#my only reward for it is a depression spiral that makes me never want to do it again

[ardentpoop]

wonder of wonders: feeling like your existence contributes nothing to the world makes it hard to want to stay in it

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Warning: Venting, moaning, and spoilers ahead. Enter at own risk.

You know, after watching 73 Yards I had a LOT that I wanted to write about. Stuff about the themes like abandonment, but also about science fiction vs fantasy, the need for answers vs the desire never to know, eerie atmosphere vs cool rationality, blah, blah, blah.

But I’m a week too late. That’s old news now, it’s Dot and Bubble time. And I don’t have the time and energy to say much except…

OMG! Did RTD always have such an unrelentingly bleak and cruel vision of human nature??? I mean, okay, we had a woman heroically staying to take care of babies in the goofy first ep, but we also had a world that would abandon a bunch of babies to die. And the last two episodes…

73 Yards depressed me in a way no Doctor Who ever has. I’ve seen every episode that still exists, seen the recons of the lost, listened to every Big Finish audio over it’s first 14 or so years, and read the “wilderness years” novels like popcorn. I mean, I have absorbed so damn many Doctor Who stories in every medium that I wouldn’t know how to count them. Some were dark. Some were depressing. Some were miserable in every way.

But this….

73 Yards made me wonder if there was no damn point in me keeping on living.

Ruby’s plight resonated far too deeply.

Alone and upset she makes the mistake of stepping of going into pub where the locals, in a display of cruelty **that reminded me why I never go into small local places, deliberately scared and then mocked her. Then her life gets soooo much worse as everyone she loves and everyone she turns to for help ends up turning on her. She isn’t merely abandoned, she is treated with complete disgust and with not even a hint of compassion to soften it. She is haunted by the “ghost” of herself, an embodiment of both a mistake of her past and her future death. This “ghost” becomes her only companion as her life speeds on to the always lonely grave. Every birthday is her all alone, no friends, no family, just her and her always distant “ghost” self. And then she grows old and “dies”. Always alone…

99% of my time is alone. I have no friends to turn to. Every friend I ever got close to ended up leaving me. Heck, even online friends always just go away without a trace. I’m in a rural area where the community I’ve lived my entire life had never made me feel included. Back in school once a year I’d get shunned for not being a Christian as they rediscovered it, and the rest of the time there was mere bullying, mocked and belittled, for all the other things that marked me as an outcast. My family were outcasts too, for that matter. My family, where Mom is the only one left who loves me, just a frail voice on a phone I can no longer reach out to. My brother has openly wished me dead and doesn’t want me setting foot in his home, telling me constantly how worthless and disgusting he finds me. Everyone else I’ve loved is dead or gone away. Every birthday is alone, and I’m increasingly aware I’m spiraling to my own death…

No one. Never anyone. Never able to make new friends. Doomed to isolation unto death. No friends. No family. No help. Just me and…..me.

Yeah, it got to me. Ruby gets a moment of using her pain for good, and the reward of a do over. But that’s fiction. My “ghost” self offers no chance to do good, and when I die I will simply rot away (or burn, if whoever gets stuck with disposal duty decides to cremate me. They’d probably just flush me down toilet if I would fit! LOL)

And I thought, ok, maybe that’s just me. Maybe most people won’t feel borderline suicidal as escapist entertainment rubs salt in very open wounds.

But then I thought about the harsh cruelty of the world in the story, the complete lack of warmth and hope. Hell, our heroine stands by and lets a young woman get (strongly suggested) abused by a man she KNOWS is a baddie simply because she needs to prove that that baddie is bad enough to deserve what she is about to do. So even Ruby is a terrible person deep down, tainted by a world devoid of love to the point of treating people as test subjects.

Okay, this is bleak stuff. Great episode, even if I am ambivalent about that all fantasy/no explanations take on Doctor Who.( It also joins things like Grave of the Fireflies on my “Great but NEVER watch again!” list. ) But it’s surely won’t be so dark next time.

Oh dear.

So in Dot and Bubble we get a world of the young and privileged living in their social media bubbles (oh, very subtle), completely unable to function in the real world to the point of being unable to walk.

Okay, that’s not bleak. A bit cynical and harsh, kicking an easy target, but dark comedy material. And the obnoxious gal we are following will surely come to her senses, learn to connect with people, will be grateful for help, and…

Oh. OH!

This is THAT kind of story. Where we are reminded that people are essentially selfish and shallow, where they do things against their own best interests out of things like snobbishness, and the one decent human being we meet is doomed to death by betrayal.

Okay, now the question is, which do I find bleaker. The “you are doomed to always be isolated” episode or the “most people don’t even deserve help” episode.

People complained about the ending of Boom being sappy, but TBH it was kinda a relief for Moffat to pop in and say “Ok, look, love will give you at least a pseudo happy ending now and then. Now don’t go slitting your wrists at the utter nastiness out there…”

And the RTD whispers “I’m not saying slit your wrists, I’m just saying that if you do no one will care. The hysterical laughter at snot monsters and musical diva gods is just the universe having a nervous breakdown in the dark, but that’s fun, isn’t it?”

I’m not saying I think these episodes are awful! Just to be clear, I’ve enjoyed stuff about all of them! I haven’t hated any of them (No, not even Space Babies with their poor little freaked out faces and ill fitting CG mouths creeping me out) And if you don’t feel depressed after these recent episodes I’m very glad. Really. I just wish I had YOUR brain!

It’s funny, after an era where I complained (quietly) about poor writing I am now complaining (loudly) about the horrible mood the better writing is putting me in!

Yes, I will keep watching, trying to hold onto whatever light I can in the darkness. But I can’t say I’m looking forward to being miserable every time. I’m not sure I’m actually having fun. My life sucks enough lately, and Doctor Who making me feel worse is something I NEVER expected to have to deal with.

**Note to self: be glad you can NEVER go to Wales! Yeah, my grandma had a penpal from Wales. It was a lovely old lady she met while they both rested on a bench in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I met her and she was quite nice, even as little me withered in shame hearing grandma, in her lifelong childlike innocence, tell an embarrassing detail about me. I rationally know people from Wales are just people. But after that pub scene…

[moki-dokie]

I wish I had the same tools and resources as other artists my age did in their formative years. I wish I had some of the tools I have now back then. I wish my brain worked like most people's and that I could visualize light sources and how it interacts with a subject. I wish I had the time and money to go take some real university art classes. I wish a severe years long battle with depression didn't rob me of creativity so badly that I lost what little skill I had. I wish I hadn't developed a bad tremor and twitch thanks to medication meant to fight that depression. I wish I had enough time in the day to actually do art how I want.

There's a ton of things I wish I could change, have, or do in regards to art. I'll never not be extremely envious of artists decades younger than me that are already so insanely skilled that they can pitch a portfolio to studios. I'll never not be jealous of peers my age that continue to grow and get even better at something they're already so good at.

But, at the same time, I've learned to be gentler on myself. I've forgiven myself for the things out of my control. And instead of staying stuck in an endless negative spiral and lamenting all the what-ifs and could-bes, I choose to go forward and make art anyway. I choose to have fun with it again, to doodle and experiment. I allow myself the freedom to start over and learn. I still don't have all the resources available to me that I wish I did but I won't let that stop me. It can still be extremely frustrating when I want to draw something and simply can't figure out how or when nothing turns out how it looks in my head, but it isn't the end of the world. I'll make something else, learn something new, and continue.

It's hard to start over in your mid 30s, but I'd rather do this than bang my head against a wall forever and hate everything I do to the point of not doing it at all. Finding the joy in creating again has been key. And sometimes that means sketching studies of cats for weeks on end because their anatomy is pleasing to work with and I can find myself learning while I'm at it, to the point that soon I won't need endless refs and I'll be able to draw them mostly from memory. Sometimes that means turning a funny meme into a full comic page just to challenge myself with expressions and panel layouts or to play around with color or grayscale. Sometimes it means leaving something I was working on for weeks or months and then coming back to it with a fresh perspective, new knowledge, and rekindled joy that made me start it in the first place. And, sometimes it's merely finding a bunch of tutorials and trying them out to see what happens.

It's crazy how much this ipad has really boosted my creativity. Not being tied to my PC is a huge bonus, as is the feeling of drawing on paper (bless paper like screen protectors!) And drawing directly on the surface. A stylus that behaves like an actual pencil (or pen, or brush, or whatever) has been tremendously rewarding and fun. I think a lot of my frustrations before were purely because I just didn't have the right tools. My Wacom was a piece of shit that only worked with sai which wasn't ideal. This is miles better, I really can't even describe it.

Anyway all this to say that if you're struggling with your art, it's ok. Be kinder to yourself, cut yourself some slack, and maybe just doodle pages and pages of silly looking cats for the hell of it. Whatever brings some measure of joy.

[angelbluediary]

Oh my god. I am so drained. What an exhausting, emotionally combative day.

Today I drove M to the city for his doctor’s appointment since our parents are both working again. We left at 12:30. During the appointment I saw messages from Anne and she’s upset with me for my latest disappearance. Says she needed me and that I hurt her by not being there when she could have used my support.

(She could have texted or called and I would have seen those but regardless).

There are 2 people in this world I consider myself very close to. My brother. And Anne. And only because Anne has always understood and dealt easily with my need to up and vanish sometimes. It’s not like I’m ignoring her—though to be perfectly honest, sometimes I need to for my mental health—I just can’t interact with the world. I get totally burnt out on everything and everyone and I retreat so deeply into myself. We have joked before that I’m like a feral neighborhood cat who you’re excited to see pop up but never expect to come back at a certain time. That freedom; that permission feels like love to me. And she revoked it because I didn’t think to message her back on discord when I was in a depressive spiral.

And to be fair, yeah, it was a long lasting one. I shut everyone out. I don’t expect everyone to be cool with it. I’ll never hound someone to be good with it, to forgive me, to keep letting me back in. This is who I am now. This is what I need now. Does it sound like I’m making excuses? I am trying to be accountable for behavior patterns I have no hope of changing anytime soon or even want to.

Anyway. All this just to say, I have lost a vital safe space today but I’m trying not to make it about me because when you’re the avoidant friend, the depressed friend who “always does this/she’s just like that,” how can it not be your fault, right? That’s what I think I should feel, at least. That this is my fault. That I should take accountability. So I’m trying to, without folding over and making myself a door mat, and without begging for forgiveness and friendship.

But the truth is that I’m hurt now. It’s always been fine before. And something ugly in me, that age-old jealousy, rears its head in defense, because don’t you have a million and one support systems? Aren’t you surrounded by friends and family and a lover? Aren’t you living on your own in a nice big house fully decorated to your liking? Isn’t money a non-issue for you? Don’t you have all these fun life experiences and go out to incredible events all the time, isn’t your life steadily moving forward and rewarding you at every turn with the fruits of your labor??

I’ve counted on 2 people I can turn to for years and I’m not afraid to snuff out one of those stars. I would rather feel alone than ever feel guilty in someone else’s presence again.

I don’t want to talk to her now and it’s so much worse than before when I simply felt self conscious about going MIA.

Anyway.

Back home after 6. Before I’m even given a chance to sit and unwind, to sip some water and just breathe, my mom wants to talk about money.

On Monday, I’d picked up Walmart groceries that my parents placed on their credit card. The morning of, they canceled a few items they didn’t have in stock. I went out again on Tuesday to get those items—dinner food for everyone. I picked up cookie dough. I added up the amount for family items, subtracted the cookie dough, then subtracted more. It was around $20, I Venmo requested $11 from my dad.

And my parents did not like that.

It was seen as me being entitled, ungrateful, selfish. The conversation between my mom and I quickly got heated, as per usual, because she just comes out the gate twisting the knife. And then denied that she ever compares me to my siblings when she literally just had in the previous moment but the exact words had dissolved almost instantly, I always struggle to take in what’s being said in the moment once I’m in a place of deep hurt, and then she looks at me like I’m stupid when I can’t quote her right then and there.

She kept pointing out that they give me everything they can and I don’t have to pay rent or food or for pads or essential things I absolutely need. She even presented a theoretical situation about me doing all this for a friend who was down on their luck and wouldn’t I be offended if they requested $11 from me for some groceries?

I had to swallow my anger and say “yes.” I knew I had to defuse and pivot. But all I wanted to do was scream “I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND. I AM YOUR DAUGHTER AND YOU PROMISED ME REPEATEDLY THAT I COULD REST HERE AND BE TAKEN CARE OF AND I HAVE NOTHING TO MY NAME.”

They do not see the things I do, things that my siblings do NOT do, as anything special. Sacrificing whole days to my siblings’ needs, to my parents’, cooking, cleaning, performing all these tasks that I take genuine pride in because I feel like it makes me USEFUL AND NOT HATED HERE and then it all turns out to be for nothing!!!! They simply expect it of me because I was born first!!!!!!!!!

Oh what the fuck I just typed so much and it fucking deleted it out of nowhere . FUCK.

I should note that the conversation with my mom ended okay. She kept reaffirming that she loves me, how special I am to her, that knowing I don’t have money changes the situation in her eyes (it hurts that she automatically assumed I feel entitled to their cash). Hugs and kisses. But the whole time I was standing in front of her, I made a solemn vow with myself to not accept their handouts anymore. I cannot fucking stand anyone lording anything over me. R and his family. My family. I hate being dependent on others. Being pulled every which way, never being able to measure up. I feel torn apart. I feel empty. Every time, EVERY TIME I get comfortable here and start feeling like I can take a little more, like my siblings do, it comes back to bite me. When I stop thinking about what I owe to others and how carefully I must hold myself in check —

If I am not a burden, why would she keep dangling the terms of them letting me move back in over my head?

I have to get out. I have to support myself and rely on no one else. I have to be so secure I’m not fighting to make it month to month but can see to the horizon of my future, can see at least how I’ll get through the year realistically. I can’t take this. I need to be so far away. From everyone. Let no one look at me. Let no one touch me. If it weren’t for the lack of rent money and the everyday screaming and commotion in my coastal 1 bedroom, that would have been the happiest time of my entire life. Still certainly the freest. And I ache for it again.

Since it is M’s birthday I cannot lay here and brood all evening. His bf will be here soon with his mom and we’ll all eat dinner and cut cake and open presents and celebrate. My mom will try to stand close to me, maybe put her arm around me. I often think I should mature in those moments right then and there, get over all my bubbling bitterness, because one day I’ll long for those touches and these moments. But there’s so much hurt in me. I feel like I’m drowning in it. I can pretend it’s not there and sometimes even forget about it but it never goes away or gets better. I’m choking: I’m drowning. Again and again like all these wounds are fresh.

[mind0fanintellect]

Growth is uncomfortable

Oh gosh it's been a while. But i've been going through this transition and spiraling through thoughts about me and my future. I've become a bit indifferent since working as a property administrator. Going back to customer service is always tough but i've been handling it pretty good, i'd say. The only thing is, developing relationships at the job is what i'm still trying to work on. I have very deep trust issues and i don't let myself get close to people. At work, i probably look stuck up or serious but it's like, i hold that demeaner for a reason. I am serious and don't really want people messing around with me and just saying some shit that'll piss me off. Because only I know how far i've come and only i know how much i need this job to keep myself stable. It's been uncomfortable though. I've been learning how to control my emotions and not let them get the best of me. I don't like swallowing it because i need to release it somehow out my system. Lately, i feel like i've been having to really think about what i'm dealing with and if i've found my career. Every job will be difficult but i want to be good at what i do and i want to show the bad ass i am. One thing i've spoken about in therapy is dealing with my issues and getting past the toxicity i face every day in my household. I want to overcome it and i want to grow from it and i guess i'm just going to face it till i make it. Only God knows how much i want to make myself proud and the security i want for myself.

I've had to rethink some things. I'm in deep need of change and finally just get the hell out of my situation for once and for all. I think i'm going to have to use this frustration to work hard towards my goal and keep myself motivated. I don't ever want to give up on myself and know that the potential i have will go towards the better good. I need to give myself grace and credit in what i've done in my life and keep going. This is a lonely life but i don't think i'd learn how to value myself if i did not face the heart aches and pain. Some people might think it's weakness but i look at it as my biggest strength. I've been pretty focused and i just want a deep understanding of myself and give myself the love that i want. My cousin got married this weekend and it made me think a bit of my situation and how fast life is going. It's actually surreal that she's actually married. She's 28. I hate to compare my life to others but some people are very fortunate to have families that support them and genuinely want the best for their kids. Those are the ultimate parents. I'm very happy for my cousin and wish her all the best. I hope to some day find the love i've been wanting and asking for; but for now, i'll continue to put myself first and make the changes to get to where i need to be.

Even though this life that i''ve been handed isn't exactly fair, I know i can do something about it and work hard towards reframing my mindset. This transition is very uncomfortable considering the depression and anxiety i face on a daily bases. But i will overcome this and will keep myself grounded. On the worst moments, i want you to know this Ariana. You have made changes in your own personal life that deserve the biggest round of applause. You finished your bachelors degree. managed to find a job that offers you good benefits to take care of your health. You faced adversity but still were able to overcome and life yourself up. Remember to never settle for less and continue to fight for what you want but be smart about how you approach certain circumstances. Little Ariana is proud of you and knows that things changed from how life presented itself. But you'll continue on a path of dedication and reward. You're an incredible person and deserve everything that will come your way. Readjust your goals to have them best fit to what you want and leave the rest in God's hands. Be patient and grateful.

Fruit for thought:

What do you look to accomplish in the next couple of months?

What will you do to take on these new steps?

What will you sacrifice?

[call-it-living]

in contrast to my last post, I am having a moment of intense happiness right now!

I just wanted to document this to showcase the nonlinear experience of recovery. I have mood swings all thorughout the day, the week, and months. Sometimes they are intense. My therapist does not believe it is a bipolar disorder, as we have been working together for over 3 years. We believe it is a result of my recovery from my trauma and depression. Depression is a mood disorder, after all.

Anyway, earlier today I was experiencing some negative emotions about my past and wrote about them here to proceses them. Even though I wasn’t feeling particularly caught in a spiral when writing it, it will help me understand what I’m going through so that the next time I have a spiral maybe I’ll be able to navigate out of it easier. Understanding is power.

As for right now, I find myself alone in my room in the middle of the night. I’ve been working on my online college course and it has felt very rewarding, I didn’t expect to like online classes this much! I needed a break so I went to spotify and didn’t know what to listen to so I clicked my covers playlist. I have a lot of punk covers of pop songs, english covers of anime soundtrack songs, and just really beloved covers (Knocking On Heaven’s Door by RAIGN is a favorite). This led me to search for some new covers, which led me to explore some new cover artists. Twenty One Two are a group that do primarily punk rock covers of pop songs, though they definitely help reveal just how much rock and pop have in common already. Caleb Hyles does really fun covers of anime songs and just spirited covers of popular music. Screaming Females covered Shake It Off and it is so dynamic and just goes to places vocally that I think we all find fun but never really dare to venture into. I cannot wait to explore them more, as they have mostly original music!

All of this not only makes me super happy because of the dopamine rush of NEW NEW NEW!!! But it reminds me of the things I like! Anime is something I watch with my one friend, so it’s something I mostly experience independently. Whereas most of my other tastes are heavily shared with my sister and other family members. Knowing that I actually do have likes and loves and passions jsut ignites such happiness within me. It reminds me that I do understand pieces of myself and can find joy outside of others and my codependent family. Also, listening to lesser known artists (even if it *is* covers of the popular music i already listen to) makes me feel unique. Like, it just diversifies my music taste even more and sets me apart from codependent tastes. I also like exploring other genres through covers. It is such a fun exploration of music, because even though I usually herald the originals (aside from some exceptional renditions!!) it just satisfies a different part of my brain to hear a beloved song in a different genre and arrangement. Switching up harmonies, keys, instrumentation, and pacing all just bring new life to a song I’ve listened to death. And it just makes me super excited when a cover artist found a song to be worth covering that is a song that means a lot to me (Twenty Two One covers Wonderland by TSwift!! That seems like a rare song to cover of hers! Most cover Shake it off, blank space, love story, etc.)

tldr: recovery is not linear, and even over the course of a single day I experience the bad and good, the ugly and beautiful, the sad and the happy. The happiness is real and it get stronger and stronger each time! Just keep living, keep trying, even if you spiral and feel helpless, once you get through the spiral you will be ok. You will continue to live and have moments of bliss.

[sonofanactuallyveryniceperson]

then please give us the essay on from now on we are enemies

I spent too much time thinking about this song, so please forgive me for the essay! This absolute monster is also dedicated to @thenimyourprince

As always, this is only my personal interpretation of the lyrics; while you’re all free to hunt me for sport, I would prefer it if you didn’t. I am, after all, just shouting into the void. Bless xxx

Okay, here we go:

Pete is well-known for being a self-described film aficionado, and a bit of a pop-culture fanatic. His lyrics are full of dual-meanings, innuendo, obscure movie references and subtle nods to contemporary literature. These references are often either incredibly vague and scattered, or they serve as the basis or through-line for entire songs. Now, I’m only going to speak briefly about the film that I believe Pete may have referenced for this piece — I’m not super familiar with it, but I know enough to draw some parallels.

The 1984 film Amadeus is a fictionalised retelling of the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (yeah, that guy). The film follows the fictional rivalry between Mozart and an Italian composer, Antonio Salieri, who was jealous of Mozart’s musical genius. If I’m not incorrect, the title of the song comes from a monologue that Salieri directs to God — expressing his anger that the ‘heavenly father’ chose Mozart as His imperfect vessel through which to bless humankind with incredible music.

The lines go something like:

“From now on we are enemies, You and I. Because You chose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy — and give me, for reward, only the ability to recognise the incarnation.”

Now, we’ll come back this quote.

If you were going to argue that this film is the sole inspiration for the fob song, you’d be able to make a pretty solid case. The song makes direct reference to musicians who create their own works (composers). It provides film-appropriate allusions to Mozart’s struggles with alcohol addiction (“I just want to be better than your head's only medicine / A downward spiral just a pirouette / Getting worse til there's nothing left”). The song even alludes to Salieri’s jealousy: “I only want what I can’t have”. There’s more if you care to look; like I’ve said, there’s a solid case for this solo reading. BUT I believe that nothing is ever that simple — especially when it comes to Pete Wentz.

(Also, you’re in my world now. Just hold on tight, and come along for the ride.)

It’s pretty impossible to ignore that this song was released as a bonus track on Believers Never Die, the greatest hits record released just prior to the commencement of the hiatus. At this point, tensions were high and disagreements were vicious and common, especially between Pete and Patrick. @infintyonhigh has a great post unpacking how a lot of Folie reads like Patrick and Pete just picking at each other through the music — over and over again. I would not be surprised if the song’s title was intended to be, at least, somewhat literal. With that context in mind, let’s continue.

To me, this song reads like Pete mourning the seemingly-inevitable loss of his band — and getting in a couple of final, cheap shots while he’s at it. Pete has often spoken about how low he was at beginning of the hiatus, how the loss of the band amplified his own depression and marriage issues. The same lyrics that could allude to Mozart’s substance abuse and mental struggles could also reference Pete’s own similar battles, as well as the simultaneous, slow implosion of the band. The line “What good comes of something when I’m just the ghost of nothing?” sounds a lot like the words of a man who feels as though he’s been left behind by everything in his life (band, marriage, etc.) — like he’s just an afterimage. This theme is continued in the chorus: “I'm just the man on the balcony singing: / ‘Nobody will ever remember me’”. If a band dies, who is left to sing their songs? If Joe won’t play the riffs, Andy isn’t on the drums, and Patrick won’t sing Pete’s words… does Pete really exist at all?

“Rejoice, rejoice and fall to your knees” brings to mind the way that Joe and Patrick fought for the need to take a break, how they pushed for the hiatus — and eventually got what they wanted, while Pete felt as though his world was collapsing.

Speaking of Patrick…

Remember that quote from earlier?

I would not be surprised if Pete cast himself as the famed Mozart — an eccentric, gifted yet difficult artist with a god complex (“Lunatic of a god / Or a god of a lunatic?”) — and Patrick as the begrudging peer who has grown frustrated that Mozart’s (Pete’s) presence is necessary to produce wondrous music for the masses. Salieri’s description of Mozart as a “boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy” definitely seems like something that Pete would think of himself; however, it also doesn’t seem too far away from some of Patrick’s more aggressive insults. (I have a vague memory of Patrick calling Pete an “erratic narcissist” or something similar, but don’t quote me on that). These lines seem to be about the slow breakdown of the band and their relationship. It’s about being forced to keep pumping out tracks together, all the while growing more and more frustrated with their musical counterparts: “Oh, their faces are dancing / They're dancing til / Til they can't stand it”.

Now here’s the kicker: “A composer but never composed”. Patrick is Fall Out Boy’s musical heart. He’s the songwriter. The sound starts with him. Patrick is a composer. He’s also Pete’s favourite pretentious asshole. Patrick has never been calm or collected about music, especially when Pete is involved. He’s slapped cameras out of hands during recording sessions. He’s thrown punches over chord progressions. He’s admitted to being a control freak in the studio — a composer who is never composed, one who is known for “singing the symphonies of the overdosed”.

Oh, Pete.

Pete has had his struggles with substance abuse in the past, and is, thankfully, in a much better place now. I won’t go into too much detail on his overdose scares — I don’t think it’s my place. But these lines hurt. Patrick as the composer without calm, and Pete as the lyrical genius who is just barely hanging on. The madness of two. What a match, huh? It makes the following line even more insane to me: “A composer but never composed / Singing: ‘I only want what I can't have’”. Patrick is the composer singing Pete’s words. Pete only wants what he can’t have — for the band to stay together, for his best friend to stop resenting him, for everything to work itself out. Fuck, man. This song.

I’m thankful these dudes found their way back to each other, and I’m glad we’re all still kicking. I could go on forever about this song, but I might as well cut myself off here. I hope it gave you something to think about.

[rubyleeray]

MARS RED Review

Hey All! 

It’s been a while (way too long!) but I’m back! And I’m here with something extremely exciting!

A couple months ago, the good folks at Favary very kindly reached out and offered me the chance to be part of a beta test for their new game - MARS RED: Edge of the Nightmare based off of the Stageplay turned Anime of the same name written by Bun-O Fujisawa. 

Regretfully at the time, I was completely unfamiliar with this story/universe but that didn’t matter for long because as soon as I saw vampires - I was immediately on board. Not to mention the stellar cast featuring so many of my favourites!:

The Story

I want to start by saying that I’m not 100% certain as I have not seen any of the original source material yet, but I believe this is a new original story that continues/expands upon the existing MARS RED universe. 

You play as Yastufusa Yuki, a newly-turned reluctant vampire that is spiralling into an existential crisis. One day he encounters Organization Zero (a group of good vampires that hunt bad vampires) and discovers he holds a unique and rare ability to mentally recreate and perform crime scenes. With their help, Yatsufusa sets out to realize both his life and afterlife’s purpose while simultaneously helping fight crime.

Even if you are someone who has had enough of/doesn’t particularly like Vampire content (can’t relate!) - you will still enjoy MARS RED. Yatsufusa’s journey into self discovery in the afterlife is a more human story than you may think. If you have ever felt lost, lonely, confused, depressed, and/or unsure of yourself you will be able to relate to Yatsufusa in some way. And if that still isn’t enough to convince you, there are so many hilarious and touching moments, you will never be bored.

And the scene with the baby sparrow just completely melted my heart:

Gameplay

MARS RED is already unique to me in the sense that it is the only non-romance game I have on my phone but it’s also a Mystery/Crime/Horror Visual Novel which is such a great combination! I am not sure if there are any Good Ends or how many there may be yet (the story is still in development) but I have come across a couple bad ends. These were easy to go back and get for me because they involved choosing the options that no one earnestly playing a heroic protagonist should pick 🤣. They were quick and funny and are very obviously the wrong choice so if you haven’t hit one yet, you’re on the right path! If you want to get a bad end, go to the end of Chapter 1 and refuse to help.

Now, I don’t know if it’s a pandemic thing or just a me-getting-older thing😬, but I have almost no patience for games with checkpoints that I have to grind/spend like crazy for. All I really want to do these days is interact with a good story. MARS RED is the game I’ve been searching for for so long! Everything centres around and furthers the story which is super refreshing because for some reason that’s becoming increasingly rare in this genre (and industry in general🫖). Not only is it a solid, mysterious, supernatural crime story, it’s also super fun to play! I absolutely love when a game has mechanics that actually exist to serve and support the story and experience as opposed to just shamelessly providing the player with another reason to spend.

Here’s another confession: I hate most gachas. There, I said it. Why? Because for the most part, I only want/like stories. I don’t want avatar clothes or duplicates of N items that I have to go in and manually delete constantly. I just want to have more content of my faves without spending my entire pay cheque. Is that so much to ask!? MARS RED thinks not! I saw there were two current gachas even in beta: one limited and one not. I was excited because I love everything about the game already but I was also skeptical because I have a long history of being burned to a crisp by all gacha games. I was expecting to see an offering of the typical beautiful and virtually unattainable rainbow rare prizes like cards that are essentially useless (but damn are they pretty!).  However I am thrilled to report that MARS RED has blessed me with my dream gacha. STORIES GALOR-IES! 

The rainbow rare item was a story with a cg and I managed to pull it on my second 10-pull and OMG I loved it. It was so wholesome and pure and a great length that made it feel as premium as it gets! 

Aside from the story, there are three other major mechanics: Investigating, Inferring, and Exploring. 

Investigating is so much fun. It reminds me of my childhood days reading iSpy books and playing Spot the Difference games. To investigate, you simply tap on items in the scene to read about them. 

Each item offers their own unique clues and context and you better remember what you see because you better believe someone will ask you about it later and that’s called “Infer.”

During the Infer portion, you are given a limited amount of time to make assumptions and come to conclusions based on what you found during the Investigation portion. If you are like me and love playing Investigator - you will love this!

During the Explore portion, you don’t actually have to do much other than pair up 2 people and choose a location. They will Explore on their own and level up/earn you the money and points you’ll need to progress later on in the process. You can also earn rewards called “Murmurs” which are little short anecdotes between the guys.

Cons

My only “con”/criticism is that I wish there were more cgs. I hardly came across any and there were so many fantastic moments that would have completely blown me away with an accompanying CG. But for the record - the CGs I did see were gorgeous! 

Random Thoughts

I feel like this would make an excellent BL game - where are my fellow YatShu, YatSuwa, and/or YatDe, shippers?! XD

I love Yatsufusa. He is my son and I want nothing but the best for him and his vampire/human friends. If anything happens to him...I WILL become a vampire myself and avenge him. I already want NEED a little plush doll of him. 

This game is generous without spoiling the player and it’s user-friendly without making me feel like a child. I really appreciate that especially since I feel that most recently released games cram a million mechanics in without ever connecting them to the story. (Have I talked enough about how bothered I am by a lot of recently released games 🤣?)

HAS TUMBLR ALWAYS HAD A 10 PIC LIMIT?!

Closing Thoughts

If you’re looking for a game/story that you can actually enjoy without stressing over - give MARS RED a go! The world needs joy now more than ever and Yatsufusa’s smile is pure serotonin! Go get yourself a boost and download this game available now on both Google Play and App Store! 

Thank you for spending some time with me! I hope you are doing well and keeping safe & happy. I’m off to go play more of this game (Chapter 7 just released!) while finally checking out the anime! Stay safe and healthy and I’ll see you soon!

***Disclaimer: I was provided early access to this app for the purpose of reviewing it by Favary. I have not been nor will I be compensated for my review, but I received a small in-game sum of points to complete the story in the beta. This does not mean my opinions or words were bought and paid for. These are my honest thoughts and feelings and Favary entered into this agreement with me requesting and expecting nothing but.***

[wonda-cat]

You mentioned rewriting that one analysis post on Tommy’s revival stream and I’d really look forward to it! I never got to read the full og post and that’s the only place I saw these takes. Especially the one about the afterlife being too depressing. It’s not even just about Tommy, the implication that even if every character is safe and happy by the end, this is their inevitable fate is messed up. It’s not “a neat subversion” it’s just depressing and doesn’t add anything.

Hey, anon!

I sorta decided to not rewrite it? I feel a bit differently about the essay in the end, although I still believe in most of my points. I’m also just not nearly as passionate about it as I was when I wrote it (I finished it in a single sitting, which was... interesting.) However, yes, the afterlife stuff still bothers me just the same, as well as the odd changes to Wilbur’s characterization... post mortem.

But—just for you, anon—here’s the entire meta-analysis essay anyway, with some minor edits to the stuff I don’t agree with anymore!

My Many Narrative Issues with Tommyinnit’s Revival Stream

I want to preface this by saying that I dearly love the Dream SMP and understand it isn’t exactly comparable to other mediums like TV and film. With this being the case, most criticism against it is generally in bad faith or strange in foundation. Complaining about streamers for bad acting is the best example that comes to mind. 

These aren’t professional actors. Most have never acted in this sort of setting, or even at all. Quite a few have admitted to never roleplaying before. Which is why it’s warranted to praise Tommy, Dream, Wilbur, Ranboo, and others when they deliver stellar performances. The same applies to criticism of music choice, dialogue delivery, focus, tone, etc. 

However, one such category I cannot overlook is in regards to its writing. The writing of a story is its entire foundation. It encompasses many things—conflict choice, character development, themes, and morals. The author creates the blueprints for the architect, who then expresses the story with light, sound, color, pacing, and music. It is in its execution that we see if this connection is made or broken. 

The reason I find poor writing mostly inexcusable is because it is one of the most available skills to practice and perfect. I don’t mean to say that it’s easy, I mean to say it is something anyone can attempt to cultivate. Whether they do it well or not depends on their methods and experience. If anyone can self-publish a novel and be criticized online for its quality—and even compared to the works of Mark Twain—then I find critiquing the writing of the Dream SMP to be perfectly reasonable. 

However, since the Dream SMP script is a set of loose bullet points, tearing apart dialogue and scene continuity—which is nearly all improv—is rather useless. It doesn’t exactly have a clear focus as the plot plays out. The characters talk in circles until they hit the story beat required, and then they move onto the next. Thus, when criticizing it, one should generally critique grand events and narrative-specific shifts, more so than small-scale character interactions. 

Which brings me to my main point: The broad narrative choices taken in Tommyinnit’s most recent livestream, ‘Am I dead?’ may lead to disastrous writing pitfalls in the future. 

I’ll be outlining each of my issues below, in hopes of creating a better understanding as to why I feel this way. 

This might become quite lengthy, so please bear with me for a bit.

Tommy’s relationship to Wilbur has flipped. This change is jarring and seems out of character.

Tommy and Wilbur’s friendship is rather complicated. While Wilbur does care for Tommy immensely, especially during the L’Manburg Revolution and the Election Arc, his mental spiral during exile put a massive strain on their relationship as a whole. Wilbur brushed off Tommy’s feelings and wants, while clinging to him and pushing everyone else away. He was simultaneously distant and suffocating. 

Tommy, on the other hand, has an unclear view of his mentor. Since the beginning, and even long after Wilbur’s death, Tommy held him in especially high regard. He saw him as a brother-figure and a wise leader. He followed what he said and did everything he could to impress him. Yet, Wilbur still hurt him while the two were together in exile. 

When speaking of him, Tommy tends to flip infrequently between remembering Wilbur the way he was before his mental decline and thinking of him as a monster. Both of these images conflict with each other, but they weren’t nearly as extreme as what Tommy described Wilbur as when he was revived from death. The fear Tommy displays to Wilbur is beyond intense—it feels as if the audience may have missed a month’s worth of character development. 

This can make sense, especially since it was stated that he’d spent what felt like two months in the void. However, this shift is still deeply at odds with Tommy’s previous impressions of Wilbur, which is both disheartening and confusing. The fact that Tommy would agree to stay with Dream—his abuser and murderer—over his past mentor is simply head-reeling. It paints a very different picture of Wilbur’s character, somewhat conforming to the fandom’s ableist impression of him—the idea that Wilbur is insane and irredeemable, and always will be. 

It also ignores Dream being the driving factor in Wilbur’s downfall, as well as the double-bind deal with Dream which required him to push the button, no matter the outcome. Others have pointed out that Tommy may be lying to get Dream to bring Wilbur back, and there’s compelling evidence for that. For one, Tommy and Wilbur’s conversation seemed uncomfortable, but it was certainly nothing like Tommy implied. (Unless this fear comes from something Wilbur said off-screen.) 

Tommy also begged Dream to not bring him back multiple times over, which he should know would make Dream even more tempted to, simply because he likes seeing Tommy in pain. Tommy is also a known unreliable narrator. He may be making Wilbur out to be worse than he is by accident (even still, I’d argue this is a bit of a stretch.) 

However, there are some issues with this theory. Tommy offered himself as payment to Dream if he chose to let Wilbur rest. This is a deal Tommy knows Dream is extremely unlikely to refuse. Tommy is what Dream has coveted all this time. If Tommy genuinely wanted Wilbur back, he would not offer this. This sort of compromise is Tommy’s greatest nightmare—something he would only do in response to his friends being threatened or his home being destroyed. 

To add, Tommy is not great at lying. Unless he was taught by Wilbur for those two months* in the afterlife, there’s no chance Tommy would be this good at it. Thirdly, Tommy is terrible under pressure. He uses humor to cope. When he can’t, he cries and shouts and spills his heart out. While cornered, Tommy will tell the truth about anything, especially if Dream casually debates killing him again, just for fun. 

For now, it’s too early to tell how the relationship shift will play out. In the grand scheme of things, this issue is rather minor.

Season three’s writing is needlessly bleak. The portrayal of the afterlife is a nightmare. There is no rest, not even in death.

I adore the Dream SMP storyline in its entirety. I believe the first season is fantastic, and while the second season has some narrative clarity issues, I enjoyed it just as much. Although, I would argue season one had a more concrete understanding of its Hope-Conflict balance. 

To briefly explain, the Hope in stories are its ‘highs’ and good moments. These appear when a character the audience is rooting for is narratively rewarded. They happen during character building in the text—it’s the downtime and peace that allows for connection and relatability. It’s a moment for the viewer to breathe easy. 

The other half is Conflict, an obstacle in the story that gets in the way of the main characters’ goals, beliefs, and motives. These are the ‘lows.’ They give the narrative focus and weight. They make the highs feel even higher. They establish consequences and force the characters in the story to change in order to adapt and overcome them. 

I bring up the Hope-Conflict balance because a traditional hero’s journey would have an appropriate amount of both. Their highs and lows are generally equalized, as the name suggests. However, this balance has been awkwardly skewed in the latter half of season two and in the current plot of season three. To clarify, it is perfectly reasonable, and even common, for some stories to tip the scale more to one side. 

But a common mistake for amateur writers is to create their stories as either hopelessly dark to cause the audience continuous distress for the sake of distress, or to keep everything entirely conflict-free for most of the plot. What do these both have in common? They each make the story boring and predictable. 

Season three has taken this concept and thrown a monstrously heavy weight onto the Conflict side and flipped the scale so hard it has crashed through the ceiling. The viewers are hardly given time to find any joy in Tommy’s character, as he’s thrown into yet another abusive situation, just barely after his first narrative reward. The world is painted as relentlessly violent and traumatic. 

Every person Tommy meets is morally grey, unhinged, or out to hurt him. Everything most of the characters love is taken from them by those in positions of power. Ranboo cannot even grieve properly because it scars his face. Puffy, Sam, Ranboo, and Tubbo all blame themselves for what happened to Tommy. 

The audience watches lore stream after lore stream with the same depressing tone (with the exception of Tubbo’s, but I assume that’s unintentional.) Tommy is revived after being brutally beaten to death by his abuser, surrounded by all of his greatest fears. The afterlife is revealed to be akin to inescapable torture. It’s a colorless void that wraps the individual like fabric. 

Time moves thirty times slower within. There’s nothing—nothing but the voices of others who’ve passed on before him. Dying in a world already devoid of happiness takes the characters to a place worse than hell. When a narrative delivers unfair suffering to the entire cast without a moment of joy to speak of, the story will feel simultaneously overwhelming and pointless. 

Why watch characters suffer when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel? What happiness could they strive for when we know they’ll never get to keep it? How can I be satisfied with a good ending, if I know that an afterlife too terrible to name is what awaits them, truly, at the end of their story? Death isn’t even a white void that offers rest—it is eternal torment. 

Obviously, it isn’t a good message to send by making the afterlife seem like a quiet, perfect place or an escape from pain. But making it an unspeakable anguish which awaits, assumedly, every character who will die in the future? I deeply hope Tommy was only being an extremely unreliable narrator. 

More likely, I hope the place Tommy was taken to was a Limbo of sorts, not an end-all-be-all destination for everyone.

The degree of Tommy’s narrative punishment continues to escalate, to an almost absurd degree.

Tommy is one of the most tragic characters to exist in the storyline. He was sent into war at a young age and experienced two traumatic events during it. He was exiled by the newly elected leader and witnessed his mentor Wilbur spiral and break down with paranoia. Tubbo is executed publicly in front of him. When expressing rightful anger at the person who murdered him, he’s beaten nearly to death and never receives an apology. 

Schlatt dies right in front of Tommy, after his initial refusal to hurt the ex-president. His brother-figure and mentor is killed in assisted suicide on the same day his nation is blown up. His best friend exiles him from his home for the second time. He routinely self-sacrifices to protect his country and those who live there. His most treasured possessions were taken from him and he was called selfish for trying to retrieve them (although his methods were self-destructive and volatile.) 

He was pushed to the brink of suicide after being relentlessly abused and isolated in his exile. He was horrified when he thought he was responsible for drowning Fundy. After making an objectively good decision to stand by his old friends and change for the better, his country was obliterated by the man he once idolized, his father-figure, and his abuser. 

He was left scattered and without purpose for many days. Then he fights against Dream and loses, while also reliving his trauma. He watches Tubbo almost die at the hands of someone he once thought was his friend. He doesn’t tell a single person about what happened to him in exile. The day he tries to sever his connection to Dream and heal, he’s trapped with him for a week, surrounded by everything that terrifies him. 

He threatens to kill himself, speaking about his own life as if it were an object—something to hold over Dream’s head. He blames himself for everything bad that’s ever happened to L’Manburg and his friends—internalizing a mentality as a scapegoat for everyone around him. He is forced into the role of ‘hero’ despite the title being unfair and distressing to him.

As if that weren’t enough, he’s then beaten to death by his abuser and spends what feels like two months in an afterlife that is worse than hell. When he returns, his senses are excessively heightened. Dream can cause him excruciating pain, just by pinching him. He can send Tommy into an instant panic attack, just by raising his voice. 

The punishment Tommy’s character receives is a thousand times worse than everyone he has ever met, or ever will meet. And it shows no signs of stopping, as Dream now has control over Tommy’s very mortality. Tommy now fears the slightest damage and feels as if he’s losing his best friend all over again. He is also forced into a position where he has to kill Dream out of necessity, to protect everyone he cares about.

Characters need fitting punishments in relation to their actions. Not always, but in order to be satisfying? Yes, they do. It is preferred that a main character deal with unfair situations and difficult conflicts, but this is borderline torture p*rn. Putting Tommy in these distressing and abusive situations on repeat and punishing him for doing objectively moral or healthy things is exhausting to watch. 

To quickly add, I find the general insinuation of Tommy going to hell distasteful, especially considering the contents of his storyline. I know this may be hard to believe, but Tommy is one of the most moral characters in the plot, besides Puffy and Ghostbur. He’s also the only character, followed by Ranboo, to recognize that they can be wrong and make mistakes. He changed himself in order to heal and be a better person. He was in the process of paying people back for the things he’d stolen. 

He’s learned to be hard-working and less violent through the guidance of Sam. He has apologized to everyone he’s ever hurt (with the exception of Jack Manifold, because that man is allergic to communication.) He puts himself in harm's way to protect others. He doesn’t set out to purposely hurt anyone. He goes out of his way to make connections with people and maintain them, even if others don’t reciprocate. 

He’s hopelessly optimistic, despite his outwardly bitter façade. He loved so much and put meaning into the smallest things. The thought that a person like him—a suicide and abuse survivor—would go to hell after being beaten to death by the man who took everything from him; it makes me sick to my stomach. 

The only thing more morbid than Tommy’s afterlife being different than everyone else’s, is the concept that everyone will end up in this same eternal torture, no matter what they do. Take your pick: Tommy is sentenced to anguish until the end of time for no reason, or everyone will receive the same disturbing ending, regardless of their actions.

The narrative weight of Ranboo’s character is potentially out the window.

For the past few months, I’ve watched all of Ranboo’s lore streams faithfully, curious to see what role he would play in the future. His ‘hallucinations’ of Dream seemed to be sowing the seeds for a plot that has Ranboo taking the fall for every single insidious thing Dream has done. It would also be a tragic parallel to Tommy’s trial. 

Ranboo being convinced he was the one who blew up the community house, when Dream himself admitted to doing it, was one of the bigger indicators for me. This is just one of many other unexplained occurrences. Dream seemed to be making an effort to trigger and control Ranboo, especially after Sapnap’s prison visit. It appeared, from the way he went about this, that Dream had some grand use for Ranboo as part of his plan to be freed from Pandora’s Vault. 

However, after Tommy’s stream, the way Dream explains himself makes it seem like there was no plan besides seeing if the book worked on people. And if he didn’t after all, then what was Ranboo for? Was Ranboo unimportant? Was Ranboo just some weirdo who happened to phase out when seeing smiley faces and imagined conversations that may or may not have happened? 

I bring this up more as a worry, and much less so as an active problem in the narrative. They haven’t actually thrown Ranboo to the way-side or written themselves into a corner yet. In future streams, this could very easily be explained away or developed as more information is revealed. 

Only time will tell.

The potential for Wilbur’s future development and importance to the plot is unfeasible.

I feel as if I am the only person on earth who doesn’t want Wilbur Soot or Schlatt revived. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is not a dislike for these characters. I especially adore Wilbur, as he’s one of my all-time favorites. I don’t want either of them resurrected because their stories have already been told. They each had a fitting conclusion that ended their involvement perfectly. 

Bringing Wilbur back would especially cheapen the impact of the War of the 16th. It’s the end of a man who was brought to the absolute edge and out of desperation, shame, and self-hatred, he destroyed himself alongside his creation. Bringing him back would leave the climax of the previous story hollow. My biggest issue, however, is that a lack of story importance would likely follow his return. 

The only real impact I’d like to see is through a healing arc with Tommy, an apology to Fundy, or a confrontation with Phil/Niki. But that’s really all the potential I can realistically see. While I don’t doubt Wilbur as an agent of chaos, able to create plot out of thin air; what is he going to do now? His country is gone, his friends and family are scattered about, and his mission from the 16th is already accomplished. 

What is a well-educated, charismatic politician supposed to do in a world already broken and without nations? Read poetry to himself and cry evilly? However, this is working off the assumption that Wilbur would be returning as his old self. 

If Wilbur is resurrected as a ‘villain’ of sorts, then what? He’s not good at fighting in the slightest. He would have no materials. There are no real allies he can make, other than the arctic group. On top of that, there are already more than enough villains to last a lifetime. 

We don’t need any more, I promise. Quackity seems to already be shaping up as another antagonist, alongside Sam’s slip into darker and darker shades of moral ambiguity. We also have Philza and Techno, which are already overkill. But then we have Dream who, despite being in a prison, has the ability of selective revival. This is mercilessly overpowered, especially if he makes many allies. The dude could just bring his dead friends back so they can keep fighting forever. 

Then there’s Jack Manifold and the Crimson followers; Antfrost, Bad, and Punz. That’s not even including characters who are refusing to get involved. How are Tommy, Tubbo, and Puffy expected to do literally anything to fight back?

Dream’s experiment on Tommy implies he had no backup plan to begin with. This makes his character seem both short-sighted and foolish.

When Tommy woke up after being brought back to life, Dream sounded surprised that the revival worked at all. This instantly shatters the perception that Dream was highly intelligent and thought ahead. With just a few lines of dialogue, it’s implied that Dream killed Tommy, unsure of if the resurrection would even be possible on humans. 

Which, to risk something that important, seems unbelievably stupid. Dream needs Tommy, from his perspective. Tommy is his ‘toy,’ the one who makes everything fun. If he lost him and couldn’t get him back, what then? Oh well, everything Dream was doing was all for nothing, I guess. 

Why not attempt this experiment on literally anyone else first? Like Sapnap or Bad or, hell, even Ranboo. I suppose it could be that, as soon as Dream got the book, he experimented with it after the 16th. This appears to be insinuated with Friend and Hendry’s revival, although this is uncertain. But even then, he was still unsure of the book’s effect on a human being.

Also, this means, hypothetically, Dream’s entire plan of escape hinged on the experiment working, to begin with, and also on bringing back Wilbur if it somehow did. I find this even more ridiculous. Why Wilbur? That man couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag, let alone get through the traps in Pandora’s Vault. Even if he is intelligent after years* in the afterlife, that’s also a strange assumption. 

How do people learn things in the void? Where do they even get this knowledge? I’d honestly argue Techno is a far more competent choice than Wilbur. And even if Dream did bring him back and tell him he owed him his life, what’s to stop Wilbur from just killing him permanently? Or killing himself, continuously? 

No way would Wilbur want to be controlled by anyone, ever. The dude would sooner fuck off into the mountains and become a nomad than help a neon green bodysuit cosplay as Light Yagami.

Dream’s discussion about Sam implies that he wasn't playing any part in Dream’s plan, making Sam appear entirely incompetent and neglectful of Tommy.

Dream talked about Sam in a way that seems detached and unaffiliated. He also mentioned him being broken up about Tommy’s fate and not being aware he’s still alive. Dream not being partnered with, or not using Sam in his plan leaves many plot holes. I’ll go through each one. The initial incident was an explosion, coming from the roof of Pandora’s Vault. This did not affect the Redstone mechanism for the doors or dispensers. 

Meaning, Sam could’ve had Tommy leave the way that was expected for visitors after he investigated and found no issues. This likely couldn’t have been done in less than a day, but it would be better than an entire week. If Tommy was required to stay for longer, due to protocol, he could’ve gotten Tommy out and then placed him in one of the minor cells for the remainder of the time. 

Also, no one else lost a canon life for leaving via the splash potion of harming and returning outside the maximum-security cell; why would Tommy? To add, Sam being uninvolved means that the explosion could have only been caused by Ranboo or Foolish. That, or it was placed long before and timed for the moment Tommy entered the main cell. (I’m going to ignore how ludicrous it is that someone would know the exact time Tommy would’ve entered the room with Dream.) 

If Ranboo was the person behind the detonation, this implies he was necessary for Dream to kill Tommy to test the book. But that makes it even stranger. If this was Dream’s goal all along, why not kill Tommy the instant he was trapped with him? It makes no sense for him to wait so long. 

Sam is also directly at fault for not letting Tommy out, even after the week was up. There was no reason not to. He already knew there were no issues with the prison at that point. Although, to be fair to Sam, his character may have been paranoid and checking everything more than necessary, just in case. But this still isn’t a good excuse for him ignoring protocol in this one instance, and yet, not in any of the others. 

All of these plot holes or inconsistencies would be removed if it was revealed that Dream was blackmailing Sam in some way, or Sam had been working with him since the get-go. That Sam was the person who set off the explosion in the first place to trap Tommy inside. It would also explain Sam’s refusal to let Tommy out and by keeping him in there for longer than necessary. 

This can also coexist with Sam’s attachment and care for Tommy. He probably wasn’t told about Dream’s plan to test the book and genuinely believed Dream wouldn’t hurt him. On top of that, Dream is known to be a pathological liar, so his statements about Ranboo and Sam could be entire fabrications. 

Who knows?

The Book of Revival invalidates death entirely. The narrative now lacks both tension and consequence.

Another way the Dream SMP differs from other storytelling media is in the way it goes about its character deaths. In a TV show, for example, there will be characters who die just because, or when it’s important to the plot. However, it seems as if the Dream SMP is hesitant to commit to killing its characters. And there are many reasons for that. 

The most important one being, killing someone’s character excludes them from the story and some of their livelihoods depend on them regularly streaming on the server. There is also the issue of the cast becoming extremely sparse if characters keep dying. Typically, in stories, when you kill a character, you should introduce another. 

This keeps the cast from dwindling as the storyline goes on. This means the writers would have to find new streamers to join, who will develop their own characters and relationships with the plot’s continued momentum. This can be stressful and daunting to those who may be newly added in the future. 

Keeping this in mind, the Book of Revival is annoying from a writer’s perspective. When death is no longer an issue for a story hinged on its characters’ mortality, then what do you have as a consequence anymore? We’ve explored every kind under the sun; from abuse, to betrayal, to loss, to destruction. 

In stories, traditionally, death is a finality. It’s a conclusion. Whether it’s good or not depends on the character’s actions, its build-up, and the event’s execution. Without this lingering sense of danger, tension evaporates from the story. 

Why should I care if Tommy loses in a fight to someone, if he’ll just come back a day later? Why should I care about what happened to Wilbur, if he just returns as if nothing happened? The answer is simple: I won’t. I will no longer care if Tubbo or Ranboo or Sam die in the story, because the idea of revival even being a possible outcome leaves me unenthused and uncaring. 

The Dream SMP likes to flirt with death. It teases the demise of its main characters many, many times. More so Tommy’s than anyone else’s. Wilbur’s failed resurrection, which had unforeseen and unfortunate outcomes, is now strange in comparison to Tommy’s, which happened without a hitch. 

To be fair, we actually don’t see how many attempts it took. But here’s the problem; Dream could do it without the book being physically present. He’s trapped in a prison with nothing on him, meaning he doesn’t need any materials either. It’s also implied he could do this as many times as he feels, for anyone he wants. This would be exceedingly overpowered, if not for one thing—Dream himself is mortal (at least, I fucking hope he’s mortal.) 

If someone kills him one last time, that knowledge is gone forever. And I’m glad they’ve established at least some way for Tommy to win. Because at this point, I was losing faith. 

There is also the bare minimum establishment that Dream can refuse to bring back those he doesn’t care for. He can also use it as a shield, holding this power over other people. If Dream is gone, death is permanent. But isn’t that how death is supposed to be, anyway? 

What a bleak premise—the afterlife is pure eternal torture while life is cheapened by a lack of consequences.

Conclusion

All this to say, I am cautiously optimistic for the future. I hope dearly that every single one of these can be disproven or developed in the coming livestreams. Obviously, there’s not enough information to really determine what the end result will be, or how everything will fall into place. 

Every time I have theorized about the story, it has done something completely different and pleasantly surprised me. I want this trend to continue. 

Surprise me again—I’ll be here to see where it goes.

[absurdthirst]

Hello I’m looking for advice and it’s not sex related (if that’s okay). I am 22 and I am going to do a virtual interview as a cashier at one of the main grocery stores in the US. It would be my first job and the reason for that is because I’ve had anxiety and depression for a while now and finally have it somewhat controlled/treated I also take medications to help as well. I want this job so I can get out of my comfort zone and make a little cash since I’m looking to work at most 30hrs/week or less as part-time. I haven’t even been interviewed yet and my mind is already spiraling. Will they be able to accommodate my anxiety if I gets to be too much? If so how? Will I be able to have the option to work less than 8 hours? I was thinking maybe 6. What happens if they try to make me work more hours than I’m comfortable with? What happens if I get an unruly/rude customer? do I deal with them myself? How is my home life going to accustom to me working? I still live with my parents and have been a “stay-at-home daughter” and basically maintaining the house. I cook and clean and take care of our pets 90% of the time which is fine since it’s my “part” that I’ve put in since I haven’t had a job or gone to school because of my anxiety and depression. But I fear that if I get the job they will continue to expect me to do the majority of the house work since they’ve been used to it for years now. I tried bringing it up to my mom a few weeks ago when I told my parents I was going to start looking for work and her helping more around the house since she has a job that works 20-25 hours a week. She basically told me that she does enough and if I wanted help with chores then she should just quit. She said she already worked and maintained a house before when we were kids and nobody helped her. (My dad never helped because he’s always worked 15 hrs a day AT LEAST since I was a kid to present day and my brother, who is 20, doesn’t do anything because he was spoiled as a kid and never was told to do chores. The only chores he’s ever had other than cleaning his room is taking out the trash but he only does it half the time. He’s my brother and I love him but he’s such an asshole that he contribute to the house if we ask him to) I understand her but I only asked her to help me, not to take the whole load. I haven’t talked to her about it since and now that I have this job opportunity I keep thinking Idk if I can handle keeping up the house and a part-time job. Especially because it’s all so new and nerve wracking to me. I want the job but all of my anxious thoughts and worries make me want to back out. Do you have any advice you could give me on my dilema? And if any of your followers have advice I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Oh hun, it doesn’t haven’t to be sex related to ask for advice!

Well, the best thing that I can tell you is that it helps to write out a generalized schedule. You can write everything down that you realistically feel like you can do if you are working 6-8 hours a day.

I know it’s incredibly difficult, but it will be a learn as you grow experiences. Sometimes it will be uncomfortable but it will also be incredibly rewarding to establish a bit of independence outside of the home.

Just remember to take it a moment at a time.

[rant-2-me]

My mental state has just worsened over the days, though I'm not sure why, and I just feel so unmotivated and lacking any energy to practice any self care other than napping, and also feel anxious because I'm not studying enough.. feel like I'm just 1/4th assing my responsibilities.. And when someone asks me how I'm doing, sometimes I blurt out that I'm not fine, and the guilt I feel afterwards for making them worry, so I find myself withdrawing from initiating conversation with them, even though I really want to, and this makes them worry about me more.. I just don't know anything anymore, everything feels too much, yet I can't rant in a clear conscience without feeling guilty for bothering them, and thinking how I don't deserve to complain because they have had so much worse (yes I know pain is relative, but I feel so horrible, like a whiny child, who doesn't know how to be content with her blessings)......

Sorry I know it's a lot.. feel free to delete it if it's triggering or making you uncomfortable in any way... I just needed to get it out..

My lovely nonnie, im so, so glad you sent this ask. and got it all out of your system. yeah this sounds cheesy but like ive been there, with not knowing how to reach out—im proud you had the courage to send this ask. girlboss vibes.

also this ask took a while to answer and im so so sorry about that, but I didnt want to do anything less than the best for you, so let's just jump right in <[:)

Lacking motivation, god I've been there, but doing self care is super super important so here is a how-to, hon.

How to do selfcare when you’re not motivated to:

1. Be a little “gross.”

Gross is in quotes because it’s so subjective, but you undoubtedly have a few behaviors you consider kind of gross regardless. Now’s the time to do them without judgment. For me, that’s meant showering less, eating weird food combos (sometimes in bed), and letting my brows and mustache grow magnificently unruly. For you, it could mean doing something you normally judge yourself for or cutting back on activities you only do for the benefit of others. Now is not the time to allow “socially acceptable” behaviors to rule you.

2. Eat whatever the hell you want.

This should be a rule always, but I’m not going to pretend there aren’t societal, social, and personal pressures that go into why we eat what we eat. Try to shut down the voice that judges or polices what you’re eating right now. We’re in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. If dinner has to be some slices of cheese and deli meat eaten in front of the open fridge, so be it. If you have a lot of cravings and are snacking more than you normally would, cool. If pre-pandemic you decided you were going to stick to a certain meal plan and it’s just not happening anymore? Don’t beat yourself up.

Yes, what we eat is connected to our mental health, and I don’t want to discount that—but if the stress of eating healthfully is making you feel like crap anyway, whether that’s because you can’t fathom cooking or don’t have the means to shop for certain foods during isolation, just eat the sleeve of Oreos and try again another day. It’s okay.

3. And wear whatever you want.

Or, more realistically, wear whatever you can. Even if it means wearing the same ratty sweatpants for a whole week. Or month. Maybe you started all this out aspiring to get dressed every day to work from home productively, or maybe you have a whole collection of comfortable loungewear you feel guilty for not utilizing. Whatever arbitrary rules and expectations you’ve set for yourself, you can throw them out.

On the other hand, maybe you need to quiet the voice that tells you there’s no point in getting dressed or feeling presentable. If it helps, by all means, play with your look, wear awesome or weird outfits, do your hair and makeup or whatever activity might feel a little silly given your current reality. In the middle of a pandemic, nothing is a waste of time if it makes you feel good.

4. Use shortcuts to avoid creating chores.

In my first week or so of working entirely from home, I was baffled by just how messy my apartment got. How on earth were so many messes piling up when I wasn’t even doing anything but working, sleeping, and eating? I hadn’t realized it, but a lot of my small tidying routines had become casualties to the pandemic. And, it turns out, slacking on the little ways I pick up after myself every day (such as doing the dishes right after I use them) added up quickly.

Instead of forcing myself to stick to the same levels of tidiness that I used to maintain, I’ve found shortcuts. For example, I use paper plates and plastic cutlery when I feel too fatigued to wash dishes so they don’t sit in the sink for days on end. Or I stick to the same two “outfits” to avoid clothes piling up when I’m too depressed to put them away every day. If you can find a small way to go easy on yourself, even if it feels a little wasteful or indulgent or gross, it’s okay to tap into those shortcuts right now.

5. Be kind to yourself if your place is messy or dirty.

I won’t lie: I’m someone whose space impacts my mental health a lot. Typically, keeping my apartment clean helps keep my mental health in check and letting my apartment get gross makes me feel worse. That’s still true in a lot of ways, but to adapt I’ve been trying to be mindful and accepting of where I’m at. And it’s…helped?

It turns out that taking the pressure off does a lot to mitigate the guilt and some of the other negative mental health effects I usually experience. In practice, it involves a lot of talking to myself. Instead of seeing my apartment turning into a depression cave and immediately thinking, “Oh, God, I need to clean up, this is so disgusting, I’m a monster for living like this, of course I feel depressed,” I go for kindness. I think (or even say out loud because, well, desperate times), “Of course my apartment is a mess right now. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I can handle the mess for now.”

6. Accept your new sleep schedule.

idk anyone whose sleep hasn’t been screwed in some way by all of this. Anxiety, depression, fatigue, pent-up energy from sheltering in place, tech use, new work responsibilities, screwy schedules…pretty much every aspect of our new reality can impact our sleep. Some people are sleeping a lot more, some are sleeping a lot less, and some are cycling through both extremes. Oh, and the temptation of naps! It’s all there.

Trying to maintain a healthy sleep schedule during all of this is a worthy endeavor—and more power to you if you’ve figured out how—but there’s a good chance that it feels impossible.

By “accepting” your new sleep schedule, I don’t mean pretending it doesn’t suck; I mean doing what you can to be gentle on yourself about it. For me, acceptance has looked like watching some comfort tv and reading my favourite books at 2 a.m. instead of staying in bed and anxiety-spiraling about how I can’t sleep. Is it ideal? No way. But I’m not going to waste energy stressing about something I currently can’t control.

7. Give yourself plenty of room to do absolutely nothing.

I’ve given myself permission to do a whole lot of nothing. That includes getting rid of the pressure to be productive and practice self-care, yes, but in a broader sense, it also means not forcing myself to actively “adjust” every day.

Some days, I just need to do nothing but feel my feelings. Or avoid feeling my feelings. Or stare at the ceiling. Give yourself space to do (or not do) whatever you need to.

also, nonnie? my love?

Never feel guilty about telling someone who cares about you when you don’t feel okay.

People who genuinely care about you—and I’m sure they are many—will care if you aren’t feeling good, there are always going to be people who care about you, who want you to be okay, that’s why they ask, why people make rant, why “how are you?” is such a common question.

But if you do need to talk, but you feel like you’ll “burden” people who you do talk to, here’s a guide to ranting.

Guide to ranting:

1. Pick the right person. Someone who’s in the right headspace to listen to you, you could also pick someone who cares about you—if you’re anxiety tells you nobody cares about you, pick someone who “should” care about you in your relationship, e.g: a friend you’ve had for a long time, a friend who’s told a few of their problems, or friend you might not feel close with, but seems very kindhearted and a good listener.

2. Pick the right time to talk to them, so you can have their undivided attention. If they are busy—as most people will be with something—they’ll have a hard time giving you good advice and listening to you. Ask them when they are free, and then ask them:

3. “hey, can we talk? I’m not mad or you or anything, it’s just that I have been not feeling great, and I just want to rant to someone about it.” and “No pressure to say yes, you might have your own stuff to do deal with.” to make sure they are the right person to talk to.

4. It’s ok to test the waters. Start slowly, you don’t have to share everything at once if you don’t want to.

5. You never know how your friend will react to what you say.While you can’t know how they’ll react, just remember that sometimes people’s initial reactions may come from a place of shock, surprise or not knowing what to say. Their initial reaction isn’t always their longerterm reaction, it may just take them a little time to process.

6. Look for ways to take action. Don’t get me wrong, ranting can be amazing for you, but on its own may not solve your problem.

But maybe venting to people isn’t for you. No matter! There are other ways to get out emotions:

Ways to rant without talking to anyone

1. Cry it out— simple and rewarding. When the baggage is just too heavy to carry cry it out. It can help you ease the pressure and ease your mind to think straight after days of holding that frustration in.

2. Work out — easy and fun. tire yourself out and release all the frustration in working out! This is going to be so satisfying for you as you try and punch, kick, balance, lift, and breathe those frustrations away.

3. Clean & rearrange — practical and can be fun. we get frustrated by so many things and one thing that can truly help clear our minds is to have a clean place where we can stay and live for the moment to breathe. Clean your room, rearrange your things and you’ll be surprised by the satisfaction this brings — a signal of a new beginning.

4. Scribble — simple and fun. Make scribbles, doodles, drawings, take a pen or a pencil, and let go. It does not have to be “good” art or professional at all. Just draw whatever comes to heart, sunflowers or clouds or rainbows—anything.

5. Write it down — fun and simple. Let those words out of your head and just live in the moment.

How to fight the lack of motivation.

1. Don't fight the lack of motivation.

If you feel down or unable to muster tons of energy, let it be ok. Be easy on yourself and acknowledge that it's ok to have a dip, especially at this time of the year.

2. Once you have accepted your slump, get to the bottom of it.

Ask yourself, "What is the root cause of this sluggish feeling?" Go deeper than the obvious reasons. Is it related to work? Your personal life? Relationships? It might also just be the weather. Get clear on what areas of your life you're feeling the most resistance.

3. Dig into that area. What is not ideal about this aspect of your life? What would make it better?

Make a list of how you'd like your current situation to improve--and be specific. If you truly can't find a reason to be less than enthusiastic, then accept your feelings and let them pass with time.

4. Take your list of what is missing and go through it.

What is holding you back from being able to create the things that are missing in your life?

5. Get support for creating the life you want.

Do some research and find an expert to help you. Even though they love you, friends and family aren't objective enough, and they tend to give advice that is a reflection of their own life and insecurities.

6. Think of current habits that are contributing to a less-than-ideal life.

Maybe it's fear, laziness, or not having enough confidence. Pick one to focus on.

7. Address this habit over the next 2 months.

They say it takes 28 days to create a new habit, but this varies from person to person. If you focus on it for two months, you are sure to build the neural pathways needed to call it a new way of being.

8. Buy a book, read articles or do some research on this particular behavior or feeling.

Read about the common causes of this habit as well as the proven ways to bust through and work around it.

9. Create a plan around shifting your current habit.

Make sure that changing this habit ultimately helps you move forward in the area of your life that is not ideal. The energy from clarity, awareness and then action will immediately get you feeling more motivated, no matter what.

10. When all else fails: make a list of activities that excite you, and do one of them right now.

Talk to a fun friend, dance around at home, workout, watch a funny YouTube video, tackle something on your to-do list. Accomplishing something will give you a hit of dopamine in your brain. If you're too overwhelmed by your day, sit for five minutes and meditate. Put on some soothing music and breathe.

okay, that's all nonnie, I hope you feel the lust for life in your lungs, please have all my love, i hope this helped, this ask took a while, but it was worth if it helps

and if you need to dont worry to send another ask, if you like spam the inbox!! queen!!!

take care, much love my sweet honey, bye <3

—*putting daisies in your hair as they leave* mod peppermint <[:)

[whelvenwings]

So I just saw that post on laziness that you reblogged and I was wondering what your thoughts are on laziness vs procrastination? Because I'm going through a particularly bad round of procrastination, but I don't feel like it's borne out of laziness (which to me, is more of "I don't feel like doing this immediately but I will do it soon"). Whereas procrastination is constantly postponing something but never being able to convince my brain to actually do the task (also any tips on tackling this?)

Hello anon!! Yes hello good hi. first of all, ugh, I’m so sorry you’ve been having a hard time with procrastination lately. it’s rough and I hope it eases up for you.

hmmmm yes, so, laziness and procrastination. WELL. hmm. OKAY. these thoughts might be a bit all over the place, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I ramble on a bit. or a lot. probably a lot! I have a lot of thoughts about it all.

so I think I’d start off by saying that I kind of don’t believe in laziness. 

it’s like... for me, laziness is... chronically choosing not to do something that you know you should do, even though that thing is entirely doable for you. that is to say, you have the time for a task, the skills for it, and the ability to motivate yourself to do it - but you regularly choose not to do it.

the key element here is choice. for me, laziness implies not just that a task isn’t done - it implies you could’ve done it, and then you chose not to. but to be able to choose not to do something, that thing has to be completely possible in the first place, right? we wouldn’t say we choose not to fly, we say that we can’t do it, it’s not possible for us. every day that I walk around instead of flying, I’m not being lazy, I’m just not doing something that’s outside my capability. very often (I’d argue always) when we regularly don’t do something, it’s because we cannot do it. it’s not a choice not to do it, because there’s something going on that makes the task impossible in our status quo. I think our ideas about what we can and can’t do, and how serious a barrier it is to not be able to motivate ourselves, are often really skewed by comparison with others. if I lived in a world populated only by birds, maybe I’d think I was procrastinating on flying.

the thing that briefly breaks me out of a procrastination loop is usually panic at the promise of Bad Consequences, i.e. my brain is finally convinced of the importance of the task, but this is a quick one-off fix that doesn’t help the chronic issue, so next time I have to do the same task I’ll follow the same pattern of putting it off until Total Panic Time. and at a certain point, even the Bad Consequences just aren’t enough motivation, and I simply can’t do the task. often I am in distress at not being able to do the task. just as often, the distress is a contributing factor in the task not getting done for longer.

the issue that makes the task not doable for me tends to vary a lot depending on the situation. and I think a lot of people have it the same way, where different issues crop up with different tasks.

- so like sometimes it’s a Success Elsewhere issue. you just can’t believe you can actually decently do the thing you have to do, so you go work at something else that you think you can succeed at. “lazy” to me implies a lack of effort, right? and yet with this one, the things that you do instead of homework or chores or whatever, they often take plenty of effort. like you’re kicking ass at video games, pouring hours into it, because the game makes you feel like you really could be the best!! it’s worth the effort because you get rewards! you’re working, just not at the thing you Should be doing, because you can’t believe working on that thing will lead to any reward/success.

- sometimes it’s a Why Does It Matter issue. sometimes you just aren’t convinced enough that the reward of doing a task is worth the work it’ll take, because you can clearly see that the world is in crisis and it’s exceptionally hard to believe that, say, homework matters when everything feels like it’s on fire.

- sometimes it’s a Fuck You Anyway issue. a lot of people feel alienated by the society we live in, the same society that says hey, you have to do homework, you have to succeed at university, you have to get these grades, you have to be polite, you can’t get angry, you have to respond to emails, you have to do this specific kind of job to make good money or else you won’t have enough. when an authority you don’t trust/a system that is clearly broken tries to shove you into doing something, sometimes you don’t want to bloody do it, you know? sometimes you don’t want to do the small tasks that build up into following a path you don’t believe in.

- sometimes it’s a The World Has Swept Me This Far, What, Are You Saying I Have to Do Things for Myself Now issue. between parents and teachers and societal expectations, a person can go surprisingly far in this world just kind of keeping to the course that other people decide for them. but the map always has edges, right? eventually people stop having a plan for you and you’re quite suddenly expected to know exactly what to do with yourself, and just become a success with the opportunities you’ve been given, but you have no clue whatsoever how to do that. doing nothing in this instance isn’t laziness, it’s not that you want to sit and stagnate - it’s just that you’re doing exactly what you’ve always done: what you’re being guided to do. the only difference is that now you’re not being guided to do anything, so you don’t do anything. you have no idea how to flex the muscles of personal choice; you don’t even know if you have them.

- sometimes it’s a Distraction issue. again, for a huge amount of people, the world is pretty garbage right now. and sometimes you’re clinging on via the happy hormone hit you get when you do something fun, so doing something hard/boring feels like it would push you too far. or sometimes the hard/boring task doesn’t absorb enough of your attention, leaving way too much space for your brain to talk to itself and spiral out of control with bad thoughts and feelings, which it won’t do if you’re watching videos or scrolling on your phone or hanging out with friends etc. given how tailored our brain hormones naturally are to finding the shortest path to happiness, and how relatively easy it is in our culture to find short-term happiness via the internet, I don’t find it surprising that a lot of people just literally cannot engage with doing difficult, boring tasks when there’s a small burst of happiness just one tap away. 

- sometimes it’s an Energy issue. bad mental health is a motivation killer. battling depression or anxiety or another mental health issue just leeches away your reserves for other things. you don’t have the spoons for doing a task, but people with more spoons will look at you not doing it and call you lazy - because for them, the task is doable, and they don’t get that for you it is not.

UGH MAN there’s so much more to it than just these separate scenarios, they all interweave and there are loads more of them, and I want to talk about how being neurodivergent affects these things and how being queer affects it too imo, but I feel like I could go on and on forever so I’ll leave it at that. my point is, I think both procrastination and so-called laziness start when for some reason, a task isn’t doable for you. so the key is figuring out why the task isn’t doable, and changing something, and then hopefully being able to chug away at it!

some things that have helped me are:

- getting little bits of help - when my mum and I hang out, she’ll sometimes just sit and chat to me while I clean around her because it’s doable for me while she’s there. collaboration can ease a lot of procrastination woes for me.

- instead of telling myself “I have to do this”, I tell myself “I deserve to have this done”. so like, instead of “I have to clean the bathroom”, it’s “I deserve to live in a clean house”. instead of “I have to do this essay for homework”, it should have been “I deserve to be able to show the skills I have, and get help from my teachers in the places where I have holes in my understanding”. it’s just like, less focus on the dumb task and more focus on the goal that I’ll achieve by doing the task, with a healthy dose of self-validation on the side.

- if the problem’s really chronic and affecting your life in a pretty major way, maybe it’s time to look into whether there’s an underlying issue with the way your brain focuses? I’m autistic, and I have friends with ADHD, and the way our brains focus/don’t focus on things can be hard to manage at times - but understanding what’s going on inside the old brainspace and reading about how other people handle the same things can be a really good way to start breaking the cycle of procrastination.

[howdoyousleep3]

I’ve been so sad and tired lately due to all of the racist madness in the US. I’m constantly cycling from rage to helplessness to numbness. As a black woman, sometimes I’m afraid to live freely because time and time again I’ve been shown that that isn’t allowed. I’ve been feeling shitty so thanks for having this blog where I can come to distract myself and feel better. Sorry if this is heavy, but it’s how I feel and I just want to thank you because I really appreciate you & your work xo 💜

Please listen! I talk about things here that may be triggering. I discuss suicidal thoughts, violence, and police brutality. I’ve tried my best to give a headsup but I have never made a post with trigger warnings so please let me know if I need to add any. 

Okay...

First things first-- I love you. I see you and love you and I am here for you in any way you could ever need me. I hear you and understand how very easily you could feel helpless and feel rage and feel numbness. Everything you are feeling is entirely valid. Never apologize for something being heavy when people need to understand and listen to how all the crazy shit happening in the world is affecting other people. You are safe here. 

Secondly-- This racist madness is real and I am hurting and I am not even a person of color. I cannot and will never understand what you are going through but it is my job as an ally and a decent human being to understand, whether that be from listening to people of color or through going out of my way to learn. I should not rely on people of color to teach me; this is my duty. 

My journey on accepting my privilege was a rough and angry one for me. I had a mentor in college who pushed me into it when Michael Brown was shot in 2014 and I was so enraged that someone was telling me I had privilege. Me?? Me who lost three close friends in a car accident in a car I should have been in Sophomore year of high school? Me whose parents went through a nasty divorce after my mom found out my dad had been having an affair for years? Me who had to give up my lunch money each week to take care of my brother and sister because my mom spiraled into a nasty depression? Trigger Warning: Me who wanted to pop pills and cut my thighs up, who had panic attacks under stairwells on my college campus? 

YES. 

It took me years to realize yes I still had privilege. You show me this now. You are afraid to live freely! My heart hurts writing this out. I have never experienced this and will never experience something of the like. Shitty things have happened to me and I do not discount them but my privilege is still greater than any person of color simply because I am white. That’s not an easy pill to swallow for most but we must try.

Thirdly-- I have been nervous to disclose this but I feel this is a good time to. I am a teacher. My first two years teaching I taught in an urban district, inner-city. I taught kids who had their own kids at an extremely young age. I taught the kids who came high to school. I taught the kids who slept under overpasses at night. I taught the kids that held up the gas station around the corner at gunpoint. I taught maybe 30 white kids in total in two years. Y’all know how SHOOK I was as a young white woman fresh out of a state university?? They ate me up! 😂 

But it was the wildest, most rewarding thing that has ever happened to me in this life. I distinctly remember the day I had a boy come to my class and he had shaved his dreads clean off. When I asked him why he said his mom wouldn’t let him have them anymore because she was afraid he would get hurt. His hair. I couldn’t believe it. At 13 years old he and his mother feared for his life because of his hair. 

I had another kid tell me a security guard at a local grocery store followed him around and made him take his hood down because he looked suspicious. Also 13 years old. 

I have seen with my own eyes firsthand the way school systems brush off and do not value students of color. I have gone to Principals with valid proof that something had not happened when they thought is had only for them to say to me, “He is full of shit.” I have seen the white students who got caught selling pot brownies at school get a much smaller punishment than the black students who did the exact same thing. 

Now that I teach in a less-diverse district I have chose to make it my mission to help kids have conversations and address privilege much earlier than I had to. I teach a subject that is riddled with controversy and topics that are coming back around so it is a smoother transition than other subjects. We get uncomfy and we talk to each other about what our own lens that we view the world through looks like. I’m always asking them, “Okay, this doesn’t affect you. Who does this affect?” 

I try to do my part and it is not easy. I have cried in frustration and cried through breakthroughs but this is what I should be doing given the position I am in. 

I kind of derailed that at the end but I wanted people to know that I’m not just spouting nonsense but instead I have seen this firsthand and worked through my own struggles. Anon, I love you dearly and I am so terribly sorry there is nothing I can do for you in this moment but I hope you find comfort in knowing that I really do try in other realms to help. I am always here to talk to you if you need an outlet for any reason and I hope what I have shared and disclosed helps you see I am someone who will truly listen. ❤❤❤

[all-of-the-above]

COVID-19 and You

The Pandemic, the one and only COVID-19, it’s affected each and every one of us in a number of ways. We have all undoubtably lost something…

a)     A loved one or friend

b)    A job

c)     A friendship

d)    A relationship

e)    Our motivation

f)      Our hope

g)     Maybe even all of the above? (If you have, my heart goes out to you)

This life changing event has had so much impact on people of all ages, and for myself it greatly affected what I thought would be an exciting time in my life. I was supposed to finish sixth form, have fun, go to May ball (I’ve never even been to prom so was definitely looking forward to this- but yeah not the biggest issue in the world I know), sit my a-levels, have my 18th birthday and go out, enjoy summer and prepare for uni. Instead, it all got cancelled. My birthday spent at home with my family, no goodbyes at school, most of my summer spent at home, and planning for uni…online. These ‘problems’ may see ridiculous to some of you, however I lost out on this time in my life I think so many of us look forward to. This loss, whilst still struggling with my mental health after the loss of my mum took a huge toll on me. My motivation left entirely, and I didn’t want to do anything, let alone help myself. I was in a state of depression and bad mental health, but for some time I didn’t even realise it. I didn’t care for myself, and since then I’ve learnt to recognise when my mood changes, when I need a little extra love for myself, and when I need to keep an eye on how I’m doing in order to prevent slipping back down that spiral (I still have bad days of course this is normal! Just not to the extreme of bad months). As I wrote about in my blog on keeping on the upwards spiral, it’s all about mindset and recognising your needs and emotions and acknowledging them to help yourself. However, back then it wasn’t so simple, I held onto the hope of seeing people and although it was crushed by news so many times, a small glint of hope was still there, a small light in a place full of darkness. Holding onto hope in times like this is something so crucial, if you can’t care for yourself in any other way, just have hope, no matter how small, because that will get you through. If you don’t think you even have that communicate it with somebody, anybody. Ask for help. Don’t feel guilty, we all need help at points and lockdown has proven to be such an isolating experience, so don’t fear reaching out. Do that small thing for yourself and you will benefit. I believed I wasn’t helping myself at all, yet that hope I had was a small portion of help. There was more I could’ve and should’ve done, but its all about learning and growing from our experiences, realising our priorities, and then learning how to care for them. Our number one priority is ourselves and often we realise this after going through bad time, commonly because we don’t want it to happen again and we want to do anything to prevent it, which means caring and looking out for ourselves. So, if you’ve struggled in lockdown, 1, 2, 3 or all of them, you’re okay, you’re here, and you’re learning, and you will get there. You are never alone, and don’t judge yourself if it’s taken time for you to learn you need to have more self-care, and more self-love. The fact is you have realised or are realising and that is such important, brilliant progress.

This pandemic has enforced an abundance of things as well as causing losses. It’s forced more alone time, less freedom, delayed plans, serious relationships and all-round new ways of life. More alone time can have serious effects on mental health like I just shared, however I have come to learn what a great opportunity it has been and will continue to be (just because were not in lockdown forever doesn’t mean you can’t continue spending some serious time with yourself!). Being alone enforces us to be more reliant on nobody but ourselves, more independence is gained, and even new skills are formed. It took me to become really down and lost to see I needed and wanted help, I reached for it and tried my upmost not to let go, I worked on myself and slowly found new methods of healing myself to become a better me. I’m not all the way there yet either, I’m still learning and understanding myself more and more every day. This is an ever-changing process with infinite goals, and by having the knowledge and ability to critically view ourselves we are able to continue this growth. Alone time now is less daunting, but do not worry if it still is for you, it’s a case of understanding what you want and realising that your mental health is important, and only you can care for it. Once you have that mindset you can begin a number of things to help, you can read books if you’re into that, especially self-help ones (trust me and give it a go, even if it’s an audio book, they really can inspire!), you can pick up new hobbies like drawing or sewing or baking, you can exercise, you can become mindful and practise meditation, you can take time to understand you. In changing my mindset and learning more about self-love, self-care and positivity, I myself have picked up new hobbies; I’m enjoying reading a lot more, especially these motivational self-help books like ‘Good vibes Goof life’ by Vex King, I love cross-stitch, it’s so relaxing and I’m a very creative person, I practice mindfulness, and most importantly to come out of this is my writing and starting this blog. I was inspired by others, but I also inspired myself. So, my advice is to you is to become your own inspiration, strive for your goals and have confidence in yourself.

As well as enforcing alone time, the lockdowns have also caused many people to have very serious relationships when possibly that would’ve been further down the line. This will of course lead to tensions and possibly even a loss of the relationship entirely. But its key to remember although you and your partner may have had to make serious decisions like moving in together or staying apart, putting a label on it or not due to covid, all of it was still your choice. It’s important to be there for one another and if you’re having doubts or feel an argument boiling up, communicate it, its not an easy situation but if you want it to work you have to find ways around it. Having alone time is key, that’s important for any relationship, but especially if it seems as though you’ve had to dive in the deep end because of the pandemic. What’s also important is spending quality time together, making date nights at home or on facetime, whatever you can do to feel a bit connected again, a bit normal. Sadly, the pandemic has also forced a lot of losses of relationships, both romantically and platonically. This may be from being in too-close-a-quarters or simply being too far away. Both scenarios are difficult, and it takes maturity and knowledge in yourself to tackle the situation as which is best. If you’ve lost people because of covid, I understand it is hard, its isolating enough never mind losing the people closet to you. However, we need to remain optimistic and look at the positives; if you tried your best to keep that relationship going, you made sacrifices, you communicated, then it is simple enough to see it was not you, and that person was not right for your life. Don’t put out energy if you don’t receive the same back. This isn’t always easy to recognise or understand but overtime you will notice a drag on your own mental and even physical state, and that’s when you can see your energy is depleting whilst you haven’t received anything in return for your hard efforts. In other cases, you may be the one not rewarding the other person with the same energy, this is ok too, it’s all about understanding where you are on your own journey. The best thing you can do is assess all your relationships whilst you have the time to do so. Think about what either person is putting in, and then what is being taken out, if its not even, assess on who’s side and then bring it up (tell that person and try to get them to understand how its making you feel and even suggest, if there is, ways of preventing it, or tell yourself, assess your actions, make your friend/partner aware that you know your mistakes, so to speak, and chose to act on them). The final key is deciding if that relationship is right for you, whether you’re putting in more or less effort than the other, take time to see why and try to come to an understanding on if your unhappy or need something to change, whatever it may be, assess that relationship and act on what is right for you. And don’t fret, seeing whether its right or not doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and effort, just like the relationship. If you’re unsure, don’t rush a decision, and always keep in mind what has happened to thus allow you to come to a better decision after some time.

Whatever may have happened to you in the course of this pandemic there is no doubt it will have impacted your mental health, and this why I talk about self-love and self-care in such an extensive way. Although there’s been a lack of freedom, we can still do things, we can still expand our minds, expand our capabilities and ensure we care for ourselves along the way. Needing a bit more down time than usual in these circumstances is ok, it is understandable and the fact you recognise that for yourself is proof of your progress. If you haven’t been doing this then go do it now, take some reflective time and think about your needs and act on them.

I’m sure we are all now feeling much more optimistic as of the news and it truly is fantastic! We have so much to look forward to but remember not to get ahead of yourself, yet also don’t panic that it will take time to get there, it may not be back to normal tomorrow or the next day, but small steps of progress are better than none. The same goes for your mental health. Just stay optimistic, change those negatives to positives, keep occupied and learn something new, and most importantly hold onto your hope. Never feel alone, there are hundreds of millions of people who feel just as you do, reach out to friends, family, even strangers, even me, we are all here to remind you of how wonderfully you are doing and will continue to do.

If there’s anything I haven’t touched on well enough or anyone has anything to say, leave a comment or send me a message. I’m here as a friend and thank you to all of you that are a part of this growing community.

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

[hopetofantasy]

Wandering Romance

- A future with child fic -

Square Filled: Future, Family, Past lovers Ship: Sander Driesen/Robbe Ijzermans   Trigger Warnings (if applicable): none applied.   Created for @skamevents Summary: “A perfect, tight little family. But happy. Until one unfortunate day in May, in the year that David turned six.”  

In the future, Robbe and Sander have a son named David. The only tie they have left with each other, actually. Because our lovers split up years ago, due to mistakes that were made in the past.  

So is their love strong enough to sustain a healthy friendship? Will they find their way to each other again or break all connections for good?

Also available on AO3

—————————————————————

CHAPTER 2: 'No one sees what I see in you’

—————————————————————

“So this is it then?”

A beautiful boy with mesmerizing eyes lying in arms. The warmth of love. It felt like puzzle pieces finally fitting together, after months of frustration and searching for anything that might look like it. Something that had been missing for quite some time. It just didn’t add up? Long sighs, hurtful eyes, loaded silences that made them more sad than happy. Their love wasn’t strong enough to deal with this...

No, he didn’t believe that.

They were strong enough.

Just not now...

He was caressing the cheek of his lover, his best friend, his partner in crime. Another part of the pair, the amazing family they had. Fathers. Their boy. All tossed away, like it was nothing. A paper crumbled in the trash. Like they never even were. And because of what? Why? Why now? Why this? This wasn’t right. They both knew it wasn’t.

He sighed to stop the spiraling.

His hands started to clench into a fist. He was so angry at first, he was so angry and sad at the world. He was promised forever, they both promised each other that their love would survive anything. The perfect man in a beautiful white suit and him wearing the black one. Ying and yang. Always complimenting each other, begging for a deeper connection, receiving it and now cutting it away.

Like his heart.

“Is this it? Can’t we keep trying? Please?”

His eyes were staring inside those deep ones. His tanned skinned hand slightly caressing his lover’s arm. Mindlessly. They were used to pillow talk until the early morning, the sunrise. The night sky turning from dark blue to light orange hues, exactly the color he once made by accident, trying out the paint samples on his palette. A beautiful coincidence. Just like the night they met.

As if faith knew.

When the other boy didn’t answer, he just went for it. His lips trying to convey everything he felt inside the troubled mind, his hands feeling every hitched breath taken away from his other half, the softness of a wanted caress, but also the sting from nails digging in his back, the bite of pleasure, the strained movement of legs  - as if love couldn’t be felt without some pain. It suited them, he thought. Every day could be a high. Every day could be a low.

His fingers gripped the sheets of their shared bed. Sharing it for the last time.  

“Oh my god, schat”, exclaimed the one.

“I love you”, answered the other.

“I love you too”, was moaned.

“Don’t leave me, please”, was said.

A tear rolling off a heated cheek.

Kissed by soft eyelashes.

The silence that followed wasn’t wounding. It was passion, it was love, it was a high that never experienced a low. A white light behind the eyes. Stars for their lights. Something shared only between them. And never would be again.

“Let us go... please”

The whisper.

And that’s when Sander woke up from his dream.

When he started to cry.

-^-

“Papa, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, darling, always. What is it?”

“How did you and paps meet?”

Oof, that was such a loaded question for a Monday morning. And he didn’t even have his first coffee yet. His eyes instantly analyzed David’s face, which was just a pure reflection of playfulness and wonder. The tiny boy seemed to concoct something on his breakfast croissant. It looked like choco spread, decorated with speculaas cookies.

What is this? Where the hell did he get that idea? This can’t be healthy right?

“Sweetie, did you eat a hearty sandwich before shoving this in your mouth? You can’t live on sweets, you know that. You won’t grow to be a big boy, then!”

“But, papa, I like it. Can I have this, like... one time?”

Oh no, not the puppy eyes.

He was a real manipulator with those big brown orbs. The kid was 9 years old, for God’s sake, how could he be this smart? He knew exactly how to play the game to convince them of mischievous things, things that were bad for him and stuff they needed to say ‘no’ to. But it was sooo rewarding to just say ‘yes’. Just to see the beautiful grin creep up onto the face he loved so much.

Something Sander wanted to collect in a jar and pull out whenever he had his ‘cloudy days’. David didn’t understand the concept of bipolarity yet, so once he was old enough to notice something, they had sat him down to explain. “David, sweetie. You know how papa is sometimes a bit different?”, Robbe tried to approach the subject, while their son stared with unsung tears in his eyes.

“Yeah, he lies on the bed and sleeps and don’t eat and is very, very sad. I don’t understand. Does papa hate me? Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry...”

If the room was a stethoscope, the family would’ve heard a heart breaking. It was one thing that Robbe had to deal with his mania and depression. Now another innocent soul was being corrupted by his stupid brain and Sander just couldn’t deal with that. The pain he might induce, the worry in his soul almost growing too much. But as always, his other half seemed to know what to do. While holding his hand, to anchor him back to this world, Robbe explained.

“No, darling. Papa will always love you. Even if you did bad things. But now you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? You see, people have a bright sun inside them. And sometimes that happy, beautiful sun will have clouds blocking their light. Clouds who bring in bad weather, like being tired, not being hungry, not wanting to talk, have sad thoughts, just wanting to sleep all the time. And that’s okay. Because after a few days of rain, comes the sunshine, right?”

“And sometimes a rainbow!”, their beautiful boy exclaimed.

A couple of teeth missing in the front, but his smile was beaming nonetheless. It melted their hearts. “Yes,” Sander whispered softly. If he wasn’t sure about how much he loved his curly angels before, he knew now. When did he become so lucky to have such beautiful love? Him and his loving partner hugging their soft boy, giggling all together, without a care in the world. A fulfilling life.

Perfection.

“Papa, are you there?”

Sander blinked back some tears, while trying to focus on the situation at hand. David was glaring at him, already halfway through the disgustingly sweet croissant in his hands. Some crumbs were falling down the plate. And the choco paste tainting his pink cheeks. The look in his face was peculiar, like he tried to figure out what his dad was thinking. If he was going ‘cloudy’.

“David... I do remember that I never told you ‘yes’, right?”

The answer was a simple shrug.

“You didn’t answer my question about paps, either. C’est la vie.”

To say that Sander was perplexed, is an serious understatement.

-^-

When Sander was thirteen, he knew.

He wasn’t normal.

This was way before he was diagnosed with bipolarity, but that wasn’t the only thing not fitting the ‘standard normal’. He knew the boys in his class and he simply didn’t like them. They were all talking about video games, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, while eating their weight in greasy snacks and referring to girls like pieces of meat. Making jokes about what they learned from their older siblings or watching too much nighttime television.

And he didn’t.

He liked to write, he wanted to be a writer someday. And paint. Drawing was amazing. Sander loved walking around with cut jeans, graphic band t-shirts and a bleached buzzcut. One day, he’d love to have a pierced eyebrow. That was considered cool in his book. Maybe his career would be ‘rock-and-roll’ artist, since he played the drums too. Something to get his energy out.

Because he had ADHD.

At least, that’s what his doctor said. He just wanted different things than others and sometimes all at once. Was that weird? Apparently so. But he wasn’t entirely convinced about having the disorder. It sounded ill-fitting. Like a shrunken skinny jeans in the dryer, the broken mug in his room where he put his discarded pencils. It didn’t make sense.

Because he was who he was.

He liked who he was.

But who was he exactly?

He knew the day he changed schools. His mom somehow knew, the way only mothers do, that the previous school wasn’t the right fit for him. His course orientation was ‘sciences’ and he almost failed everyone of his classes. Sander was struggling to keep afloat. Almost drowning at the formulas and facts and figures. Those were more abstract to him than art. Art made sense, somehow?

And that’s why his mom send him to an art school.

There he saw people with asymmetric hair, nose rings and cut t-shirts. Girls with alluring auras, rainbow shoes and paint covered arms. Boys with mesmerizing eyes, fresh make-up and decorated backpacks. Beautiful souls who talked about art like breathing. Who understood things like writer’s block, portrait frustration and tunnel vision.

And he fell in love with them, all of them.

His people.

It took him a few years to understand what else made him special. Because he did fall in love with people’s souls, their auras, instead of a specific gender. It was a highlight in his life when he figured that one out. He finally knew another piece of the puzzle. Life was complicated, but knowing something more about yourself, made it so much easier.

His first crush was on a dark skinned boy from his drawing class. He didn’t reciprocate feelings, but liked Sander as a friend. Ekon appreciated the way Sander caught him in his art pieces. Complimented him on how he perfectly attained his off-beat smile, when someone made a joke at his expense. He was a quiet boy. But a boy, nonetheless.

And then there was Saartje. An unconventional girl, even for an art school. She seemed to walk around like an ice queen surrounded by raging fires. Hated every thing he suggested to lift her sculptures to a new level, always answering his comments with a cold stare. Such a soft girly name for such a raging bitch.

And Sander couldn’t help but fall.

Hard.

Without parachute.

But she used that to her advantage.

His love was treated as an exchange. If Sander would shut up about his newest passion called David Bowie, she’d give him a kiss. When he asked her on a date, she would think about it. Maybe if Sander could persuade the teacher to give her a better grade? And if he paid? Being the hormonal teenager he was, he obliged. And he believed. He was tricked into uncertain love.

Something he carried with him.

Especially after his eventual diagnosis. He dated Britt. He thought he deserved this kind of love. The uncertainty, the doubt, the hardships. It was all his brain’s fault, for being the way he was. Love? Love was something to be earned, not to be given. And nobody would give that up so easily for someone as broken as him.

Until that one boy,

in the moonlight.

He never saw true beauty ‘til this night.

And his heart,

did love as true again.

-^-

“Do you want any help with that?”

“Papa, I know how to make myself look like Bowie, you know.”

Sander snorted. He was truly a son of his, wasn’t he? This tiny boy was sitting on a high chair, right in front of a mirror, attempting to put on the make-up in a dramatic way. The tip of his tongue spilling out his lips, trying very hard to focus. He couldn’t stop staring at this sight, which filled him with pride. He must have taught him well.

The next generation was secured.

“Dad, stop staring at me and go find my other dad.”, David said sternly.

Ok, but who was the parent in this relationship exactly? Sometimes Sander didn't know. Yet, catching the eye of the supervisor right behind him, he was sure that everything was going to be a-okay. Maybe he did needed to find Robbe and the boys. It’ll do him some good. It had been ages since they had some real interaction that wasn’t through a phone.

It wasn’t difficult to spot them through the crowd of curious adults. The exaggerated screaming at each other was enough. Robbe had been pulled into the biggest hug by Milan, flanked by a jumping Moyo, giggling Aaron and a serious Jens. It sounded like the weirdest end of the world. But the feeling that coursed through his heart wasn’t unusual.

Pride.

For what they all achieved.

How they all stayed together.

Through hell and back.

Moyo had, somehow, become a successful club owner of a couple of nightlife establishments all around the city. From an only-known-by-initiates speakeasy to a high paid, high-end sky club, he knew what he wanted to do with his life and brought it to the table. Jens, on the other hand, went on a totally different route. After failing to start a few start-ups, he became g a video editing/sound mix freelancer and stay-at-home dad to help his lawyer-wife.

Aaron was still on the grind as a social worker, working until late at night to fight for the hardest cases. “These people deserve a happy ending”, he’d always say. And Sander couldn’t agree more.

Last but not least, Milan. The interior designer with an ecological mind. He had helped them out with the decoration of their home, which was totally picture perfect. And still cheap as f.

After the whole ordeal of greeting, Robbe seemed to have a huge smile plastered on his face. That was good, Sander though. Lately he looked so lost, certainly in Sander’s neighborhood. And he didn’t know why. As far as he knew, he didn’t say or do anything wrong. On the contrary. He’d encouraged Robbe to bring Wouter along, saying it was totally okay to find love again.

Where was that bastard, anyways?

“Heeeeeey, Jack Frost!”, the entire group turned towards him and engulfed him into an instant hug. Causing a lot of high pitched giggling, ‘omg, your hand is on my butt’-s and eye rolls. The warmth next to him was familiar, though. As was the scent. Which made his heart drum a little harder, like it wasn’t stating the obvious already. Pulling away, the electrified gaze lingered.

“How are you?”, the one asked.

“I’m good.”, the other answered.

He wanted to know more. Sander always wanted to know more. His heart never stopped beating for this boy, so everything he would say, would be engraved in his soul. His broken mind. His eternal love. That would never change. Even through the pain, he knew that they belonged together. That it was neither fault. Life just happened.

Like always.

But before he could ask anything else, a woman approached the brown haired man. Some colorful glasses, a beautiful classic dress and an intrigued smile on her face. Robbe immediately greeted her as ‘Mrs. Raymaeckers’. “I saw David backstage. Are you ready to see the performance, Mr. Ijzermans?”, she politely asked. Robbe slowly nodded his head with a careful smile.

“Ofcourse, David is going to be amazing, he was bouncing off the walls about this. I’m interested in what he’s going to play...”

“Ah yes. The David Bowie thing. He’s truly special, isn’t he? Unique in some ways.”, she giggled, while wrapping her hand around his arm. Causing a lot of heads unsubtly turning towards the gesture.

“I love how he has such a playful spirit. Does he have that from his father or his mother?”. She blinked rapidly. Auburn hair tossed over her shoulder. A beaming smile.

Wait...

Was she...

Trying to flirt with him?

A potential married man?

Sander saw how the other boys desperately held in their laughs. Some of them failed. Robbe’s cheeks reddened slightly, like he didn’t know how to answer this delicate question.

She just assumed he was straight?

That was such heteronormativity.

It irked the beach blonde man, that people could still think this way, like a child couldn’t have two fathers or mothers?

“He has that from me, actually.”

Six pairs of eyes bore into his. Most of them applauding the ballsy move on his part, one of them grateful for this way out. The last one, however, went through a whole process.

Confusion, calculation, realization and shame.

“Oh... I’m sorry.”, Mrs. Raymaeckers sheepishly stated. "I didn’t know. I just assumed... Ahem. Well, I’m gonna check the rest. Bye, Mr Ijzermans. Bye, Mr-”

“Driesen.”, he answered coldly.

“Bye, Mr. Driesen.” And with that, she was gone. As fast as the wind.

He didn’t like it.

He just didn’t.

How people could still think the way they did, how they would just come up to potential married men and flirt with them? How was that okay?

He knew he was clenching his fist, because of the pain. Fingernails making tiny half moons. It stung. Jealousy and anger tasting like poison in his mouth. His stare trying to find a fixated spot to calm his breathing.

He found it in some deep brown eyes.

A cautious smile coming towards him. He knew. Robbe always knew what Sander needed, even when he didn’t know himself. He was intuitive that way. His beautiful man, such a perfect human. The father of his child. And he couldn’t help, but sigh. Breathing slowly, heart thumping. A small caress around his fist, trying to soften the harsh ache. Only making the ache in his heart greater.

“Robbe”, he whispered silently.

“Yeah, Sander?”

He didn’t say anything more. He couldn’t. Robbe needed to live his own life, making his own mistakes, battle his own prejudices. Feeling his own real love. So Sander just stood there. Looking at the face he adored the most and he started to notice something. It almost looked like Robbe was anticipating this, was waiting for some kind of answer, some kind of truth.

And that's when they heard it.

A David Bowie lookalike coming onto the stage.

Childlike coughing in the microphone.

The first notes of a guitar riff.

The scratchy start of ‘doodoodoo''.

The song.

David Bowie.

The sign.

“You've got your mother in a whirl She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl Hey babe, your hair's alright Hey babe, let's go out tonight You like me, and I like it all We like dancing and we look divine You love bands when they're playing hard You want more and you want it fast They put you down, they say I'm wrong You tacky thing, you put them on.

Rebel rebel, you've torn your dress Rebel rebel, your face is a mess Rebel rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so!”