Have you ever had one impression of a person, but then learned they were another kind of person entirely? That first impression you had, the one that wasn’t True, was that a Real Person, or Imaginary? But you still spent all that money and sweat on an imaginary girl, huh?

Hope her hole was real.

I think that fake bitch of an ex you dated was a nazi. Your ex was a fascist. Oh, was she Jewish? It doesn’t matter, changes nothing. I’ve never met her - wouldn't matter if I did. When I imagine her, she's in Hugo Boss black and got skull-and-bones on her officer's cap, and she's saying racial slurs as she ruins your life, cheats on you, drains your bank account and kills your dog after getting custody over it in court. I imagine all bad people this way. All women who rejected me were exactly like this.

But I must breach working-class anti-fascist solidarity, and admit, on That Question ("Would you?").... Yeah, I would. Sorry bro. Take me away Comrades, I admit it, I'd give it to that Nazi Jew raw. Would I do that to her as she exists, or the Fascist Propaganda her who is a work of fiction?

That depends. You still got her number?

haha it's ok you can call me an incel, it's a step up from what i actually am

(User was banned for this post.)

The Nazi and the Fascist aren’t my hallucinations. That’s not my mental illness. But it’s adjacent to me, it’s thrown at me without my Consent, and it's a Trigger. I'm paranoid about commies myself.

In the multicultural cyberpunk year of 2019, with its trans-human gender-sex-orientations, anti-racist ethno-narcissism, fanatic anti-normalism, cultish critical theory intersections, grand byzantine minimalism, placidity, in such splendid predatory banality… In the absolute state of the world! – Aah! An undead ideology conceived by a salty Frenchman in the badlands of South Dakota in the 1890s shambles forth the devour all that is Good and Holy in the Great United States of AmeriKKKa, God Help Us All! And A Child Will Lead Those Dreadful Legions of Corruption Upon All The Meek Of Our Fallen World!

Or it’s just a spoon that isn’t real.

Nobody wants to be straight-forward, and I gotta navigate the labyrinths of euphemism. Maybe there's something weird going on - how people talk, how people act, how people think, none of those correlate to each other. It makes you feel schizo when you do all your mental rain-man calculus and realize there's a fucking Elephant in the living room and he's not wearing any goddamn pants. Once that little ray-of-sunshine blesses your tiny bug-man brain to enlighten you that the elephant is real, and the spoon isn't, it's only a matter of time before you're crowned in tinfoil a Potato King on your off-grid Bug-out estate in the Idaho Panhandle, or start drinking yourself to death and bullying mailmen (or both).

If you'd like to avoid that sort of Elephant-Mania Spoon-denialism, maybe you should try answering Uncomfortable Question instead of being so Weird about it, oh wise Mr. Kirk, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Talking-Head, Mr. Important-Guy, Mr. Movement, Mr. Politics, Mr. Voice of Reason, Mr. Metatron. Take it from a schizo-maniac with a manifesto, you’re freaking out the hoes.

Try Praeger U talking points out on a Tinder date and watch her shrivel up from instathot to instahag -- she will go through menopause before your very eyes, that's how dry her pussy will get. Trying not to sound racist while talking about the Antarctic Nazi base and the importance of craniometry in ethnocultural anthropology will get you more action than anything that sounds like a paraphrase of Charlie Kirk -- because even if you're still being cringe at least you aren't being fake. Point and laugh at that fucking elephant - the moron isn't even wearing pants! That'll get her thinking about taking your pants off. Or not - it's not foolproof. If she doesn't laugh, red-flag, she's a Nazi so Begone Thot!

Please, for the love of God, go off-script! See the damn elephant and forget the spoon, and forget the wise Mr. Kirk, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Talking-Head, Mr. Important-Guy, Mr. Movement, Mr. Politics, Mr. Voice of Reason, Mr. Metatron. Take it from a schizo-maniac with a manifesto, you'll go insane if you don't.

[. . . ] [T]hen there's that neuroticism, that narcissism, that fear. The whole point of these politics groups and gatherings and Q&As is what, anyway? Is it really just basic marketing tactics, like a live-action advertisement you expect for people to passively consume as though it is persuasive? To shove free-markets and free-speeches down my throat and have me swallow it without having anything that’s been bothering me answered? What do I look like to you, an Ideology Whore? You don't even reciprocate a good time, huh? I'm not that kind of girl. You didn't even buy me dinner. You made me pay to bore me. I'd cuck you if we dated just to make a very important point -- fully aware it'll go over your head. Fuck you.

We gotta hear The Script. We gotta recite The Script.

Real Conservatives Think Like This. Real Progressives Think Like This. White People Walk Like This. Black People Walk Like This.

Gotta hear that joke ten thousand times so you can recite it like a mantra in your sleep.

Free markets mean free people. Facts don’t care about your feelings. Private Companies can do what they wish. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. We want legal immigration, not illegal.

Abolish ICE. Your childhood hero says Trans-Rights. Do you not want me in the movement? Abolish whiteness.

The Racism of Lowered Expectations.

Reparations.

A white nation.

Workers of the world unite!

Abortion is a human right.

Have you got it memorized?

Let’s go over it a few more times.

Say it with me! Hillary was found innocent in a hundred hearings and it is sexist to besmirch her reputation.

Repeat after me! Trump’s economy is the best in history, and if he's racist why is black unemployment is at historical lows.

You benefit from unearned privilege. You suffer from toxic masculinity.

The world is about to end and everything you know and love will die, and it is your fault, for not believing in the correct things at the correct time.

Are you laughing yet?

I’m dying. I feel like an e-girl, and my orbiters are sides.

But do you wanna know what I really think? The whole bit about psychic and social suppression? You ever hear about the Procrustean bed? Well, what if we put your political, social, moral consciousness and your psychic abilitys into a bed like that. We could talk about it. You ever play Xenogears?

Or you could just put me in a box. I really wouldn't mind. I'm Houdini. Hey, was Houdini a Nazi, like Henry Ford? Can we get a fact-check? I didn't mean to be problematic.

Break the Conditoning - Step outside the box, and use it as a step ladder. Ascend, Beyond the Box - use The Spoon.

Bush did 9/11, the Israeli’s danced, the Aliens killed JFK - sure - but I only say this because of my MK Ultra Schizo-brain. It’s true, it’s false, it’s fact, it’s myth, I don’t have to believe any of it -- I also don't have to believe any of you if I don’t want to. My feelings do not care about your facts, and did you know that some of the world's most uncomfortable facts are manifested into being by uncomfortable feelings? Is it the fact of the bullet that kills the political dissident, or the feelings of his executioner? Is it the deranged lust of the rapist that violates his victim, or the fact of his power to do so? I guess it depends on whether the perpetrator said "nothing personnel kid" before he committed the act. I don't know about that Nazi Rapist's feelings, but MY feelings are valid and I can believe or disbelieve whatever I want on the basis of my feelings, and my feelings alone. My feelings bend the spoon of your facts.

Are you going to say I don’t have the right, Adolf? Sucks for you, bud, I may be a commie by blood, but the heart that pumps it was assembled in the ole USA -- and we got the Right to be a Retard here in America. It's a Free Country.

[Note: please insert image of Jonathan Frakes from Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction]

Now that the dust has settled: Was the Nazi Roller-Coaster Real? Or did we put the Truth in a Mass-Grave? We will let you know at the conclusion of our program.

Sincerely and Full of Suffering Your Friend Always, Orcbrand

[epixolon]

Hey so I started ORV about 2 weeks ago and I need to place down my feelings and I hope y’all appreciate it. Most of my predictions about immediate events turned out to be wrong, like they were through most of the novel, but some of the longer ranged ones might still be possible, and as you will read i haven’t edited these, so most of my stuff will be wrong, but I don’t much care, it’s stream of thought. Enjoy

Chapter 0-206

* Dokja will bookmark and use either Jonghyuk’s regression, or Nirvana’s reincarnation.

* Dokja will devour a constellation’s story in order to get their stigma, rather than go through the process of bookmarking it, with my personal guess being zeus and the lightning carnival since that’s been mentioned a bunch and he already has electrification.

* when the fourth wall has devoured things so far, dokja gets a better understanding of the being, so maybe if he devours a constellation like, say, zeus, he will gain a better understanding of the constellation to allow for bookmark

* Soon enough he’ll use unidentified wall to communicate with his allies, probably the underworld, maybe Uriel, definitely Jonghyuk and co. outside Seoul in an attempt to consolidate his power before the coming storm of the nebulae opposing him.

* Yoosung will find a way to be a sacrificial bastard like Dokja so she can upgrade her stigma from him by following his story.

* The fourth wall makes a lot of sense both as a representation of Dokja’s inner thoughts and subconscious, mostly seen as the ways that he’s been traumatized, such as with his mother, are when he becomes most like the fourth wall and the benefits are lost.

* The being inside the wall that his mother saw is unclear to me, i could maybe see the subconscious pride and confidence that he has with himself and the knowledge he possesses, but it could also be the author in some fashion, especially with that bit of advice he got in the outer god’s stomach

* The fourth wall is a great piece of writing for every reason possible, but also makes sense within the universe as to how it can do this stuff: we see everywhere that when a constellation wants to do something direct, it has to use up probability, and anyone that wishes to oppose its actions can use some of that probability as well such as with Kyorgius (I don’t remember how to spell his name, the tiny man), or even the outer god, and probability storms are when nobody will use this probability to oppose them, the universe sets the balance right. And so the fourth wall uses probability

* The fourth wall represents two things: 1. how probable is it that a book character can affect a reader? that’s unlikely right? even more so to be able to know the reader in some intimate fashion? and 2. we see sparks every time someone tries to read his mind/abilities. the fourth wall essentially absorbs that probability and stops the skill, and i think a similar thing happened with the unidentified wall as it seemed to be using a lot of probability to do anything and the fourth wall just took it all in “with a bigger spark”

* the unidentified wall i think will possibly become “identified” as something, either a definite thing straight from ways of survival, or it will be open to possibility like Heewon’s crouching figure, in which case i see like a 30% chance it is influenced by the fourth wall and becomes something similar to it

* I definitely think there’s a possibility the secret plotter is related to the author, and you see it much more when in a reread the constellation seems to occasionally hear his thoughts or potentially understand more about the situation than it should be able to, without being overboard obvious about knowing dokja’s attributes.

* ok and with it laughing when he forces down the fourth wall, like he could tell what happened, and when he was “snapping at the great old ones looking at you,” I’d say he’s pretty damn powerful, maybe even more than narrative grade, and maybe it’ll just be the christian god or the devil or whatever something, but it could also be the author i think

* As we’ve seen most clearly from Dokja’s use of the sword song of the maritime war god, but not Jihye’s ghost fleet, constellations can have multiple stigmas, so i at least am predicting Dokja will give the fourth wall or possibly character list, or maybe even a copy of the ways of survival text (i definitely don’t think she’ll get ORV or bookmark though, those are protagonist powers), as a stigma later on for Yoosung, but i def could be wrong about that.

* I think there’s a possibility Sooyoung will tell everyone that Dokja is a reader before he gets back, but i could see it not happening.

* when 41st Yoosung is born as a dokkaebi, i wonder if using her channel will break the contract he and Bihyoung have. i think he might switch over to the channel for his covert revolution actions at the very least, and just block channel access to the vedas and the other nebulae, and might switch over his scenarioing to the new channel entirely

* actually, when he was in Seoul, he said his contract was cancelled, so maybe he can stream with the both of them now, or even just 41st Yoosung

* i think there’s a possibility that Sooyoung actually did plagiarize the text, but just doesn’t remember, either because she’s becoming more like a character like the two prophets, because when the author deleted the text from the internet her mind got frazzled, or when she made her first clones, the memory of reading it went with it and got destroyed when the clone died

* the author in the first chapter said that their story won a contest, and while in retrospect it seems like a lie, i wonder if there’s the possibility that like with peace land, who’s author sold the setting, if the author wrote the story either without meaning to

* like if Sooyoung actually did just write her own story from a dream, maybe the author did the same and just got more of the dream enough to realize the coming reality of the story, and maybe the dream was them acting like actual prophets to the world before the constellations were going to show up anyway

* the debt/free service time mentioned by the dokkaebi in the beginning is interesting, and i wonder if the end of the scenarios is having enough coins to buy either the planetary system or even just more time of free service away from the constellations.

* Dokja might eventually get more attributes, maybe something like writer or fanfiction writer or revisionist to get new powers given the ways he’s changing the story, either something like avatar (or maybe he’ll just use bookmark for that) as a way to either die more or make a nebulae out of one constellation, or some bullshit reality bending power like writing is, or just like a more reliable use of the other constellations’ Deus Ex Machina to do anything he wants, with enough probability of course

* compounded because in his attributes window we see more skills ■’d out

* given Myungoh’s daughter, will Dokja be adopting a 4th child in the near future?

* maybe asmodeus wants to feed the 73rd demon king to his child

* do you think anyone we’ve met, maybe someone from the constellation banquet, has the ancient dragon’s heart we see Dokja looking at in the Ichthyosaurs’ stomach?

* does/will Dokja look very different from how he did previously because of the golden dragon heart (which based on the heart we’ve seen previously should give him a lot of regen and storage of his magic) and the arm? along with the rest of the broken pieces that became his ruined body that probably only vaguely resemble his face? and the demonic energy he had before and might have again, and maybe ending up as the 73rd demon king

* his face is apparently blurry to people, even with a new story on it, i wonder if he’ll lower the fourth wall to let people see him at some point

* Jihye mentioned that his face is blurry, but Gilyoung has mentioned that he looks fine, so to me that indicates it’s maybe the fourth wall

* do you think there will be any romance by the end? i get the Jonghyuk and Dokja romance implications, but at least as far as the Fate goes, it looked a lot more to me that Dokja’s true love was the love of a good story, and that he died from the story he told with his friends, that proof alone isn’t enough for romance to me, so i could see it ending with none, no romance at all and the story just ends with Dokja and his 7 adopted children.

* why are there 72 demon kings, but they’re in the 73rd demon realm and asmodeus has 32 realms under his control? is there a mistranslation or a misunderstanding going on or what?

* maybe asmodeus absorbs/devours/suborns any demon king that he can and just takes his land, and so he wants the 73rd realm

* could be related to the question of asmodeus’s child above

* i think destroy evil from samyeondang might come up in the demon realm

Chapter 207-214

* I love Uriel now I think, and Biyoo

* i wonder if Dokja can bookmark unidentified wall, or if Hayoung can learn bookmark

* I’m unsure if the revolutionary will end up being a bad person or not, because i think I might have a problem if Dokja just kills the revolutionary, but maybe they’ll sacrifice themselves, or die elsewhere, or maybe they can give it up willingly, idk

* i could see the end of the novel being all the star stream being destroyed, which means no dokkaebis and no stories, so the constellations start to die, and we either get a sad ending of Dokja dying as a constellation, or we get a nice one of him (and maybe some other nice constellations) surviving on Biyoo’s Bootleg, or maybe the same barstardry he pulls, with him doing another “I don’t die when I am killed” and coming back from death again

* I wonder if Hayoung and maybe Dokja will find/convince the 15 year old to allow/make a way for Sooyoung to keep her sanity while following the story, like maybe a new story for the constellation, idk

* ooh shit, Dokja having read the story is spreading, yoo sangah at least suspects, i wonder if everyone will know by the time he gets back

* it’d be a funny scene if Uriel notices Biyoo’s Bootleg and tells Jonghyuk about it to avoid the dokkaebi, and so they miss each other for a bit until Dokja does something stupid/self-sacrificing enough (maybe by a plan from the Duke) that Jonghyuk realizes it’s him and comes and saves him

* i had a dream the dokkaebi had british accents whenever they spoke, and the idea of a foul mouthed floating cat going around saying “oi cunts moider each other or ah’ll shank ya nan” is just hilarious to me

Chapter 215-224

* <3 <3 Fuck Kim Dokja <3 <3

* I figured the hair was going to be involved, but not explicitly that

* If Dokja can find a way to with relative consistency summon the soldier, that’s great

* ok asmodeus is the king of the 32nd. ok, not 32 of them

* Dokja normally says no to potentially unfair support like this from constellation level beings, but i’d actually like to see him deal with asmodeus and just manage to manipulate it so that he is the king of all demons or something

* If Dokja gets support from Asmodeus, than the demon will probably leave his incarnation body there and use it as a puppet to pop in when needed even as he attends to matters in his own kingdom most of the time. This’d open the possibility of Dokja getting to adopt another child, which is always good to see

* I’m also real curious how the possibility of the people who were once characters finding out they were, and what differences there will be to the “real” people, although the fact that the two prophets are characters now is intriguing

* So far it’s just Sangah who knows, but I wonder if Heewon and the others will even be allowed to understand the concept, given the ways the filtering has prevented it in the past

[harrysthoughts]

You - Episode 9/10

Youlinas! This is my last in-depth post about You, season 1. Feels like just yesterday I was just sitting down to watch a buzzy Netflix show with my girlies...little did I know what I was getting myself into. Spoilers from the last 2 episodes are nigh.

 “How did I get here?” That’s the question Beck asks herself as she sits on the floor of the glass cage we all knew she’d end up in since we saw it in the first episode. 

First, let’s talk about Candace, annoying as she is. Of course they just had to cast someone that looks like Lucy Hale sucked on too many helium balloons at a party, which isn’t a bad thing, it just is. In the second to last episode, we learn all about the doomed relationship that preceded Joe and Beck, and it’s not really as interesting as it could’ve been.

 Basically, Joe meets Candace while she’s complaining about being hungry. We learn she’s in a band called “Heathcliff’s Misery” (stop) and likes wearing Doc Martens (same.) Short story short, she cheats on Joe with a record label guy and he finds out. This is where Joe kills someone for the first time: he pushes said record label guy off a roof (after the guy offers him some blow. Have some manners, Joe!)

 Flash forward to today and Beck is following in Candace’s featherbrained footsteps because she’s also cheating with a man who’s supposed to propel her: Dr. Nicki, the therapist. Joe finds out (“THERE IS NO EMMA FOX FROM BROWN!” - there never is, is there?) and promptly beats John Stamos right up, but doesn’t kill him. 

When things might just be a-ok, Paco comes to ruin everything (his fave pastime.) He stops by to return a book to Beck, saying that he forgot he’d put it in the ceiling. Beck is like, “ThE cEiLiNg?!” And Paco is like, “Yeah it’s where Joe hides all the evidence from all the people he’s killed!” Not really, but basically. Curiosity, as it does, kills the cat. Beck retrieves a box from the ceiling while Joe is getting breakfast and discovers Benji’s phone, Peach’s phone, her phone, her panties, and Candace’s (Urban Outfitters) pendant. And the jar of teeth, which makes her freak out and drop it. While cleaning up the teeth jar glass, she cuts herself. Joe notices when he comes back that she’s shaking and bleeding and he’s like “let me take care of you!” This is a pivotal scream-at-your-tv moment. Beck is just about to leave, spewing something about how Annika wants to get brunch, when Joe slams the door and hits her. She wakes up in the glass cube. Of course.

Beck in the cage is stressful to watch, like a live-action millennial Beauty and the Beast without the singing cutlery. She goes back and forth between being distressed and being calm, as I’m sure anyone would in that situation. She wears a Nirvana shirt, which feels symbolic but ultimately just makes an already fake situation harder to take seriously.  

He brings her a typewriter like she’s Kit fucking Kitteridge and tells her to write. They share dinners through the little food box. Joe offers her the rest of his wontons, probably in an attempt to normalize the fact that they’re separated by impenetrable glass. Her first attempt to get out is when she begs to use a real bathroom, and not a pot in the corner. Joe is about to free her but then she looks at the staircase like she’s about to run up it. Beck, darling, we must never make our desires so obvious! 

While she’s locked up, Joe takes cautionary steps to insure he can’t be blamed if people start to wonder where Beck went. The Salinger private investigator asks Joe some questions before revealing that they’re testing DNA for evidence they found at the Connecticut house. He immediately flashes back to the time he peed in a jar and put it back on the shelf. I’m sure he’d be pissed if he got caught because of the jar. Sorry, had to. 

Paco attempts to kill his mom’s drunk boyfriend but fails so Joe does it for him. Meanwhile, Beck is back in the glass cage, writing the best, most Beckish prose she’s ever written. As I watched I was like...this is good! The New Yorker is shaking! 

Joe comes back and announces that the PI could potentially put him in jail. Beck tells him to read what she just wrote. She makes a strong case that they could blame everything on the therapist because he too has a random jar of teeth laying around. It would check out. They have a heartfelt moment, hands touching on opposite sides of the glass, like 3rd graders on a trip to the aquarium. Joe comes in to embrace her and just as he notices the missing keys from the typewriter, Beck STABS him. My roommates and I woke up the whole block with our screams of victory, as if we were straight boys watching soccer. 

She escapes and starts screaming at him, naturally. Throughout the entire scene, the keys remain in the door, which is SUPER stressful for everyone involved. Finally, she runs up the stairs, only to be faced with a metal door. So now she’s locked at the top of the staircase, banging on the metal door, screaming. It was a very Kate-Winslet-in-Titanic moment. Of all people, Paco wanders up, takes a look at her, and walks away, leaving her to go back into the murder den to retrieve the keys. After hitting Joe with a hammer, she gets the keys and goes up the stairs AGAIN. I haven’t been so stressed watching a screen since Skyscraper (a very underrated movie, Neve Campbell’s elevator performance alone is worth the watch.) She is frantically trying out the different keys when Joe grabs her. Blackout. 

The next scene is of Beck’s face plastered on a best-selling book at Mooney’s, where Ethan says something about not being able to get away from someone after they’ve died. So Beck’s dead. Joe, smartie pants psycho that he is, took Beck’s writing and turned it into a memoir, framing the therapist as the villian, just like Beck suggested. John Stamos gets arrested and Joe continues his life. Paco and his mom move away, thank ZOD. 

The final scene is similar to the very first scene of the very first episode. The bookstore is washed in hazy afternoon light and Joe is narrating. The familiar bells chime as we see a girl walk in. Joe creepily starts psychoanalyzing her based on her physical traits and clothing, just like he did Beck. And then...it’s Candace. She says “Hi bunny.” Joe is dumbfounded, as are we.

CANDACE???!?!?!?!?!? If Candace is going to be the focus of season 2, I might have to dip, because I did NOT sign up to watch someone who’s only facial expression is that of someone sucking on a penny for the first time.

I’ll digest this whole thing and report back with final thoughts later on, probably. Thank you guys for reading these little summaries. I’ve had so much fun writing them and seeing what you guys have to say. 

[delusion-of-negation]

regarding/I'm thinking about this because of that Spotify post, but because I listen to a huge variety of music and I always say things like "I like a bit of everything" or "I like stuff from a lot of genres, as long as it's a good song then I'm happy" when asked about my taste, which I know can be annoying because it doesn't give enough specifics (so often I'll try to list a few artists along with that), but I get a lot of those situations where people immediately try to one-up you by listing some obscure genre/s that they like (in a "no way, that's just what normies say, you probably haven't even heard of this" way), and it's always something that I actually listen to or something that I sometimes listen to because I have friends who like it (and I like listening to music that people I know like, it's a chance to learn about them and bond over something), but instead of playing their game I'll just recommend some artists that I like within or close to that genre, and it becomes this positive experience where they get back to me saying that they appreciated the recommendation... so like, I feel like people can be too pretentious about music, and I don't feel like people honestly recommend music to each other enough without the "you're probably just a normie who hasn't even heard of this" parts that are completely unnecessary and ruin the experience for everyone, so when I ramble about music it comes from a good place but I get that most people don't really care so I'm sorry

edit: when I say "in a "no way, that's just what normies say, you probably haven't even heard of this" way" I mean that they either straight up say that or they're of the more polite bunch who say words to that effect, things like "I seriously doubt that, everybody says that", people almost never just go "oh that's cool, I like [genre]!" it's always things like "people who say that always like Lady Gaga or some shit like that, and they think that they have varied music taste because they listened to Nirvana once" and it's like babe who hurt you, calm down, you asked my music taste and I told you, I didn't say "Who's Dave Grohl?" while wearing a Nirvana shirt so maybe wait a little bit before jumping to conclusions like that? and it's just exhausting sometimes to like a wide array of music and get treated like a poser by people of literally every single genre because you have the audacity to enjoy that genre just as much as anyone else but also like others... it honestly reminds me of how people respond to discovering that I'm bisexual, like "no you must have a favourite" "no you can't really like this if you also like that" "you can't like this as much as someone who only likes this" "you're probably faking liking this and you'll run back to that at the drop of a hat", not to belittle anything or compare anything or whatever, but you gotta admit that it is kinda funny how people don't seem to comprehend "I like more than one thing" regarding literally anything

edit edit: don't discourse on this post, I'm rambling about music, I literally don't care about whatever incorrect assumption you just made about my political viewpoints

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 36

Life went on this way for a month or so, maybe two. Zack would unveil new depths and oddities about himself everyday. It seemed to be something he made an enormous amount of effort to do. He showed me where, between his thumb and pointer finger, his cousin had once accidentally shot him with a beebee back in Minnesota. The little ball stayed between his thumb and finger and you could still feel it in there. He told me about how his heart was on the wrong side of his chest, and doctors said he wasn't going to make it past ten, but he seemed to still be around so he would probably be fine now. Everything he told me was recorded carefully and meticulously in my understanding of the whole. I should have been happy, I didn't really have to do anything, and Zack was just there everyday. But then, I found myself more stressed. I was giddy, but this wasn't fun. His paranoia went as far as he suspected that many of the people in the school and in the town had been replaced by robots. I found myself getting these waves of nausea and confusion around him. I didn't know why. I didn't know what to do with anything he said either. It seemed like making him feel better wasn't the point. It seemed like happiness wasn't the point of anything anymore.

And I was confused. He courted me for months. Just when all the stars and the moon had aligned, some force had mysteriously reset the chessboard. And then he disappeared and come back with an entirely different mindset about me. I now felt like I was under his control, but like I was more of a disciple or a councilor. Do you court people for eight months, and then give them an unromantic role in your life once you have completely overthrown their autonomic sense of reality and they are willing to walk off a cliff if you merely asked it of them? Because that is what ended up happening. And despite all of that, I would have killed for Zack. I would have done whatever he said. I felt like he had systematically taken me apart and was putting me back together in a new way. All the while, I felt cheated. I just wanted him to feel the same way for me that I felt for him. But I was willing to put myself through this for him. I came to school shaky every morning. I was not able to sleep, simply waiting for second hour to roll around once again.

Maybe too, when it really came down to it, I was afraid of the intimacy in the situation. Nobody had ever confided in me like this. There was this need to resist it, and run, but a stronger pull to give into it entirely. It really hurt. It forced me to confront Zack as a real person rather than an idea. I have a natural tendency to like people be they a friend, a hero or a romantic interest and then put them in a frame and hang them on the walls of my inner world to look up to and see the best in them. I love these people. But when I have to jump into the frame with these individuals, I feel very awkward. I sometimes see sides to these people I didn't want to see. What if I become disenfranchised and that person is nothing as I thought they were? Then I have ruined a beautiful thing, and I will have to take down the picture, leaving a barren empty space where that person used to be. But more likely than that, I feel like I am afraid I cannot live up to the great beauty that I saw in the other. So me jumping in the frame as an equal was/is hard. I feel like I am making a beautiful thing that I value less beautiful, and the stress to do everything with a novelesque perfection is very high.

Also, I couldn't tell if Zack was losing his mind or not. Maybe he was, maybe I was. Or maybe we lived in a very fucked up world that was out of touch with greater things. I had no other information to go on. I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone anymore. Obviously there were no adults who understood or cared. Calling my feelings a crush didn't quite cut it anymore. I tried to explain that this was like we were speaking to one another on a higher plane of existence, but that made zero sense to my friends, what little I might have said to my mother or sisters, and it was something my father could never know about – and in any case I already knew he didn't get that sort of thing.

Sarah suddenly seemed very feeble to me and unsure of herself. She seemed to look up to me in a way she never had before, and this was largely because Zack put so much value in me. Nobody believed I had magic powers of course besides him. I never believed that either, not for one moment. But it still did scramble the way Sarah looked at me. I knew this because she was comparing herself to me in his eyes, and I could see that plain as day in the way she talked, behaved and thought of herself. It made me weary. Why? And didn't she understand that my position didn't feel good at all? Like, I was addicted to it. I was terribly addicted. But now I had to worry about someone I was in love with being schizophrenic, and secret societies. I had to force myself to think day and night about how to best live up to this great authenticity that Zack was looking for. There was no cuddling or fun stuff. This was a soul-searching mess. But all she saw really was power. That's all that Ava saw. It reminded me of something my father had once explained to me.

Though he is wrong about a great many things concerning human relations, he told me once that humans, like every animal in the animal kingdom serve and long for power. It's so engrained in us that we don't even know it. We immediately see it in other people. We search for it in ourselves. We have different language we use to disguise this fact, but every micro detail in any given situation and you will see the transfer of power between two people. Every thought you have is a search for a new way to find power, a way to maintain it, or a reaction from a fear of losing it. You can see it in the body language of any two people talking. Human beings are in a constant state of war, even at the best of times. We are a violent and chaotic animal who lusts for power, in all it's various forms. Even eastern religion, which seeks in some ways to eliminate the lust for power, is in itself a facet of the same problem. It's an attempt to wipe away temptation and desire itself, which are considered weakness or hindrances to greater enlightenment more like. I never wanted to believe that really, but I was starting to see it as a truth that I could not avoid.  It was weird to think that just two years ago Sarah had been schooling me on why I wasn't cool and she was.

Ava wouldn't look at me if I talked about Zack at all. She had been acting really strange lately, well, stranger than ordinary. She was acting impulsive and greedy in just about every scenario. She left absolutely no room in conversation for anyone else. She was still funny, and I still enjoyed being around her but in a sense she wasn't fun like before. She had become vainglorious. She would call me on the phone, and then just talk without hearing or responding to anything I said. It was getting to where I didn't like her calling me anymore, though I didn't want to admit that to myself. I took her phone calls more and more reluctantly.

And Samantha was not really apart of 'the group' anymore. Sure, she ate lunch with us, would share her pencils and paper. She seemed to like Sarah okay, and was still around us, but she had her boyfriend up in Moscow, Adam and what happened between her and Adam, or sometimes other guys she talked to on the internet was all that mattered to her anymore. And there was nothing about our little lives that interested her really. She had ambitions to go to college, and I think my attitude against the institution of our little lives kind of annoyed her. She wanted to work with the system that existed, excel and get by. Not question everything to bits hoping to tear down society and restructure it in some new way as I was naively beginning to propose at the lunch table on lunch break.

I remember quite distinctly waking up every morning riddled with a massive amount of anxiety and adrenaline. I would feel sick to my stomach, but excited. Everyday something compelling and new would happen, and I was changing rapidly. In the class that Zack and I did most of our talking FFA, there was another class going on for a very small minority of seniors who were learning how to weld. And there was this smell of burning metal that I will never forget. It mixed with my anxiety, and I imagined myself to be an animal being helplessly ground into a machine with that unnatural smell all around me. And then Zack's eyes. It all muddled together and when I think of it now, I still can almost smell it. I would always start my day by listening to Vegetable Man and Baby Lemonade by Syd Barrett. Ava had burned me these two songs to disc and I would listen to them on repeat every morning as I got ready. Then, I would I'd skip breakfast and fly up the hill. I could feel absolutely no pain in my legs at all, which was weird. If you have ever run for your life, in total fear, then you might get my meaning. Your legs just don't register the pain. I was rushing up the hill as fast as I could. Once I got to the top, I would look down at the school on the other side of the hill and see if I could spot Zack. He would often be waiting for me, a little tall green flannel speck with blonde hair waiting for me.

One of the times I ran down there, and first thing he learned the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody over the weekend and was just being absurd and singing off all the lines. He had taken out the time learning all the lyrics just so he could be entertaining and funny and sing them to me when I got to school. Zack also made me tapes of his songs. He mostly covered Nirvana, but also did a Jimi Hendrix song, The Rolling Stones, and Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground. He sounded like Thurston Moore if Thurston Moore was drunk and trying very hard to sound like Jimi Hendrix. At the time, he I thought he was the best singer I had ever heard.

Because I had not signed up for Driver's Ed in January, I missed out on a fair amount of time that I could have spent hanging out with with my friends and Zack. I was already beginning to see the error in my ways. How could I have been so dumb? How had I not realized that Zack was going to be in the class? So twice a week for several months I was forced to hear about how they all would hang out in the elementary school. Zack would often say that he really wished I was there. But what could I do? It was too late. And there was a part of me that was skeptical about my ability to drive. My father's girlfriend Tammy had taken me out for a drive on an old dirt road, and I had mistaken the break for the speed peddle and in a panic I had pointed the car to veer off the road and into a ditch. I had fortunately found the break milliseconds before we would have flown off the road. Tammy had me get out of the vehicle and we all drove back. I felt very strongly that perhaps there was something wrong with my common sense when it came to things like this. I could not immediately tell my left from my right either. In fact, a lot of this stuff seemed to be somewhat of a genetic gift from my mom. I had always grown up hearing about what a terrible driver she was, and how she should not have a license. And she couldn't tell her left from her right very quickly either.

Zack and I never did end up going to prom, though, my other friends all went did go. I didn't own any dresses or any nice clothes at all really, and I would have been too afraid to wear a dress if I had owned one. So I stayed home. Samantha and Adam went together Sam wearing just a t-shirt and fishnets. Ava's mom had bought Ava this gothic nurse uniform. And they had gotten the DJ to play Marilyn Manson and it was a grand scene I am sure, the entire redneck community reeling angrily the horrors of 'The Nobodies' (I do imagine that Marilyn Manson would have been quite proud).

Perhaps I should have found a way. But I really felt like there was this bridge between me and the rest of the world. I no longer could be a part of the world somehow. One may say this was depression, and maybe there was some of that. It just felt like I had a duty to distance myself from society. I could no longer feel comfortable in any group. I had troubles even standing with my friends in a circle. Because, were they my friends? Were they really? Even if Zack were wrong about most of what he had said about secret societies running the world, or especially about the whole robot replica replacement thing (dead wrong on this one for so so so many reasons), there really was no ignoring that I was starting to see this pattern with people. I had followed along my entire life, but something had always seemed wrong. Some little voice in the back of my head always knew something was up.

This reexamination of society was the starting point to me thinking critically about things. I was wrong on just about every assessment I made about society, psychology, aesthetics, philosophy and whathaveyou when this all began. Zack wasn't really all that correct about much – nor was he the bag of wisdom I made him out to be, but ultimately, this was the beginning point for my discourse with life itself. I have never woken up a single day of my life without a serious question formed and ready to analyze. I can reach back to before this time and understand myself emotionally, but honestly most of the thoughts I had before this time were quite primitive. I have troubles connecting with my former self intellectually. Seeing my first fourteen years of life is more like watching a movie of a stranger doing things that I barely understand. I was still me. I recognize the emotional wiring of that young girl quite well, as well as a few other inclinations. But my thought patterns were not much to speak of.

Tammy and I went to the Metallica concert. The concert was being held in a very large stadium up in Spokane. Our seats were very far and very high up from stage itself. I had never been in such a big stadium in my life, and as we went up the steep steps, I worried that I might fall. I relied more on an enormous screen projected for the masses to watch, to get a decent view than we did from actual eyesight alone. From eyesight alone, the members of Metallica looked like toy wrestlers you might buy at the dollar store. I was more excited about Godsmack. I've gotten over Godsmack and Metallica now. They don't resonate with who I am anymore. But I will give them something. The singer of Godsmack had this strange moment where he went into this strange chanting episode and stopped playing music that people recognized. He played these strange drums, and it was very trance inducing and dissonant and almost had this otherworldly vibe that made me feel strange. He did this for about ten minutes. I personally was most impressed with this part of the show than any other part of the show and to this day it's most of what I remember. The drummer of Metallica kept passing out, and then they would drag him back to the drums upon his request. I have no idea if this was a stunt or not.

That Easter was a strange one. I ended up having Sarah and Ava over for a sleepover. We stayed up late, talking and laughing about various topics. My father came home, and was snoring so loud that the entire upstairs and downstairs rang with the sawing sounds of his snores. Then Tammy came over late and drunk. We could hear her drunken steps going up to my father's bedroom, and much to my disgust, they began having loud ridiculous sex. My friends and I all held our ears. It's never been my idea of fun to listen to my parents going at it. It seemed to last forever. Eventually, all three of us just started holding our ears and singing over the noises, but nothing seemed to stop it. I knew they must have heard us singing as loud as we could, but they didn't seem to hear. Ava pointed out that there was no way that Tammy wasn't faking it.

Later that night, after my father and Tammy had fallen asleep, Ava started getting paranoid and freaking out. It was three or four in the morning, and we were all sitting in my old room next to the stairs, and they too could hear the footsteps through the house that belonged to no one marching up and down the steps checking room to room. I was used to the ghost noises. But my friends were horrified. And then we started hearing footsteps outside the window. But there was no one out there. Ava was being so out of control with her loud panicking that I was beginning to ignore her. It was unsettling. But as far as I was concerned, nothing was even a fourth as scary if your friends were there with you. These girls didn't know the half of what I dealt with alone. Ordinarily, this kind of thing happened when I was alone. It was eerie as hell, made me feel paranoid and sick to my stomach. I would get scared, force myself to lay down frozen and then force myself to go to sleep to end the agony of thinking about who/what had walked up to my door and had stopped.

I decided to try to ignore Ava's manic hollering, who was more of a nuisance than the noises outside my bedroom window were and everyone knew that she did this kind of thing off and on for attention. She kept insisting to me there was a ball of light outside my bedroom window. I didn't believe her and told her to stop. She kept insisting that there was one though. So I looked out there, and sure enough, there was a light that was moving around in suspension. It wasn't with such bright intensity that you couldn't see through it, it wasn't a perfect orb. It was slightly blue and more soft in texture. It moved a little bit, and then would move back. The outside of my window was a covered porch. It moved up to the ceiling part of the porch. I just kind of watch fascinated, and in all curiousness, I tried to find a light source. There were no street lights that would have created this. It was not beaming from any particular direction. Tammy and my father were both upstairs asleep. It just stayed there by the window, and eventually floated away.

In FFA, by the draw of a hat, Zack and I were placed in a group together that would be our project in that class. Basically, we had to come up with a farm structure. I knew nothing about agriculture or farming and had zero interest, but Zack said he knew a little bit and we would muddle through it. Also, in our group was this older popular athlete named Casey. He told us first and foremost that he thought the both of us were dirty trash, and he had no intention of failing this class on account of us. Just because we lived like degenerates, did not mean that he wanted to as well. Eventually, he talked Mrs. Gulke into getting out of our group, which she complied. Zack and I spent the first two weeks just talking. We got nothing done besides that. Then, in the last week or so, we started working on it. For me, it was kind of embarrassing because for there to be a Sanborn-Brunes joint family farm, would that not mean that one or both of us had to be related by marriage? It just seemed kind of obvious that most of these types of these shared arrangements were brought on by a marriage of some type. I remember little of the details involving this project, other than that Zack was insistent that we have a lot of silos and some kind of aircraft to drop the seeds. Zack had an older brother named Jimmy who flew planes for a living. Jimmy had been Zack's mother's first son with another father, but the child had been taken away by her mother due to her being mentally unstable. Zack's mom had been institutionalized for mental health reasons in the past.

When we went up to do our report in front of the class, Zack did most of the talking. And somehow we passed.

It was becoming painfully obvious that Ava could not stand me being Zack's friend in any way. When Zack would come up to talk to me, she would literally use her physical body at times to separate us from conversing. It was so absurd that it was becoming comical. I no longer had any doubts that Ava was jealous, it was too obvious. It did upset me a little bit, but then I did remember that Zack had told me that he didn't think Ava was a very nice person. What I didn't understand was why he thought that. It had seemed to me that everyone had liked one another just fine that winter. I was tired of beating a dead horse, but I still felt like there was something missing.

One day, I think it was for a health class, our health teacher decided to take us for a walk. It was a bright sunny May day. Jason was back in school. I remember as he was walking with us, he walked ahead of us and went into some old geyser's house to ask for a cigarette and come back. Ava was trying to separate herself with Zack. We all watched as she shoved between me and Sarah, and was standing so shoulder to shoulder with Zack that it was hard for him to walk without touching her. And I remember he finally had to stop her and tell her to give him space. He told her he specifically just wanted to hang out with me that day. Ava was infuriated, and she ended up walking away to walk with Teal instead. Zack and I walked together. I was so happy. I felt like things were finally back to normal. On our way back to the high school, Zack held my hand and we sort of skip-walked and sang Buddy Holly by Weezer.

I was blissed out. Zack regarded me over everyone else. I knew everything was going to be alright and work out in the end. The world softened. I remember thinking that it might have been one of the best days of my entire life as I laid on my bed saturated in glowing happiness after school. I could finally put the uneasiness of the previous months behind me. Then Ava called.

Ava had something to tell me. She seemed upset and nervous. I tried to hide it, but some part of me already knew somehow. It had been unable to form in conscious thought, but somehow I had known. She wouldn't quite tell me until I coaxed her out of it. She finally told me. She had fooled around with Zack. During that fateful basketball game that I had been unable to attend, she made plans with him to go to his house after school. He initially had wanted me to go to his house, but she had found a way to intercede with this and go alone. And she had initiated the whole thing.

The air was knocked out of me. And I felt sick. Nothing was real anymore. As she got more comfortable talking about it, I could tell she was actually enjoying the fact that she could tell me, mostly to brag really. I couldn't move, or talk. All I could think to ask was, 'did you kiss him?' She was confused by that upsetting me the most. She thought all the sex stuff was going to bother me, and it did. But the idea of him kissing her made me the most sick.

I ended up getting off the phone. I was disembodied. I thought about killing myself, but I didn't have any real way to do it at the moment. Plus, my little brother and sister Allison and David were home, and that wouldn't have been right. I couldn't really breath. I was dizzy, falling in and out of consciousness. There is a threshold of pain where, you are besides yourself with pain, and you are able to consciously recognize 'I am in pain.' This is what most pain feels like to a varying extent. But I was not able to do that. I was pain. Pain was all there was. I didn't even know what I was doing. I filled the bathtub with the hottest water that would come out of the tap, and I got in. It burned. My skin grew red. My head was burning. The water hurt me less than my mind did.

Eventually I crawled out of the tub when I hit a point where I couldn't take it. I curled up with a towel in the corner and I tried to scream but nothing came out. I felt myself floating out of my own body, and I seemed to look down at myself in the corner. And then I don't remember anything until I woke up an hour and a half later.

I was shell shocked at school the next day and for the rest of my time in school. I told Sarah about it. She seemed shocked and thought that was really fucked up. I think she tried her best to step outside of herself and understand, but there was no way she could. I just felt empty and drained and used. I felt like Zack had used me in his own way. Ava had used me. I was a fucking idiot. I could see through things now. The world was a cruel place and there was only ever any meaning if you were the one who held the power. I thought very seriously about death. I thought it might be better if I simply killed myself. But I didn't do it. I just kept living somehow. Zack continued to talk to me more or less just the same. For a week there, I fully expected the world to end. But the world is a funny place like that. Everything can fall apart, and yet it just seems like things keep going. I watched Allison and David play outside with their friends, just as I had done when I had been younger. My dad carried on his relationship, BBQing chicken outside. Cars commuted, the school buses went their normal routes. Ava and Sarah found other things to talk about. The world was not going to end for me, or anyone else.

I became very monotone in person. The only time I let myself have thoughts or feelings was behind a pencil or a keyboard. I stumbled through my classes mostly observing the rest of the world that I could never be apart of again. I had spent several years taking typing classes, and I had never been able to type very fast, but now that I had racing thoughts, I had suddenly overnight developed a knack for typing at a rapid pace. The keyboard was an extension of my brain. I would come home from school and write every day. They were no longer suicide letters or dear diary entries, but loose ideas about how I thought the world operated, or metaphors of what life was.

I also lied and told everyone I no longer had a crush on Zack. This was true, but not the way people thought. I no longer thought crush really summed up how I felt. Aside from being deeply disappointed that he had given into Ava's desperate need to get laid. I felt the love that I had for Zack had transformed into an agape type of love that was hard to even put into words. Like I had known him all my life. I took my feelings, I locked them up. Nobody I knew had the right to see the real me anymore.

It actually wasn't for another week that I heard the full story. Ava, Sarah, Teal and Sam, all of them had known, but nobody had told me. Zack had been dating Melissa since November. On the weekends, he had been up in Moscow with his sister Whitney, Melissa, and her older brother Josh. That means that all the times he had said he loved me, held my hand, tried to kiss me, all the things he had said, or expressed to me had been kind of like cheating. It had all been empty. I had been living a complete and total lie. And then what he had done with Ava had most certainly been cheating in a way that was empty and dishonest. It was so dismal and I was so disappointed that I had to laugh at how horrible it all actually was. It was the kind of thing that punches you in the nose so hard that it's almost funny. Samantha – to give credit to her indifference, had been the one who had told me the truth. Sarah had only known for a short time. Ava had known for several months, and so had Sam, but she just hadn't felt like telling me anything because it didn't matter to her. I was in the library, and Sam told me the truth.

What I felt then was more like anger. And of course it as Melissa all along. She had been the one who had taken interest in me to begin with. She had been the one who had infiltrated my friends and gotten them to throw rocks at me, the one who had known I had liked Kyle when I did. And yet, I really didn't dislike her. I didn't think that any of this had actually been her fault. She didn't know about what Zack had been up to in Kendrick, or about Ava or me. It would have been convenient to pin this all on her somehow, but Zack was at fault. There was no other way about it.

My friends just accepted that I didn't like Zack anymore. Sarah may have partially understood that I was not being entirely honest, but it was something that I think everyone wanted to believe was true. I learned how to put on an ere of indifference. I asked Ava details about what she had done. It made me sick to hear it, but I knew that if I wanted to be the kind of person that faced the truth, than I needed to put my feelings behind me, or test my own feelings by allowing myself knowledge that hurt me personally. Perhaps there was a level of self destruction in forcing myself to listen to the fine details. Ava was all too happy to tell me.

In details of how she had gone about it and why, I learned that Teal had pushed and supported her going and doing this. In Teal's eyes, I was a weak female who didn't know how to take what I wanted in life and therefore didn't deserve it. In fact, I deserved to have failure rubbed into my eyes. She thought that girls like me deserved to get hurt. Also, she didn't think friends should have any dibs on guys. If you had more power, and your friend was dating someone you liked, it was in order that you ruthlessly take what you feel you deserve. Might makes right. When I asked Ava why she had done it, she had told me she was horny, as if that was obvious and a good enough answer. I was really baffled. I couldn't believe a person would just destroy their friend's life like that just because they were horny. I mean, did she not have hands?

I also talked to Sarah. I think Ava was trying to get me to turn on Sarah, and I wasn't having any of it. I started thinking back to the beginning of the year when we had still been friends with Katie. It was only now that it truly occurred to me that Ava had screwed Katie over and manipulated her, much like she was trying to manipulate me. Why would she do this? When you looked at Ava's history of friends, none of them stayed, and many people seemed to have a strong negative feeling towards her. I understood now that this was no accident. Ava was a bridge burner, and she did it for no better reason than she was insatiable, and was good at finding new bridges. She burned me as soon as she was able, without a second thought.

When talking to Sarah also, I carefully crafted a question. I had always felt she was jealous. But there had never been any proof. She was polite, kept her distance. But she seemed highly dissatisfied with Zack and me just the same. I phrased it carefully, and I asked her 'If you could magically go back in time and replace me, so it had been you who had gotten close to Zack instead of me, would you do it? She was nervous. 'Yes'. Her voice was shaking over the phone. I closed my eyes.

I went home the day I found out that Zack had been dating Melissa this whole time, and I was angry, but not at anyone in particular. This seemed beyond help. I was angry at the world. Everything was one massive cruel joke. I had tried hard to be such a good person, and it meant literally nothing to no one. I was the weak fool who saw the best in everyone and it had ended up leaving me burned and broken. I took one the kitchen chairs, and I threw it as hard as I could. The legs shattered. I threw the pieces until the chair was a heap of wood. I realized that I had created an enormous knick in the wood floor. That knick is still cut into that floor to this day.

PART 35 - http://tinyurl.com/ya5xhe2f

PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

PART 31 - http://tinyurl.com/yae3o4rd

PART 30 - http://tinyurl.com/ybht9aul

PART 29 - http://tinyurl.com/ybfcr9j2

PART 28 - http://tinyurl.com/yagdlo47

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 -  http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 -  http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 -  http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

[nearlyhuman]

I didn’t even make this a read more you’re just gonna have to scroll or press j

2: Age? 24 3: 3 Fears? alienating people I want to like me, going to school when i should have not, not going to school when i should have 4: 3 things I love? Vegetables, girls who i don’t know but then they invade my personal space, taking long walks almost every night of the summer 5: 4 turns on? they’re personal 6: 4 turns off? baby talk, the word “daddy,” self-consciousness, physical pain 7: My best friend? my fam, J + K, my boyfriend 8:Sexual orientation? they say its a spectrum but so far i haven’t ever wanted to do a girl  9: My best first date? i don’t remember what my first official date with R was but definitely not the other guy so I guess the other other guy who is married now. or there was one that wasn’t a REAL date but it was KIND of a date but it really wasn’t but that one might win  10: How tall am I? huge 11: What do I miss? Knowing my place 12: What time was I born? @ night 13: Favourite color? going to be honest the truth is i never understand this question and it doesn’t really make sense to me and that’s why the answer always changes... green... gold... pink... black... idk 14: Do I have a crush? idk if i’m supposed to say yes but i’ve been w/ my bf for years now i think it’s something other than a crush by now 15: Favourite quote? I don’t have one over all but one I recently read that I love is this: “Malcolm X never lived to see the government fall but the state he opposed made him a stamp. And that's the best you can hope for if you never give up - your enemies will teach your corpse to dance.” Pat the Bunny. 16: Favourite place? lately it’s been the inner harbor at night 17: Favourite food? lately it’s been a tray of peaches we got at TJ’s 18: Do I use sarcasm? Only when I shouldn’t, like when i’m pissed off and being a baby about it 19: What am I listening to right now? R taking medicine lol 20: First thing I notice in a new person? it probably depends on the person, but i usually look at their face and try to figure out if they’re nice, mean, or bland, etc 24: Favourite style of clothing? to this day the only person i think i ever knew that i had strong feelings about how they dressed was when two brothers at the pizza place where i worked just wore the same 3 shirts over and over and over and the same pants and shoes every day. I also like other famous people who also wear the same thing every day. 25: Kiss someone that starts with the letter “R”? i have ONLY kissed people with the first initial R 27: Meaning behind my URL? I used to feel like I didn’t have the right feelings like a normal person, but then i went to therapy for a while and now i’m pretty fine with my feelings, but i still like my url and don’t feel like putting in the effort to find something i like better 29: Favourite song? i don’t have one atm but i guess one foot on the gas one foot in the grave has been #1 for a couple years, before that it was hypocrite cte 30: Favourite band? anything toh kay touches 31: How I feel right now? annoyed that i have to be in school 32: Someone I love? my old boss malick 33: My current relationship status? w/ R 34: My relationship with my parents? i’m not in a therapy session so i don’t have to answer 35: Favourite holiday? Valentine’s Day?  36: Tattoos and piercing i have? just ear lobes 37: Tattoos and piercing i want? I really don’t want any and I don’t want to say my tattoo ideas here anyway 38: The reason I joined Tumblr? I was trying to learn how to talk genuinely w/o any of my friends saying i was experiencing normal teen rebellion 39: Do I and my last ex hate each other? yes 40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? no 41: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted? no 42: When did I last hold hands? a couple days ago i think 43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? 10 minutes if i’m trying 44: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days? monday for class 45: Where am I right now? bedroom 46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? deborah 47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? both 48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad? no 49: Am I excited for anything? doing potluck movie nights 50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? EVERYTHING? you can never tell someone EVERYTHING you think about them, so that always ruins it 51: How often do I wear a fake smile? I don’t work in customer service anymore 52: When was the last time I hugged someone? when i got to chemistry lab earlier today 53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? i would be so confused lol 54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? yes 55: What is something I disliked about today? all of the school 56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? davey mac 57: What do I think about most? school, anarchism, acne, friendships 58: What’s my strangest talent? yesterday my kind-of mentor said i was his mentor 59: Do I have any strange phobias? no 60:Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? i definitely don’t want to be behind it but i only MIGHT want to be in front of it 61:What was the last lie I told? don’t remember 62:Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? phone, don’t have to worry about angles 63:Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens? No ghosts, no opinion on aliens 64:Do I believe in magic? No and i find it really irritating when people do 65:Do I believe in luck? idk what that means, i guess not 66:What’s the weather like right now? i’m inside 67:What was the last book I’ve read? i’m in the middle of Walden and Conquest of Bread 68:Do I like the smell of gasoline? yesss 69:Do I have any nicknames? yes but very few people use them 70:What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? none 71:Do I spend money or save it? save 72:Can I touch my nose with a tongue? no 74:Favourite animal? James 75:What was I doing last night at 12 AM? watching TV 77:What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? when nirvana comes on the radio 78:How can you win my heart? talk to me often and about stuff i like, or have that Mysterious Something, or do vlogs 79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? i’d be ashamed of myself if i had actually thought of an answer 80:What is my favorite word? probably either... Christmas... Valentine... Birthday 81:My top 5 blogs on tumblr? glumshoe 83:Do I have any relatives in jail? not that i know of 84:I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? my first instinct is to say persuasion but not like manipulating other people’s will just make me really persuasive.  86:What is my current desktop picture? i never changed it from the default 103:Am I a vegetarian/vegan? no, I kind of disagree w/ making those strict decisions, but i do try not to eat much meat and very very little red 109:Been outside my home country? yes, several countries in europe and once to guadeloupe 110:Gotten my heart broken? yeah haha twice when i was a kid 114:Been to prom? no 118:Had a crush on someone of the same sex? don’t think so, at least not the kind that makes you want physical contact w/ them 119:Learned another language? made good progress w/ french 123:Dyed my hair? blonde ends, green ends, pink ends, black ends, green all over, dark red all over 124:Voted in a presidential election? a big secret is that i voted for Mitt Romney when I was 18 haha 127:Met someone famous? Matt Shultz and Tomas Kalnoky 129:Peed outside? yes 130:Been fishing? yes 131:Helped with charity? i prefer working at non profit places than for profit 132:Been rejected by a crush? i never went after anyone to be rejected, but i’ve definitely wanted to be w/ people who didn’t want to be w/ me 134:What do I want for my birthday? everything 135:How many kids do I want and what will be their names? maybe 5 or something, give or take 2. Probably name the first ones Tomas and Tavi 139:Favourite Tv Show? shameless 140:Where do I want to live when older? maybe Frederick 141:Play any musical instrument? not anymore, took violin in highschool/middle school for a few years 142:One of my scars, how did I get it? i had a wart on my knee removed lol 143:Favourite pizza topping? pineapple or veggie pizza 144:Am I afraid of the dark? not in and of itself 145:Am I afraid of heights? moderately 147:Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? what kind of emo question is this  148:What I’m really bad at? anything someone with really long thin arms would be bad at 149:What my greatest achievements are? the stuff i’m most proud of would sound like i have a hero complex if i just wrote them here. writing a whole book. 150:The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me? they were going to kill me lol it didn’t happen though 151:What I’d do if I won in a lottery? if i answered i’d either sound like a goody two shoes or a doodoohead in a guy fawkes mask 152:What do I like about myself? I am very smart 153:My closest Tumblr friend? I don’t think i have any left!  154:Something I fantasise about? having a house outside a city w/ willow trees and magnolia trees and bamboo and a few weird looking dogs

[bitemekpop]

‘Get to Know Me’ Tag

‘Get to Know Me’ Tag ♡

Got tagged by the one and only @byungjoo

Rules: Answer 30 questions then tag 20 Blogs (we all know I don’t tag so I always break the rules for these things)

Questions

Nicknames: Surprisingly enough, despite not having many friends, I have many nicknames: Savie (it’s a feminized version of the “nickname” that the bassist of Def leppard has (Sav) because I’m his biggest fan and  learned how to play guitar and bass because of him and the band and I just loved his nickname so much that one day I started calling myself Savie and it stuck), Devil’s Spawn (I actually started calling myself that and my friends just went with it because I’m a bitch and can literally be the devil’s spawn if you mess with me or my family or friends) Ghost (cause I’m quiet and can sneak up on anyone and stand behind them forever without them knowing until they turn around and suddenly- BOO... I don’t actually say that.... or I could be someone one second and gone the next), Shadow, Mama Bear (cause I’m protective and will literally beat anyone’s ass who attempts to hurt or scare any of my friends or family, seriously don’t fuck with me I can beat up a guys ass who’s three times my size, I’ve done it several times), Kit-Kat (cause I love kit kats), Oreo (because they’re the best and I’m obsessed), and Hollyzilla (view mama Bear and Devil’s Spawn reasons for an explanation)

Gender: Female

Star sign: Capricorn sun/mercury/mars/uranus/neptune, Aries moon, Aquarius venus, Sagittarius jupiter/pluto, Pisces Saturn, Cancer lilith, and Libra asc node

Height: 5′4″ (so...... around 164.592 cm I guess)

Time: 2:23pm

Birthday: December 28th

Favourite bands: Topp Dogg, Def Leppard, Linkin Park, Wagakki band, Monsta X, NCT, Bon Jovi, EXO, BAP, One republic, SF9, BlackPink, Skrillex, Bassnectar, Enigma, The vane, The Beatles, Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Rob Zombie, Speed, ZE:A, Aerosmith, F(x), Ladies Code, Tom petty and the heartbreakers, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Cinderella, Nine Inch nails, family Force 5, Limp bizkit, Garnidelia, Depeche Mode, Pentagon, Red Velvet, Block B, Boyfriend, Boys Republic, Evanescence, Nu’est, Up10tion, ....to name a few

Favourite solo artists: G-Eazy, G-Dragon, TOP, Eric Nam, lady gaga, Childish Gambino, Enya, Josh Groban, Rihanna, Jay Park, Luhan, Luna Haruna, Micheal Jackson, etc.

Song stuck in my head: I currently have 6 songs stuck in my head that are switching between themselves: Cave me In- Eric N/Gallant/Tablo, All my friends- Snakehips, One More Light- Linkin Park, Hysteria and Animal- Def Leppard, and Down for me- G-Eazy

It’s supper annoying because a line from one of the songs but the composition for a song could be playing in the background then take over then another song will interrupt and it’s just.... ugh! I’m listening to Down for me now though so that might help

Last movie I watched: ....... I think it was Berlin Syndrome

Last show I watched: 0_0 I hardly ever watch tv.................... I think I went back and rewatched an episode of hemlock Grove about 2-3 months ago.

When did I create my blog: My main blog was created on June 14th 2012, my reaction blog was created on May 27th 2014, and this blog was created on October 8th 2016.

What do I post: literally everything since I have 3 different blogs. Kpop moodboards, kpop reactions, selca ships, anything kpop, 80s rock, political shit, feminist stuff, millennial stuff...... essentially anything I want to that I agree with

Last thing googled: “what to include in a suicide letter”

Do you have other blogs: Yep, sav-fan-forever is my main blog and i-growl-growl-growl is my reactions/selca ships blog then I have this one

Do you get asks: not really. Unless it’s a reaction or selca ship request for my second blog

Why did you chose your URL: I think my main blog’s name pretty much speaks for itself, i-growl-growl-growl is from EXO Growl, and this one I came up with while I was thinking about “bite my shiny, metal ass” by bender from Futurama and... I don’t know this just popped into my head so I made it the username

Following: 566

Followers: main blog- 667, i-growl-growl-growl: 1,473, this one- 23

Favourite colors: Black, Brown, Red, (dark grey and white are also faves but not as much as the first three colors)

Average hours of sleep: hmmmm around 11:30-6:30 roughly, so about 8 hours but I’ve been going to sleep around 12:40-1:35 recently so who knows, I might’ve ruined my sleep routine

Lucky number: 12, 60, 1260

Instruments: I play bass guitar, Electric guitar and a small bit of acoustic guitar

What am I wearing: pink hello kitty pajama bottoms and a cozy, soft long sleeved grey shirt/thin sweater sort of shirt and fluffy socks

How many blankets I sleep with: 3

Dream job: Jockey, Artist, Musician or professional street racer (yeah yeah yeah I know that’s not a true profession but it’d be cool and I’d be careful)- for dream dream jobs but for realistic dream jobs I’d choose  english teacher in Japan or Korea

Dream trip: travel across Japan, visit the Arizona ship at Pearl Harbor, visit sites where the Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand, visit the concentration camps in Germany, visit the Japanese internment camps in Amerca (I’m a major history nut and did a full years worth of research on the topic so it’s super interesting to me and I’ve always been interested in the concentration camps and Pearl harbor since I was practically a baby) or go back to the UK

Favourite food: answered in a previous tag but I’ll repost again: BUFFALO WINGS!, Nigiri, Sushi, Udon, Tteokguk, Lamb, Curry, BREAD, DONUTS, Nachos (even though I’m lactose intolerant but only if it’s the good nachos with the gooey cheese and not that shit excuse wanna be nachos where people just put sliced pieces of cheese on chips and cook it because those nachos are fucking nasty as shit!), Pizza Rolls, sour candy, chocolate, daifuku mochi, rice, PASTA, potatoes, carrots, apples, COFFEE CAKE, Chocolate cake, cake in general, cookie dough, black olives, broccoli, cauliflower, steak, chicken, chili, chili cheese fries, dumplings (won tons), egg flower soup, etc.

Nationality: I’m white with a bit of Finish and native American blood in me

Favourite song right now: hmmmmm, haven’t really thought about that, probably Eoeo- Uniq or Easy Love- SF9

[para-weird-normal-blog]

Life in a cult - personal experience

The cult:

The leaders of the cult or Elders were to believe to be very unique and special souls incarnated in a human body. They claimed to be older than the universe itself, therefore very wise. They claimed to have unusual and mighty supernatural powers as reading in individual’s mind, emotions, past and future. They presented themselves as teachers and mentors in occult and ordinary life, too.

The cult didn’t have any name. It was an union of people that took Elders as their mentors, teachers and believed they‘re chosen ones.

The cult was partially engaged in an occult field, esoteric field, health care, mental care and apocalyptic precognitions field.

The Elders also owned a company that made profits from esoteric or occult lectures and teachings.

My experiences:

Guilt tripping

Everything was my fault. Was I sick? My fault, because I didn’t manage to keep my energies in check. Something bad happened to me? My fault, because I let outside energies influence me, I didn’t keep my „shield“ in check. Did I fail in something? My fault, because I didn’t try enough, I didn’t use my whole potential, my will wasn’t strong enough.

Negative feelings

Negative feelings were a sign saying that I was weak. Being angry, feeling disdain towards someone or something was said to be only my low mindset, my unacceptance of the Truth.

Being above good and evil

I was taught that as Higher Beings we were, or were trying to be, we have to think and feel as we are above Good and Evil. Many times, I was a witness of Mr. B and others doing horrible things in the name of Higher Power, Higher Will. And of course, I was doing the same. Everything that the elders and we did was justified, no matter how harsh or harmful it was.

Superiority and Elitism

All of us were told we are special and we have some supernatural powers, that they know how to unlock and teach us how to use those powers. We were told our souls were superior to others. We used to refer to „average“ people as monkeys - stupid monkeys not realizing and knowing the Truth.

Lowered self-esteem

I was drowning in the constant feeling of not being good enough. Wise enough. Skilled enough.

Elders know everything

We were made to believe that elders know everything. They know about your past and your future. They know what you feel and think. They know when you lie and when you really mean something. It felt as if they know you more than you know yourself. Most of us would ask them for advice about our lives, because we felt like they had the right answer. Like they really knew what was the right thing to do.

There always was an answer for everything

They had an answer to every question you might have had. These questions were answered within the belief of the Truth.

This is the only right way to live

They made you believe that this is the only right way to live and without it, you’d end up having schizophrenia, cancer, depression, anxiety and many more specific troubles, such as being alone, possessed by demons, committing suicide or being killed.

Families and bonds

We were taught that there is no bond between family members and family means nothing. We were told that we had to pick people and form a „family“ with them. Of course, we had to pick these people from within the cult.

Forced advices

The Elders always have some advice for you in their sleeves. Advices about work life, family, health problems, financial situation, etc. It covered every part of your life, they always had something to say about it. If you didn’t listen to their advice and didn’t do as they said, you don’t appreciate what they do for you, you don’t appreciate their time that they spend on you. We were told that the next time, they wouldn’t help us if we needed help. They basically forced you to do as they say.

Questioning the Truth

Questioning their teachings, the Truth did always result in group ridicule of the individual, guilt tripping, mocking, emotionally threating with what my happen if you betray „the only right way to live“.

Emptiness inside

I was taught not to have any dreams, any desires, any wishes. I was taught to be just a tool for „the Higher Power, Higher Will.“

Fear

I was living in a constant fear of what might have happen if I wouldn’t live as they say. I was afraid of their supernatural powers they supposedly possessed. I was scared of the connection they had with the „outside“ world and that they could easily ruin my life. I believed they could make me sick, they could manipulate the reality so I’d for example lose my job, etc.

Controlled introspections

One of the many things we were forced to do was an introspection. For example, we had to write down all our negative and positive personal traits, at any time the Elder wanted. For some of us, it was really difficult to write down the positive ones, because of the low self-esteem they forced us to have. I remember that for a few times I didn’t write down any of my good traits and I was mocked because I failed in another task.

The Ego corruption

They constantly forcefully tried to break our egos. They used to often ask us „Who are you?“ but they mocked and ridiculed every thinkable answer we gave them. We were taught not to have an ego, not to feel ourselves as a person that has valid emotions and valid opinions.

Seeing their influence

Before I realized that I was brainwashed, I used to see their influence everywhere around. They claimed to have worked with/for police, politicians, corporations and even celebrities. They wanted us to see how powerful they were and they used everything they could to support their claims.

The world outside is evil

We were taught that the world outside is full of evil people, demons, etc. They made it seem like only with them we could be safe. When someone said something negative about us, they used manipulation to make them seem as manipulators, liars, under evil influence, mentally ill or just stupid average „monkeys“.

Expecting to attend group activities

We were often invited to attend group occult or esoteric activities which were supposed to help us grow and understand ourselves. When I refused, I was told that I really needed it and if I wouldn’t participate, I could end up mentally ill, physically ill or even dead. I was told that I was already too far and there was no going back. I was also accused of being selfish, spiritually dirty and doomed.

Being constantly confused

The Truth was presented as something we can’t understand while we’re on our path of spiritual growing. At the same time we were told that the Truth is within ourselves and we should be able to feel it and know it.

Against all influences

We were told that things like alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, birth control pills, antidepressants and any other psychiatric pills are bad for our spiritual growing. We were taught that the glass of wine can lead us away from our path by making changes in our thinking and energies.

Honesty times

We used to have Honesty times regularly. They used to sit with us individually and in something that was called „discussion“ they pointed out your every failure, your every weak moment, your every mistake you made or currently making or will make on your journey. They analyzed every part of your soul, your every thought and feeling. I was told that they do that for my own good, for my better growth.

The system of falling negativity

The more negative emotions we have to secretly keep inside and tried to suppress, the more open we were to act as Elders did. I found myself doing Honesty times with new comers, making them scared and feeling low, failing in everything and guilty.

Reaching the Nirvana

We were made to believe that with the Truth we could be completely at peace with the universe.

Paranoid thinking

They made us believe, because we were all special individuals, that we were nonstop in danger. They made us believe we couldn’t trust anyone, there were people and forces that always tried to attack us, to ruin our lives and corrupt us. We were always on guard.

What the cult experience left me with

-          Trust issues

-          Low self-esteem

-          Empty visions of future

-          Panic attacks

-          Dissociative states

-          Dull emotions

-          Feeling constant guilt

-          Feeling constant fear

-          Shame

-          Paranoid thoughts

-          Doubts about my choices

-          Loneliness and isolation feeling

-          Avoiding socialization

-          Distrust in society

-          Fear of joining any other group of interest

-          Impossibility having dreams, desires and wishes

-          Difficulty rebuilding family relationships

-          Fear of their wrath

-          Fear of constant present of evil

-          Fear of going insane

-          Avoiding situations that might remind me of the experience

-          Inability to relax

-          Problem with having any kind of relationship

-          Changed personality traits

-          Inability to remember a part of the cult experience

-          Memory problems

-          Feeling detached from others

-          Inability to understand personal boundaries

-          Inability to make decisions

-          Fear of openness

-          Overtrusting people that remind the former cult members

What happened to me after I left and how I feel now?

There were threats. There was the constant fear for my life, for my sanity. I had to burn bridges and cut connection with almost everyone I knew, to be able to heal. I moved away, I didn’t tell anyone my current address, phone number, email and I deleted my facebook account.

It took me about a year to start thinking for myself again, to start having opinions again. Slowly, I’m learning to have dreams and desires again. I learned how to relax more and how to not be so scared and nervous all the time. I don’t feel guilty or ashamed anymore. I’m learning how to trust people again and how to stop overtrust those who remind me of Elders with their way of talking and thinking. I’m learning how to stop compensate my low-esteem by being too open to men. I started to have hobbies again and I started to believe in myself more. I still can’t think about my future, I still feel detached from others… and more. I still have some work to do.

[daisyxking]

breaking point // future self-para

“My baby needs her father to be okay, how about that first?!”

Pushing the hair back on Dustin’s head, Daisy pressed a small kiss against his nose. His eyes were closed but this time it seemed peaceful. This time she wasn’t worried that he was on the verge of death because they told her he was stable and if they were lying she already told them all she’d shut the hospital down.

Absentmindedly, she began tidying up around the room, moving around awkwardly with her large stomach in the way as she struggled to bend down to pick a napkin off of the floor.

“Ms. King we can get someone to help you with this, you’ve been through a lot. Please relax. For the safety of you and the baby.” Daisy turned to face the nurse who’d entered without knocking to the redhead’s annoyance.

“It’s not realistic to believe that anyone but my nanny or myself could maintain this room to my already compromised standards,” she said snidely as she flattened the blanket that covered Dustin.

“I’m afraid I must insist, your baby needs you to be healthy.”

“My baby needs her father to be okay, how about that first?!” She finally snapped, slamming her hands down onto the bed before rushing to make it perfect again. “I apologize, Betsy. Everything just needs to be as perfect and stress-free for when he’s ready to go home.”

“What it needs to be is normal. What’s normal for him?”

For a moment, Daisy looked puzzled, trying to decide between the state of her house or Nirvana.

“He lived with three other boys but… there aren’t good memories there right now. I need it to just be perfect, okay? If it’s perfect then at least he’ll know I’ve been here the whole time in case he wakes up from his nap when I’m gone because all I ever am and everything I ever do is perfect. Okay?” With that, Daisy crossed her arms defiantly. Halfway through her staring contest with the nurse, she felt a foot kick her spine and she groaned in pain while simultaneously laughing happily. “Oh my god oh my god she’s still here Lola’s still here she’s okay!”

“Are you-”

“I-I told… I told God that if he let me… if I could keep Dustin he could take my baby away but she’s still here! Betsy she’s still here!” At that point, tears of relief rolled down her cheeks and she rushed to Dustin’s side, kissing his forehead over and over again. “Do you hear that Baby? Lola’s kicking and she wants you to be her Daddy, okay? Lola and June and I are all waiting for you and we’re here for you and I know you need your rest so I’ll go for a bit but Baby our little girl just kicked!” After a final kiss to his forehead, Daisy stepped back, tears still running down her cheeks. She wiped them away and let Betsy help her into the couch where she sat to calm down. “Okay, alright, things are better now. This is a good sign. Things are so much better and it’s going to be okay! Oh goodness I must go find June and-”

“June is in our children’s area reading a book she said a boy named Mason got her,” Betsy said in a soothing voice. The mere name left an iron-like taste in her mouth but as long as June was safe and far away from the heartbreaking sight that was Dustin at that moment, she was satisfied. “I really must insist you rest, Miss King.”

“I will in an hour or so. Just in case he wakes up or something. In the meantime my father’s lawyer is here with more nondisclosure papers.” There were a few who had tried telling her that the agreements didn’t change anything as they were all bound by law to keep info confidential but, as those first few had learned, that was not enough to change her mind. What’s the worst thing that happens if you break that? She would ask them. A slap on the wrist and the loss of your job? Well congrats but if you break this agreement you’ll lose everything but your own mortality. It was accepted early on in their short, 13 hour thus far stay, that going along with and signing the paper was easier for everyone.

Years of paranoid parents protecting both her and all of their own secrets had worn off on her and she eyed every doctor or psychiatrist or nurse or receptionist with suspicion, wondering if they would gossip about her Dustin Young and ruin the perfect world she would be keeping him in once they went back home.

Strolling through the hallway with a clipboard and a satisfying amount of signatures, she was told that the psychiatrist was in and she could talk to him now.

“One moment, I need to check on June.” By that point she’d been running on autopilot on a nearly empty tank but nothing was really getting close to stopping her. She had called Cecelia, the only person she could think of who would help her without asking too many questions besides Jeanine who was preparing their addition for Dustin to stay in for a while. So there Cecelia was, ready to take June to Ellie’s apartment where she and Davis were currently. Daisy stopped to kiss the top of June’s head and give her a quick hug. “Hey,” she told the younger girl who had only been told that Dustin had fallen and hit his head but would be okay soon. “I’m gonna make sure our boy is taken care of, okay? I just don’t want you to worry about it so Davis and Ellie will be hanging out with ya. I know how much Hershey loves you.” Tucking a piece of hair behind June’s ear, she nodded at Cece who nodded back before leading June to her car.

Daisy went back up to the floor where Dustin was staying and a nurse led her to the psychiatrists office.

“I expect to be told once he starts waking up he needs a familiar face when he does,” she said as she stared down the woman. With the way she was acting and speaking you would have thought he’d been in a coma rather than simply given something to help him sleep and relax after what he’d gone through. Still the nurse only nodded, opening the door for Daisy.

“Miss King, I understand you wanted to meet with me before I speak to your… husband?”

“Soon,” she said. “For now he’s just the other half of my heart that I almost lost and everyone here is acting as if I’m a subject to gossip about because I’m making sure he is protected from judgment rather than somebody who thought she was about to see the love of her life die.” Daisy gave the man a tight-lipped smile before reaching into her purse.

“I’m sorry you feel that way Daisy, I’m sure they’re only concerned for your well-being.”

“Sure, we’ll go with that. Anyway, I wanted to make sure you understood that my parents are billionaires and I don’t care how much training or school you’ve put into this job or what your reputation is, if I find out that even a word of this situation has been leaked to anyone you will lose everything you’ve built for yourself. Are we clear?” Sliding a contract across the desk, Daisy placed her pen on top of it. “Feel free to read through it if you’d like, it basically says the same thing I just did.”

The man took the pen and signed quickly. “Daisy, has anyone asked how you’re doing?”

“Yes, too many people.”

“But I mean have they seriously asked? Not just if you’re okay or if you’re fine, has anyone asked what you’re feeling?”

“Why would they, Bruce?” She responded quickly, using his first name as he had used hers. “I only sat there cradling the body of my boyfriend who looked to be on the verge of death while waiting for the slowest ambulance I’ve ever heard of to arrive. So what am I supposed to say when people who don’t care about me at all ask if I’m okay? Say no? Say that I told God he could have my baby if I could have Dustin? Say all of the things that they’ll only use against me in the break room over their vending machine chips? Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She reached out and took the contract, tucking it into her bag and began to get up.

“Wait, please sit. I’d like to talk to you just a bit more.”

“About what? About all of that? Because I’m sorry but if I let all that out I won’t be able to compose myself before Dustin needs me.”

“I was just wondering why you think everyone is talking about you when I’m sure they’re only concerned.”

“I don’t really have time for a psychoanalysis but tha-”

“Humor me, Miss King? I’m merely an old man with a penchant for learning more about human behavior.”

After a huff, and only because her feet were killing her by now, she sat back down.

“Is there anything I can rest my feet on?” He helped her pull a chair up to rest her feet on and she glanced over at him as he took his seat. “Ask away Doc.”

“You said everyone has been talking about you. Why do you think that?”

“Since my great-grandfather bought this island for his second wife and then my grandfather turned it into the place that it is and my father improved it, the entire island has talked about the mysterious King family who lives as far away from the rest of the town as possible. We’ve never been able to trust the idea that anyone isn’t talking about us. Why would now be any different? Walking around the hospital with my desperate contracts and demands? But I don’t care about that, okay? They can make a mockery of me if they’d like, I just want my boy to be safe.”

“And if they aren’t talking about you?”

“Then I suppose they wouldn’t shoot judgmental looks at me before ducking into doorways. I don’t care, in all honesty, if they judge me. Are we clear on that? But if I see so much as a singular look like that at Dustin I will return and demand they’re fired. Do you see where this is leading, then? Because I’m terrified of bringing him into my life now. Where everyone analyzes every move that’s made. I’m…” And finally a tiny crack in the foundation she’d laid after her breakdown in front of Hunter. A sentence that she couldn’t finish. “I don’t want anyone to judge him, I just want to keep him safe from all of that. I’d do anything to keep him away from all of that. That’s all I have been doing since I made that call. Are we done?”

“Why did you offer God your baby?”

Daisy’s face and any resilience within her expression dropped immediately and she began standing up.

“Yes we are done here. Anyway, bill my insurance for whatever that was, though I don’t feel much different at all,” she remarked, pushing her chair back in and walking towards the door.

“You won’t be charged, Miss King, and I hope I didn’t cross any lines. Mere curiosity.”

“I don’t want a word of any of that repeated to Dustin. He doesn’t know about my offer and he never will. Okay? Okay. Goodbye.” Without anything else, she shut his door behind her before making her way back to Dustin’s room. On her way there, she signed the bills for his stay and care and texted Davis for an update on June. She was doing fine, but he was wondering why Cece had brought her from the hospital.

“Thought I was going into labor too early when I was back at Nirvana for my phone. Just resting now. Thanks for keeping June while Dustin and I make sure everything is okay. Xx”

“June’s saying Dustin was in the hospital bed though? What’s happening?”

“Haha, he was just joking around before he went to get me some fries. I’ll keep you posted.”

“You’re sure you’re both okay?”

By then, she was sitting down with her feet up on Dustin’s bed, trying to figure out how she could possibly lie to someone she’d trusted for so long.

“Totally. Just running some more tests but I should be by to pick up June later today. There was just a lot of stress from what happened. It’s all going to be fine. Xx”

Then she locked her phone and sat it face down so that her emails wouldn’t keep popping up and her concerned texts from Mallory and Lincoln and Ellie and Cece and her parents and Jeanine would leave her alone and for once in her goddamn life everything was silent. All of the work and charging forward and powering through and terrorizing everyone was put on hold and the only noise in the room was the vent buzzing softly.

“You’ll be okay Baby,” she whispered after a few moments of silence. “You’ll be alright. Nothing is going to hurt you anymore. Not if I can stop it. I’m… going to try so hard Baby, so so hard to keep you safe from everything the world is gonna throw at you.” She held his large hand in between her own, much smaller grip and played with his fingers. “Please don’t ever leave me. I’m sorry you didn’t know how much you meant to me but you’re my whole world. My whole world, Baby.” Her voice finally cracked so she took a couple of deep breaths, calming herself down again. She didn’t want to tell the psychiatrist that if Dustin hadn’t made it she would have given Lola up anyway because he was the only thing in her life that kept her strong. She didn’t want anyone to know that, but she did. She knew it was the truth and she’d been faced with it as a reality for a few minutes while she thought he was going to die. “I know you can’t hear me Dustin Young, but I’m going to keep you safe from now on. I love you Baby I love you and there’s so much left of this life of ours that we have to live. So live it with me.” By that point she was mumbling desperately because she wanted to badly to see his eyes open even though the steady beat in the machine beside him told Daisy that he was okay she just wanted to see his eyes. Still, she wasn’t made of energy and it wasn’t long until she was asleep too, hunched awkwardly over the back of the terribly uncomfortable chair with a hand holding Dustin’s as she drifted away.

[fairytail-whathesays]

Instead of Ultear,

You know what would’ve been a decent--no, amazing--alternative to Ultear being revealed as the one behind Jellal’s brainwashing instead of Zeref? Brain.

Because unlike Ultear, Brain was not a villain who was going to be redeemed and he did not have a tragic backstory cushion to fall on. He is up there with Hades and Mard Geer when it comes to villainy, and literally has an even more evil personality that wants to blow up the world hiding inside him. Brain was already behind Ultear’s own path down to darkness, so I have no trouble at all believing that he’d happily run a slave tower full of children.

In fact, it would also fix a lot of problems with that slave tower and the Oracion Seis themselves. We know Brain was looking for kids who would grow up to be suitably strong wizards to use as keys for his Six Prayers body link spell to seal Zero with. A while ago, I made a post specifically detailing how badly Jellal fit into the Nirvana Arc. Putting Brain behind the brainwashing of Jellal fixes the following problems:

Why the slave tower was being run. While initially being used by Zeref cultists to resurrect him, I repeat, we know Brain was looking through the children in that tower to find keys for the body link spell. When Ultear gives the reasons behind the brainwashing, we’re given a vague and undefined “yeah we found a key to revive zeref by doing this” thing that very unsatisfactorily explains why she would waste an entire 10 years running a slave tower for no discernable reason and renting out a chunk of her magic to Jellal. Brain’s explanation is much more clear-cut and really, it’s all he needs.

The immensely bipolar and insane actions of Jellal while possessed; sometimes he’s cool and calculating and likes playing with his opponents, like Brain, and sometimes he’s a laughing lunatic who will blow up his hard-earned Tower of Heaven just to kill Natsu and Erza, like Zero. Let’s say that Brain was possessing Jellal in order to seal away Zero in another person while he was still looking for keys to do it properly. The calculating, chilling Jellal is Jellal when Brain is in control, and the insane Jellal is Jellal when Zero is in control.

Why Jellal didn’t blow up Brain when Brain tutored him in Destruction Circles. In-story, Destruction Circles are only used one time, which is for Jellal to blow up Nirvana and then himself, which both fail. They’re also hastily given an explanation in why Brain can undo them: because he’s the one who invented them and personally instructed Jellal in their use. However, this takes a different, retroactive turn when Ultear is revealed as the one in control. We know Brain spent weeks torturing her as a child, creating part of her tragic backstory. You would think that an Ultear-controlled Jellal would immediately recognize Brain and blow him to kingdome come in rage. With Brain being the one in control, this problem is not present.

How Brain knew where to find Jellal. Why, exactly, does Brain need Jellal to find Nirvana? Answer: he doesn’t. How, exactly, did Brain know where to find Jellal’s assumed-atomized body? Answer: he shouldn’t. With the current story, this just comes off as Mashima determinedly jamming Jellal back into the story at literally the worst time with no logical explanations whatsoever. However, if Brain is the one possessing Jellal, it obviously makes sense that Brain would know where to look to find Jellal’s body.

Jellal’s amnesia. In-story, this is a very poorly-used and convenient device to absolve Jellal of his wrongdoings by wiping his mental slate clean and reverting him to Good Pure Jellal. It’s got a lot of holes in it that are never explained, such as how Jellal can still use magic that isn’t his, how Jellal can use magic he learned while possessed, and Jellal very conveniently hearing a “voice” in his head that told him "I must find Nirvana”. This becomes better explained with Brain in control: Brain is still actively possessing him in the Nirvana arc.

Why Cobra couldn’t hear Jellal’s thoughts at first. In the same instance as the amnesia coming into play, Cobra is for some reason unable to hear Jellal’s thoughts in order to (badly) preserve the tension. This doesn’t really make sense, because memories and active thoughts aren’t the same thing. However, we can deduce that Cobra couldn’t hear Brain’s thoughts either, because as detailed here, he was shocked when Brain stabbed him in the back and took it pretty damn hard. If Brain knew how to hide his thoughts from Cobra, it makes sense he’d know how to also hide Jellal’s thoughts from him, too.

The Oracion Seis being willing to work with Jellal. In canon, the Seis have no clue that Jellal was possessed and only know him as a monstrous lunatic that terrorized their childhoods. Which is why it makes no sense that, when Brain brings them Jellal in a coffin, they seem pleased at the idea of his resurrection and willing to work with him--they should hate him and want Jellal to stay dead to the point of mutiny. If Brain is the one controlling Jellal, then it makes sense that they’d be okay with this--they’re in on the brainwashing plot. It would also make it a decent catharsis when Jellal later pulverizes them in the Tartaros arc and gets confronted with the Zero illusion, instead of Jellal being a horrible tyrant beating down and enslaving the people whose childhoods he ruined to the point of post-traumatic stress disorder. I don’t really like that one, since I prefer the Oracion Seis as the anti-villains they are, instead of complete monsters like Brain. So instead, you could also have Jellal walk up to Brain’s corpse and be relieved that he’s dead, stating that he owes Cobra and the Seis, explaining that Brain was the one behind his possession and wants to work with them, or something along those lines. 

The source of Jellal’s brainwashing feels genuine, and not just there to give him an out by turning another character into a scapegoat. I’ve already said before that I heavily suspect why Ultear was made the one behind Jellal’s brainwashing last-minute: because fans weren’t on Jellal’s side yet and still didn’t like him, so Mashima turned the blame onto another villain so Jellal could be redeemed--much like he turned Acnologia into the new overarching villain when he decided he wanted Zeref to be a tragic, redeemable villain. However, he should have been more careful with it. He decided in that same arc that he wanted to redeem Ultear Milkovich, and so we have Ultear, with her suitably tragic backstory, being the one behind another character’s entire set of crimes despite being on the heroes’ side now. That slave tower was run for 10 years and many atrocities were committed that stripped hundreds of innocent children of not only their bodily health, but their mental health, and people died. In doing this, Mashima is breaking a basic rule of drama, as established by Aristotle: do not show a bad man (villain) coming to a good end. What I’m saying is that by stacking Jellal’s crimes onto Ultear’s already heavy ones, her sins become completely unforgivable and she looks like a monster, no matter how sad her story is. This would be okay if Ultear were Brain, a remorseless villain who has been shown willing to brainwash, torture, and manipulate people as he pleases and who is a complete monster as is already established. But Ultear became a redeemed villain. The Tower of Heaven is a crime worthy of death--death by execution, not death by self-sacrifice or suicide. This would make it, again, amazing catharsis when Cobra kills Brain--he was the one behind not only Jellal’s suffering, but the Seis’ as well, and he then gets exactly what he deserves. Mashima should have turned the blame onto a villain that wasn’t going to be redeemed so he wouldn’t have to deal with this atonement bullshit, and Brain was there, but instead he chose Ultear. 

It also accomplishes this much for Brain himself instead of Jellal:

It connects him to the overarching plot better. When it comes to Brain’s relevance to the story, all he’s really there to do is be a villain for the Nirvana arc; he isn’t present in the Neo-Oracion Seis for obvious reasons, and is promptly killed when he gets free from prison by the dude he backstabbed. Even the responsibility for Ultear’s childhood torture is anime-only (although I accept it as canon for this exact reason). Putting him in charge of Jellal’s brainwashing connects him to the Tower of Heaven arc, in turn connecting him personally to Jellal, Erza, the Tower of Heaven gang, and everyone else that involved. It also adds another layer to the relationship between him and the rest of the Seis: they were terrorized by Jellal until he saved them, taking them them out of the tower and teaching them their magic. In reality, he’s directly responsible for that horrible experience.

It gives him more of a connection to Nirvana. Nirvana is, essentially, a brainwashing magic. It forcibly switches the alignments, personalities, and allegiances of anyone it affects, and is probably pretty fucking powerful since we can deduce that its original intended target was Acnologia. Brain is called Brain because of his vast intelligence collection, research, and surveillance abilities, but adding brainwashing to his arsenal would give him even more reason to pursue Nirvana: he likes control and he’s already started figuring out how to achieve it. 

[play-these-heavens-one-more-time]

I started listening to what has been known as “the Seattle scene/sound” nearly 13 years ago, when I was 14. I was an unpopular, unhappy, lonely little person with more doubts about life than anything else. A couple of months later that year, I was forced to jump on the ordinary timeline of life and I became an “adult” version of myself when I was still essentially just a kid. All of this happening at the same time that all the adults in my life started to behave more like spoiled little children than I’ve ever seen them. Were they always like this and I was just beginning to see it? Or did something happen that turned everyone into such a crappy version of themselves?

The thing is that I found myself in this very complex position, in this weird awful environment where everyone hated each other, where everyone thought they were right… where everyone thought they could do whatever the fuck they wanted without thinking of the consequences behind…. Consequences that most of the time had to do with like… their daughter, for example.

I felt guilty for everything that was going on… not because I was actually guilty, but apparently that’s how kids who have been through a traumatic situation end up feeling. I felt so bad that I made a deal with myself that I was never gonna be a problem to anyone “anymore”… and to do that I had only two choices…. I could disappear in front of everyone’s eyes by making myself smaller, quieter, to the point where I would stop talking and eating. Locking myself in my room but still doing everything that I had to do so nobody would notice that I wasn’t there…. I thought that if I didn’t do one of my tasks at home or that if I failed a class or if I brought any problem home, people would actually pay attention to me which would ruin my plan of disappearing…. I had to keep all things as normal as possible so that they wouldn’t miss me or see me. In my mind, this was a perfect plan… because the other option was to kill myself. Which I actually considered several times but I never got the nerve to do it… I’m too scared of physical pain.

So, I decided to go on with plan A, which turned out to be actually easy? which at the same time made me realize how forgettable I was, how replaceable that I could actually dissapear and no one missed me, so easy to take for granted, so easy to be left out of the picture, so easy to be left alone, so easy to just… forget that I was there, feeling, living…. Growing up.

It was also during this time of confusion that I made another pact with myself: I would NEVER become someone remotely similar to any member of my family. I wished nothing more than being the complete opposite to whatever the hell they were (and still are). But then I realized that I had no one to look up to, no adults I could possibly admire, no one I could trust, nobody was honest enough to win my loyalty, everyone seemed so fake, always trying to look like they were something more than the pile of shit they actually were, everyone pretending to have it together, but actually being just another crazy motherfucker doing nothing to be better...  That was the time when I found this group of artists… who, after a long time of me feeling completely lost, gave me some kind of direction… they basically showed me that art was the answer. That I could find truth in music and books. That I didn’t need people in “real life” when I could immerse myself in “their” world, which by the way, seemed so achievable for me. It was like I didn’t even have to try… it was like finding home, my real home. I didn’t need to buy new clothes to follow a trend, I didn’t have to “look” differently from what I did because they were dressed just like me.

Remember what Eddie said when he met Neil Young? Like he finally had an adult in his life to live by example, someone he could actually look up to, after some crazy adults in his life he finally had someone who inspired him. Well, for me, that was “them”.

And the music…  oh my god, the music… it was so pure, so raw, so honest… a word that for a long time seemed like a utopia, I found truth in their sound. I didn’t fully understand their language (I didn’t know much English then) but I knew that they were singing about something familiar, I could feel it, in their voices, in their guitars, in that sound… it felt like the kind of sound I would make if I only knew how.

That was when I “met” Kurdt, Krist, Dave, Eddie, Stone, Jeff, Mike,Andy, Chris, Matt, Jerry, Layne, Kim, Jennifer, Donita, Kathleen, and all these bands, from green river, to bikini kill, and l7 and 7 year bitch and nirvana and pearl jam, and soundgarden and mlb, and alice in chains and stp and every single one of them… I knew all of them. With time I started listening to more and more bands and my music taste began to expand and I’m really grateful for that. It was all because of them. They were the ones who started all for me. Every single band that I listen to right now, in some way I can connect it to one in this group of musicians. It wasn’t long until they became my friends. My only friends. I was so lost into their music and the music they brought to my ears that I didn’t have any interest in meeting new people. And nobody wanted to be my friend either… nobody listened to this music like I did, nobody cared about music like I did. No one. Then I got into college and even though I met people who are huge music fans, they didn’t listen to these bands either. Which only made me reinforce my position. I was there to represent them.

I’ve thought about giving up several times since that first ultimatum… I’ve wanted to choose plan b and actually disappear from this earth and a couple of times I’ve been really close. But I’ve always found comfort and company in their music. I always knew I could count on them. ALWAYS. They were always there to make me laugh and to hold me whenever I’ve fallen down. They’ve always been there to help me put myself back together every time my life has broken into little pieces. And that’s why it hurts so bad right now. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense to me that they’re dying. It broke my heart when Scott died, and now… I just have no words to express how much this affects me. Chris for fuck’s sake. It’s just too fucking close to my heart. It’s fucking family to me.

I know that most people here recognize me as a red hot chili peppers / john frusciante fan, which I am. But before them… there were these guys. It if wasn’t for this group of people, maybe I would’ve never had the chance to hear the chili peppers in the first place.

My history with them comes way before I even knew how the internet works. I would walk for hours and wait for hours just to make a copy of someone else’s cd because I didn’t have any money to buy an original one.

I would talk to people just so they would let me see their albums and their old magazines… it was the only way I could learn something about them. I would ask that classmate of mine, who I barely talked to if she could ask his brother to ask his friend for that nirvana dvd she said she had seen once… that if she could ask him to make a copy for me…

I stole posters of nirvana from other people’s garbage bins.

I have pearl jam’s t shirts that are older than you that I bought in the flea market 10 years ago and that were already ripped.

I have tapes from radio shows that are 12 years old, with interviews of chirs and layne and kurtd. Sometimes they would play some bits of documentaries and I was there, next to my crappy cassette player ready to record everything and then learn their answers by heart, taking notes of every artist or band they would mention.

That’s the real me.

That’s the person I’ve been for most part of my life.

And that is why every time I feel lost I go back to listen to them because that’s where I find myself. I find that real me.

I’ll turned 27 in a couple months and I’m still that person. I still see them as my family and friends. Mainly because I still haven’t been able to make “real” friends. And because I still hate the way the members of my family are. I still disagree with their opinions and I still don’t want to relate to what they think or what they are.

There was a time in my life where my boss couldn’t remember my actual name so she started calling me “Nirvana” because according to her “I see you and I think about nirvana, that’s you as a person”. She did that for as long as I worked there which was about a year (then she killed herself… by hanging).

I started writing this because I feel like I need to start putting the pieces back together… my life was brutally shaken that night when the news about Chris came out. I feel like they took a piece of my life without permission and I want it back because I’m scared I can’t live without it… that part that has been with me for so long… that was a milestone in the formation of this adult version of myself that I had to create 13 years ago… He was there… and I don’t know how to let him go…

I stopped talking to people for the last couple of days because I needed to think about this… My mind has been busy trying to put the puzzle back together, trying to make sense out of it and no one here would be able to understand any of this. First of all because they don’t know what is like to be this emotionally attached to an artist or band and second because they don’t care. They don’t think it’s that important. And I don’t have the time or energy to make them understand, to explain something that you just have to experience. There’s no other way. I can’t tell them to imagine their lives without friends or parents and then find a group of people who 30 years ago made this music that became your lifestyle, your home.

I don’t really care if nobody reads this, I just needed to write it down so I could understand it myself.

And I wanted to say THANK YOU, to Chris, to Soundgarden, to Temple of the Dog, for helping me so many times. For being with me through all these years. For giving me hope. For making me feel like I belonged somewhere. For making me feel like you were a friend. I love you Chris. I really hope you find peace. And that your soul is resting in a nice place… I will never forget you and what you did for me. And every time I think of you I see you smiling at me and that gives me a little peace in these times of trouble…

All of this happening at a very low point in my life… maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it wasn’t… I’m feeling lost and vulnerable again. And it’s scary because the last time I felt like this I almost didn’t make it… and it took a lot of time and work to put myself back together… just to stand up and walk out of my room… I’m not really sure how I got here or how I’m supposed to get out again, but I know I’ll be listening to you, to all these bands just like I always do.

thanks for everything that you did for me in this life, i will miss you every day.