#none of this is supposed to read as negative or self critical. I just enjoy talking about developing art skills and what's hard about it et

[raphaelderberry]

so this is probably my best digital painting yet!

reference image is from here (x) I have no rights to it and make no money from this.

[psychelis-new]

pick a pile: "Encouraging words for you"

take a breath and choose the photo or number that calls you the most to read a few encouraging words for yourself and your situation, especially if you have been through something and felt overwhelmed/stressed. take care of you and try to give yourself peace.

don’t take the reading too seriously. only take what resonates with you and leave the rest. if you're not called by any pile, let this reading slid as it may not hold messages for you. if you're called by more than one pile, there may be messages in each of those piles. remember that is a general reading and some things may not resonate with you. energies can change and readings are based on present ones (as you read); you're always in charge of your life.

(photos found on unsplash)

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1 2 3

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pile 1

Maybe at times you forget your worth and how special you are. You hide down in your negativity, in your sadness, in your habitual mental pattern that only wants to block you and let you think of you as unworthy and unlovable no matter what you do or don't. But you're just light. You shine bright. You bring warmth, smiles, care and support everywhere you go. You heal people just with your gentleness. You are this special even if you think you're none of them and tend to downplay yourself and all you do. Maybe you're just not aware of how people really see you. Or maybe you don't let them in that much... which is okay, you can also choose who to let in and how. But please, let those you feel like, in. Let them give you back cause you can receive all that you give.

You're healing big things at the moment. You're moving from this place of lack of self care and worth, a self judgment place where your inner critic thrives, to a lighter, simpler and fairer (for yourself) place. You're really going down within, and it's okay if you felt like you were over this: the more we approach a moment of big change, the more we need to uncover stuff and find our real self. Find a new balance within. This process can bring disruption, pain, doubts... but it's all okay. Hang in there, stay true to yourself. See yourself. See things through your intuition, do not let your mind and fears block you. Talk with them, understand their reasons, but show them a new possible and equally safe way to live (even if they cannot see it this way: go slow). You don't have to keep staying in the same place, you can learn to shine 24/7 as you're supposed to do. You can find your way out. You can trust and try something totally new and different. You can change everything, even your point of view (and you're called to).

songs: superstition | jon bryant; mi vida | justin park

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pile 2

Patience, calm, my friend. Life is made of ups & downs and that's fine. We also need to go through dark to be able to see the light. We need to make moves, make mistakes, try, to overcome blockages and grow. To become ourselves. It's painful at times, yes ofc, but it's nothing you cannot survive. You've been through so much and I understand you feel discouraged and tired at this moment, but you don't deserve to stop believing. You don't deserve to give up. You deserve a break, a moment for yourself, a time out. A walk in nature, to feel the sunbeams hitting your face and body, to feel the warmth of life enter your cold tired bones. You deserve more hope. And this is what this message is here for.

Give yourself a break, come back to your present life, enjoy the present moment and all that it has to offer you from life to connections. And yeah, maybe you are not where you wanted to be, maybe there's still a lot of work to reach your goals and maybe you cannot see the end of it and it's getting a lot to bear with, to wait for the right time, but deep down you know it will be worth it. So please, resist the urge to give up. Cry, let your pain out, and then reground yourself in any way you want or feel like. Play with your inner child, they want to help you chill and see things the way you used to, before life's experience complicated it all for you. Give yourself a break over what's not going as you'd like to, what's not going as planned, what you cannot see yet. Let fate work for you. Your prayers, your efforts, are not going unnoticed. You have a choice in how to deal with this moment: will you choose the hardest way (focusing on the negative side continuosly, which will only bring more to you) or the calmest way (taking into the picture also what's good and what can be good in the future if you give yourself and life a bit of time)? Do not overwork, it won't help. Answers will come to you at the right time.

songs: enchanted | taylor swift; that's why I love you | sir, sabrina claudio

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pile 3

You're so sweet and sensitive... please give yourself and your feelings the right importance. Put things back into the right perspective. You deserve to be cared for too. And if someone or something pains you, you should say it. At least, acknowledge that feeling, do not pretend it's fine when it's not. When you do so, you're teaching yourself (and others too) it's okay to mistreat you and to not consider yourself as important as anyone else. You're teaching yourself (and others too) you have no worth, which is untrue. You're so very worthy and fantastic. You're a blessing for those who can really see you and have you in their life. You can go distance for them... but not everyone can see it and appreciate it as they should. Many just take advantage of this.

Do not follow them, do not look over yourself to watch something that is far in the distance with them. Focus on you, on what's in front of you too (look at yourself in the mirror and start caring for the person you see there: do not hate them, they're doing their best. Cheer for them, love them as a best friend could and whatch them blossom. If it's too hard, give them a name and talk with them, help them, guide them as you would with a child or someone lost in your town -even if you don't know the roads' names, you can still help them little by little, maybe even take them where they need to go and have a chat while at it). Make your needs known, do not hide them: you're not too much, you're just human as anyone else (and if someone cannot deal with your needs or even dreams, or marks them as impossible, it's their problem not yours. Do not pick up their point of view, stick to yours. It's okay to dream and you deserve so much more than you believe). It's time to learn to shelter yourself from the harshness of the world and focus on the warmer side of it. You can find it, or you can create it. You're sweet and sensitive but you can make it, you're also very strong and you can find people that will protect and help you too. Frogs may be an omen; drawing/doodling (especially animals) can help you or you may called to do this (check the spiritual meaning of those animals if it happens).

songs: arms | christina perri; unplayed piano (instrumental version) | damien rice, lisa hannigan

[prettyrealm]

i love ur blog fr… one of my least favorite things about the tarot community (not just kpop) is how some people alter or water down their readings (or just aren’t perceptive enough) so that their content is more positive and validating for consumability… and the people who choose to be honest and direct get ate up 😭 divination can be harsh. idk why people are here expecting validation or only positive things. most of these idols are not nice!!

if you want a romantic story and enjoy living in denial, go to ao3!! wattpad or something?? y’all are looking for fanfiction. there are soooo many writing blogs on this site.

and i also have soooo much beef with like, pop culture tarot readings on youtube and tiktok that are clearlyyyyyy not too good in quality, but people eat it up blindly because it tells them things that they like to hear and never anything critical. i have a theory about that being one of the reasons why people assume honest readers have bad intentions or are hating on people. i don’t think people realize just how common it is to read on someone and get the vibe that they’re shitty in some capacity, or not even having to rely on intuition and to be directly told that there is something off about someone. idols aren’t usually any better than the average person, and the average person usually has bad traits. period. some are worse than the average person.

also… i have a problem with how it’s seen as perfectly fine to share the positive traits we’re able to pick up on through tarot, but sharing the negatives is seen as invasive?? like girl either it’s all invasive or none of it lmaooo. you’re okay consuming content that makes you feel like you’d be attractive to someone or reading about what their personality is like, but it’s too much when that same person says that they’d potentially be a bigot or have issues with stuff like anger? that’s when it’s too much??? 😭😭

Thank you so much for stopping by to show love!! I really appreciate your perspective and agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. 🩷

People were shocked by @dreamofmetoday and l’s ideal type readings being so specific and descriptive and we didn’t get why until we tapped in with other peoples readings and realized most are just saying very vague things or just things that EVERYONE is looking for in a partner (for example, kind, sympathetic, loyal) or just things that make it easy to self-insert in general. I think the self-insert aspect is a main reason people put such an emphasis on only focusing on the positive.

I also get asks demanding I tell them how I get such specific and detailed answers when it comes to things like homophobia/race/misogyny whatever, and it’s like, that’s just how it works? Makes me wish more people would get into tarot themselves so they could see.

The “romantic love story” crossover stuff that you mentioned is why I think you’ll often come across readings, and even PACs, on here that are like a wattpad story. like you said, many readers know there’s a large audience for this. For example when it comes to PACs, 3 pile PACs are a very quick and easy way to get followers and likes, but overall don’t exert a lot of energy and limit the amount of people who can actually connect with the PAC but then each pile will be filled with nuance, details and specifics and the reader is able to just say, “take what resonates and leave what doesn’t” to get away with it. How is someone even supposed to know what truly resonates and what doesn’t for a future spouse reading anyway? Not to mention, how can these readers suddenly get so much detail for a random pac and then not in their other readings or personal readings? There’s just a lot of predatory behavior in the tarot community unfortunately (thank you to melody’s anon for helping us label this finally too), and in turn, it creates a huge misunderstanding of what to expect from readings when you know nothing about tarot.

Not saying all 3 pile PACs are bad of course btw, because that would be ridiculous. There are of course situations where the 3 pile format makes sense, but a lot of them on here are just baiting.

In regards to positives being welcomed with open arms and negatives being considered invasive, it’s literally just nonsensical and honestly, a little weird (often the result of fetishization or idolization etc. so to say this under the pretense of high morals is odd… to say the least). I’ve seen people say things like “who are readers to decide what’s a negative?” when that’s literally not the case, it’s not a case of the reader “deciding” anything, I’m literally asking specifically about the negative traits. It makes me wonder what questions other readers are actually asking in the first place to even come to the conclusion that we would assigning these traits ourselves. Or the argument that “humans are multifaceted so we shouldn’t assign them blah blah blah” like… yeah… duh they’re multifaceted, which is why there’s literally a positives section? It just seems like they reach for excuses to defend their main point that the negatives of these men’s personalities just shouldn’t be acknowledged. It almost makes me feel like some people make these blogs to even improve their idols overall image on a smaller scale or have more control of the perception of it.

I really LOVE how you said “it’s either all invasive or none of it is” because that’s something Melody and I talk about together all the time. Their love lives and “kinks” aren’t invasive topics, but everything that could ruin someone’s fantasy about an idol is. In the end, you’re only allowed to post readings that let you daydream about being their best friend, boyfriend or girlfriend with no complications or obstacles I guess lol. Thanks again for sending this ask! It was really cool to unpack this and see that there’s a reader/follower on the same page. 🩷

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Michael Riedel vs Bernadette Peters – the Broadway Battle of 2003 and beyond

My previous piece gives a fairly comprehensive look at Bernadette and Gypsy through the ages; though there is at least one aspect of the 2003 revival that warrants further discussion:

Namely, Michael Riedel.

Today’s essay question then: “Riedel – gossip columnist extraordinaire, the “Butcher of Broadway”, spited male vindictive over not getting a lunch date with Bernadette Peters, or puppet-like mouthpiece of theatre’s shadowed elite? Discuss.”

It’s matter retrievable in print, or even kept alive in apocryphal memory throughout the theatre community to this day that Riedel was responsible for a campaign of unrelenting and caustic defamation against Bernadette as Rose in Gypsy around the 2003 season.

While “tabloids may [have been] sniping and the Internet chat rooms chirping”, when looking back at the minutiae, none were more vocal, prolific or influential in colouring early judgment than the “chief vulture [of] Mr. Riedel, who had written a string of vitriolic columns in which he said from the start that Ms. Peters was miscast”.

He continued to find other complaints and regularly attack her in print over an extended period of time.

Why? We’ll get there. There are a few theories to suggest. Firstly, how and what.

Primary to establish is that it perhaps would be foolish to expect anything else of Riedel.

Also an author and radio and TV show host, Riedel is best known as the “vituperative and compulsively readable” theatre columnist at The New York Post.

He’s a man who thrives on controversy, decrying: “Gossip is life!”

The man who says, “I’m a wimp when it comes to physical violence, but give me a keyboard and I’ll kill ya.”

“Inflicting pain, for him, is a jokey thing. ‘Michael has this cruel streak and a lack of empathy,’ says Susan Haskins, his close friend and co-host.”

And inflicting pain is what he did with Bernadette, in a saga that has become one of the most talked about and enduring moments of his career.

From the beginning, then.

Riedel started work at The Post in 1998.

His first words on Bernadette? “Oddly miscast in the Ethel Merman role,” in August of that year on Annie Get Your Gun. It was a sentiment he would carry across to his second mention six months later (“a seemingly odd choice to play the robust Annie Oakley”), and also across to the heart of his vitriolic coverage on her next Merman role in Gypsy.

 Negative coverage on Bernadette in Gypsy started in August 2002 when Riedel discussed the search for trying to find a new American producer for the show. It had initially been reported in late 2000 that a Gypsy revival with Bernadette was planned for London, before it was to transfer to Broadway. To begin with, Arthur Laurents was “eager to do Gypsy in London because it hadn't been seen in the West End since 1973”, and he “wanted to repeat [the] dreamlike triumph” he said Angela Lansbury’s production had been. But economic matters prevented this original plan, leaving the team looking for new producers in the US. Riedel suggested that Fran and Barry Wiessler step up as, “after all, they managed to sell the hell out of "Annie Get Your Gun," in which Peters…was also woefully miscast.”

He also quipped: “Industry joke: "Bernadette Peters in 'Gypsy'? Isn't she a little old to be playing Baby June?”, calling her “cutesy Peters” and again a “kewpie doll”.

Bernadette here seen side by side with the actual Baby June of the 2003 production – Kate Reinders.

Other publications to this point had discussed her “unusual” casting. Which was fairly self-evident. In contrast to being a surprising revelation that Bernadette Peters was not, in fact, Ethel Merman, this had been the intention from the start. Librettist Arthur “Laurents – whose idea it was to hire her – [said] going against type is exactly the point,” and Sam Mendes, as director, qualified “the tradition of battle axes in that role has been explored”.

It was Riedel who was the first to shift the focus from the obvious point that she was ‘differently cast’, to instead attach the negative prefix and intone that she was actually ‘MIS’ cast. According to him then, she was unsuitable, and would be unable to “carry the show, dramatically or vocally”. All before she had so much as sung a note or donned a stitch of her costume.

So no, it wasn’t then “the perception, widely held within the theater industry,” as he presented it, “that Peters is woefully miscast as Mama Rose”.

It was Riedel’s perception. And he took it, and ran with it, along with whatever else he could throw into the mix to drag both her and the show down for the next two years.

 As to another indication of how one single columnist can influence opinion and warp wider perception, just look to Riedel’s assessment of the show’s first preview. It is typically known as Riedel’s forte to “[break] with Broadway convention, [where] he attends the first night of previews, and reports on the problems…before the critics have their say”. This gives him “clout” by way of mining “terrain that goes relatively uncovered elsewhere”, and it means subsequent journals are frequently looking to him from whom to take their lead – and quotes.

At Gypsy’s opening preview then, he reported visions of “Arthur Laurents [charging] up the aisle…on fire”, loudly and vocally expressing his dissatisfaction with the show as he then “read Fox [a producer] the riot act”. Despite the fact that this was “not true, according to Laurents,” the damage was already done, with the sentiment of trouble and tension being subsequently reprinted and distributed out to the public across many a regional paper.

News travels fast, bad news travels faster.

 And news can be created at an ample rate, when in possession of one’s own regular periodical column. This recurring domain allowed plentiful opportunity for attack on Bernadette and Gypsy, and Riedel “began devoting nearly every column to the subject,” which amounted to weekly or even more frequent references.

As the show progressed beyond its first preview, Riedel brought in the next aspects of his smear-campaign – assailing Bernadette for missing performances through illness and accusing Ben Brantley, who reviewed the show positively in The New York Times, of unfair favouritism and “hyperbolic spin”.

The issue is not that Bernadette was not in fact ill or missing performances. She was. She had a diagnosis at first of “a cold and vocal strain”, that then progressed more seriously to a “respiratory infection” the following week, and was “told by her doctors that she needs to rest”. So rest she did.

The issue is the way in which Riedel depicted the situation and her absences via hyperbole and “insinuating she was shirking” responsibility. He went further than continual, repeated mentions and cruel article titles like “wilted Rose”, or “sick Rose losing bloom”, or “beloved but - ahem-cough-cough-ahem - vocally challenged and miscast star”. He went as far as the sensationalist and degrading action of putting “Peters' face on the side of a milk carton, the kind of advertisement typically used to recover lost children,” and asking readers to look out for “bee-stung lips, [a] high-pitched voice, [and a] kewpie doll figure”, who “may be clutching a box of tissues and a love letter from Ben Brantley”.

It was quantified in May of 2003 after the show had officially opened, that “out of the 39 performances "Gypsy" has played so far, [Bernadette] has missed six – an absence rate of 15 percent.”

As an interesting comparison, it was reported in The Times in February 2002 that “‘The Producers' stars Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick have performed together only eight times in last 43 performances due to scheduling problems and health concerns,” – an absence rate of 81%.

Did Riedel have anything nearly as ardent to say about the main male stars of the previous season’s hit missing such a rate of performances? Of course not.

 Riedel arguably has a disproportionate rate for criticising female divas.

One need only heed his recommendations that certain women check into his illuminatingly named “Rosie's Rest Home for Broadway Divas.” Divos need not apply.

Not that he was unaware of this.

In 2004, Riedel would jovially lay out that “Liz Smith and I have developed a nice tag-team act: I bash fragile Broadway leading ladies who miss performances, and she rides to their rescue.”

Donna Murphy was the recipient of what he that year dubbed his “BERNADETTE PETERS ATTENDANCE AWARD”, when she began missing performances in “Wonderful Town”, due to “severe back and neck injuries and a series of colds and sinus infections”.

This speaks to his remarkably cavalier and joyful attitude with which he tears down shows and performers. “The more Mr. Riedel's work upsets people, the more he enjoys it.”

He knows he yields influence – it was recognised he had “eclipsed Ben Brantley as the single most discussed element in marketing meetings for Broadway shows” – and he delights in his capacity to lead shows to premature demises through his poison-tipped quill yielding.

When it was reported Gypsy would be closing earlier than had been planned, he made mention of “hop[ping] around on [its] grave” and debonairly applauding himself, “I suppose I can take some credit for bringing it down”.

 His premonition from the previous year’s Tony’s ceremony was both ominous and prescient, when he predicted the show’s failure to win any awards “could spell trouble at the box office”. He was right. It did. The 8.5 million dollar revival closed months before anticipated and failed to return a profit.

Multiple factors can be attributed to Gypsy’s poor success at the Tony’s, but it’s clear to say Riedel’s continual bashing leading up to the fated night throughout the voting period certainly didn’t help matters.

His suggestions to do with Bernadette’s performances were not helpful either.

After alleging Laurents as the director of the 1991 revival “practically beat a performance out of” Tyne Daly when she was struggling with the role, he proffers that to improve Bernadette’s success, “it may be time for [Laurents] to take up the switch and thrash one out of Peters”.

Great.

It was irresponsible and unrelenting commentary that did not go unnoticed.

His “ruthless heckling of beloved Broadway star Ms. Peters” was deemed in print “his most egregious stunt so far”.

Vividly, in person, Riedel was accosted at a party one night by Floria Lasky, the venerable showbiz lawyer, who “grab[bed] Riedel’s tie and jerk[ed] it, nooselike, scolding, ‘It was unfair, what you did to Bernadette’”.

Moreover, the wide-reaching influential hold Riedel occupied over the environment surrounding Gypsy was tangible in the fact his words spread beyond just average readers, and even unusually “started seeping into the reviews of New York's top critics”. Riedel himself, as the “chief vulture”, was indeed what Ben Brantley was referring to in his own New York Times review by stating how the production was “shadowed by vultures predicting disaster”.

Even more substantially, the “whole Peters-Riedel-Brantley episode” became its own enduring cultural reference – being converted into its very own “satiric cabaret piece, ‘Bernadette and the Butcher of Broadway’”. All three parties were featured, with Riedel characterised as the butcher, and it played Off-Broadway later in 2003 “to positive notices”.

 But penitent for his sins and begging for absolution Riedel was not. “Riedel saw nothing but a great story and a great time,” and for many years after, he would continue to hark back to the matter in self-referential (almost reverential) and flippant ways.

In 2008 as Patti LuPone won her Tony for her turn as Rose in the subsequent revival, Riedel couldn’t help but jibe, “Not to rip open an old wound, but I'd love to know if Bernadette Peters was watching”. (He neglects also to mention that “Mendes’s Gypsy was seen by 100,000 more people than saw Laurents’s and grossed $6 million more”.)

More jibes are to be found in 2012 as he reported on the auction after Arthur Laurents’ funeral, or even as recently in 2019, as he asked, “Remember the outcry that greeted Sam Mendes’ Brechtian “Gypsy,” with Bernadette Peters, in 2003?”

As with in 2004 where he points to the “pack of jackals who have been snarling” about Bernadette’s failures, this brings up the canny knack Riedel has of offloading his views to bigger and detached third party sources – thus absolving himself of personal centrality, and thus culpability.

If there was an outcry, HE was its loudest contributor. If there were snarling jackals, HE was their leader.

Maybe Riedel’s third person detached approach to referencing matters was intended to be a humorous stylistic quirk for those in the know. Or maybe it was his way of expressing some inner turmoil over the event.

In some rare display of morality and emotional authenticity, Riedel would at one point admit “I find it kind of sad and pathetic that the high point of my life supposedly has been about beating up on Bernadette Peters”.

Fortunately for him then, a degree of absolution was eventually achieved in 2018, where Riedel visited Bernadette at her opening night in Hello Dolly in 2018, with the intention of ending their “15-year feud”. He “got down on one knee at Sardi’s and extended his hand,” with Bernadette reportedly yelling “Take a picture!” while he held his deferential and obsequious position on the floor.

So if eventually this “feud” has some kind of circular resolution and Riedel was glad it was over, why on earth did it begin in the first place?

One notion is that it was simply another day on the job. Riedel is a man who sees Broadway as “a game for rich people”. Positioned as an “an industry that brought in $720.9 million in the 2002-2003 season”, it is “not a fragile business”, he remarked. As such, he “[could not] fathom the point of donning kid gloves” in covering it, and reasoned the business as a whole was robust enough to weather a few hard knocks. “Thus, Riedel can coolly view Bernadette Peters as fair game, as opposed to, say, a national treasure”.

More to the point, he was a man in search of words. During the season in question, Riedel was “one of just three New York newspaper columnists covering the stage” – a “throwback to a bygone era when…Broadway gossipmeisters…such as Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen ruled”. Now at the time, as the “last of a great tabloid tradition”, Riedel presided over not just one but two columns a week at The Post. As a result, he was in need of content. “One of the reasons I've become more opinionated is I just have more space to fill,” he admitted. Robert Simonson hypothesises in his book ‘On Broadway Men, Still Wear Hats’ that Riedel may have consequently picked “the thrashing of Bernadette” as his main target simply because “it was a slow news cycle”. Options for ‘titillating’ and durable content were scarce elsewhere that season.

And after all, if Riedel would later cite Bernadette in an article concerning the Top 10 Powerhouses of Broadway in 2004, saying even despite a few knocks or bad shows, “she’ll bounce back” – surely there was no real damage done.

If her career wouldn’t be toppled by his continual public defamation and haranguing, what was the harm?

Feelings? Who cares about feelings or Bernadette’s extremely complex and personal history with the show stretching back to when she was a teenager.

It was just part of the territory, there was nothing personal in it.

 Or was there?

Maybe there was something personal in Riedel’s campaign after all.

He makes a curious comment while discussing ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in 2004. The then incoming star of the show, rapper P. Diddy, had invited Riedel to dinner, and he makes judgement that this was “a smart p.r. move”. Then he ponders, “you do have to wonder: If Bernadette Peters had broken bread with me this time last year, would her chorus boys have to be out there now working the TKTS line to keep "Gypsy" afloat?”

Might he be going as far to suggest that if Bernadette had indulged him in a meal, her show might not have suffered so, by way of him being more inclined to cover it with greater lenience?

It may seem that way, at least in considering how Riedel reviewed P. Diddy’s performance thus after their dinner: “Riedel pronounced himself impressed. ‘He could have forgotten his lines or had to be carried offstage. He didn’t do anything terrible, he didn’t do anything astonishing.’”

Seemingly all the rapper had to do was remember some words and remain physically onstage, and he sails through scot-free. That’s a rather different outcome, one could say, to being absolutely eviscerated for what became a Tony nominated effort at one of the appreciably hardest and most demanding musical theatre roles in existence.

Though perhaps it’s hard to tell if that was really his insinuation from just one isolated comment pertaining to lunch.

This argument might be fine, if it WAS the only isolated comment pertaining to wanting Bernadette to have lunch with him. But it isn’t. Riedel continues to make a further two references over protracted periods of time to the fact Bernadette hasn’t dined with him.

One begins to get the sense of him feeling desiring of or somewhat entitled to such a private lunch with the lady he’s verbally decimated for years, and a sense of bitter rejection that he hasn’t been granted one.

“If Tonya Pinkins doesn't win the Tony Award this year, I'll buy Bernadette Peters lunch,” he simpered, and later, “I invite Bernadette to be my guest for lunch at a restaurant of her choosing. She can reach me at The Post anytime she's hungry”.

The embittered columnist in this light takes on now the marred tinge of a small boy in the playground who doesn’t get to hold the hand of the girl he wants in front of his friends, so spends the next three years pushing her over in the sandpit in revenge.

Moreover, the last statement makes undeniable comment on Bernadette’s troubled relationship with food, body image and public eating.

So now not only so far has he insulted and mocked her physical appearance and played into all the usual trite shots calling her a “kewpie doll”; suggested Arthur Laurents violently hit her in order to elicit a better performance; continually publicly harassed her regarding a show that strikes close to the nerve with deep personal and psychological resonances due to her mother and childhood; but now he’s going for the low-blows of ridiculing her over her eating habits.

Flawless behaviour.

 Maybe it’s far-fetched to suggest a man would have such a fragile ego to run a multi-year public defamation campaign after so little as not getting his hypothesised fantasy of a personal lunch date. But then again, this was the man who “left Johns Hopkins University after his first year because of a broken heart.” (“I was in love with her; she wasn't in love with me,” he said.)

And also the man described as “an insomniac who pops the occasional Ambien,” living in a “small one-bedroom” that is “single-guy sloppy”, who has “been living alone since a four-year romance ended in 1996”.

The man whose own best friend called “cruel” and with a “lack of empathy”.

The man whose own sister answered that “well, yes,” he’s always been mean; and after being picked on as a kid for “being the small guy and the intellectual”, he grew dependent on using “his verbal ability to beat someone” and put himself in positions of defensive impenetrability.

See, writing Riedel-esque, vindictive and provocative conjecture is no especially challenging or cerebral task.

Riedel may well see his approach to ‘journalism’ or reporting as “all fun and games”.

But I for one am not laughing.

 One final aspect to address when considering Riedel’s reasoning for the depth of his coverage on Bernadette demands attention of how he gets his information. His own personal opinions and motivations aside, crucially he depends on insider providers for insider details. Perhaps somewhat alarmingly then, “leading Broadway producers themselves are among his sources”.

“Half of Broadway hates him. The other half leaks to him”, John Heilpern titled his 2012 Vanity Fair profile on Riedel.

As such, in frequently taking his lead from “theater folk, usually with an ax to grind”, Riedel acts as the mouthpiece to bring secretive backstage reports out front. High-up, influential characters are thus able to funnel their agendas into public view, while keeping their identities hidden.

Notably, it was raised in the above article that Riedel’s “merciless running story” regarding Bernadette in Gypsy “was fed by none other than its renowned librettist, Arthur Laurents—or, more precisely, by Laurents's lover”.

Contrary to the smiley picture below between members of the show’s creative team and it’s beloved star, it was no secret that Laurents did not like Mendes’ 2003 revival. Laurents told Riedel that “Sam did a terrible disservice to Bernadette and the play, and I wanted a Gypsy seen in New York that was good… You have to have musical theater in your bones, and Sam doesn't”. In fact, Laurents admitted the only reason his 2009 book ‘Mainly on Directing’ came into existence was because of how much he had to criticise about the show – it grew out of the extensive set of notes he gave Mendes.

Additionally, it was no secret that Laurents’ lover, Tom Hatcher, demonstrated both a desire and capacity to influence Arthur’s productions. As well as being the driving force for the 2009 Spanish-speaking reworking of West Side Story, Hatcher had intense investment in Gypsy specifically. Patti LuPone writes in her memoir, “From his deathbed, Tom had told Arthur, ‘You have to do Gypsy, and you have to do it with Patti’. It was one of his dying wishes”. Laurents himself, in corroboration of this, explained Tom’s reasoning – “he didn't want the Sam Mendes production to be New York's last memory of Gypsy”.

The allegation in Heilpern’s profile might be hard to prove from an outsider perspective. But given that neither were happy with Mendes’ production and both actively took steps to ensuring it would be superseded in memory, it is not completely implausible.

 Overarchingly, as much as Riedel’s writing may benefit FROM insider sources, it is said he does not write in benefit OF them. For instance, although friends with Scott Rudin in 2004, an animated (nay threatening) warning from Mr Rudin asking Riedel to “back off” from “slamming” his show, Caroline or Change, seemingly “had no impact”.

That’s not to cite total impartiality or exemption from personal connections and higher up influences colouring his reports of shows. Theatre publicist John Barlow would describe that sometimes “if you ask Michael to kill [one of his pieces], he will, if it’s someone with whom he does business”.

But it would be remiss not to mention that his influences and sources stretch beyond just the big wigs. Amongst his other informants too are the more lowly, overlooked folk like “the stagehands, the ushers, chorus kids, house managers, and press agents… the guys who build sets in the Bronx”. Basically, for anyone who’ll talk, Riedel will listen.

“Michael Riedel doesn't work for the producers or the publicists; he works for the reader,” one publicist said. “Sometimes we're glad of that, sometimes we're not-but at the end of the day, that's the reality.”

Sometimes he’s nice, sometimes he’s not – but the world goes round.

Through all that’s been explored, it should be stated how painful and injurious it must be for individual performers or shows to fall upon the unmitigated, maiming force of being on the wrong side of Riedel’s favour. The way he approached coverage on Bernadette is deplorable from an emotional and personal standpoint. Some would argue that it was too far and crossed a line and was most definitely unfair. Others would say it was justified. It’s hard not to sound petulant as the former, or heartless as the latter.

While his actions may indeed be abrasively wounding in isolated (often plentiful) cases, it’s unreasonable to say Riedel’s intentions would be to cripple the Broadway industry as a whole. There are those who purport that Riedel in fact “keeps Broadway alive with his controversies”. His words may not always be ‘nice’ but it’s difficult to argue they're not engaging.

Many are quick to criticize or react impassionedly to him and his columns; but few are quick to stop reading them. And Riedel “knows that the most important thing is being well read”.

Hence it is understandable why Riedel is appraised as “the columnist Broadway loves to hate”. Through his enthralling and stimulating bag of linguistic and dramatic tricks, Riedel knows how to keep the readers coming back. “He’s lively, and he makes the theater seem like an interesting place,” one producer did reason.

“There are times when no one's going to care about Broadway if you don't have a gossip angle that focuses on the backstage drama,” opined George Rush, the Daily News gossip columnist who was once Riedel's boss.

Perhaps it is logically and principally then, if somewhat cynically, a matter of believing “it's just business” and knowing how to “play the game”.

As Riedel himself would rationalise, “It’s all an act. You gotta have a gimmick, as they say in Gypsy.”

It may not be pleasant, but in a world increasingly dependent on sensationalistic and clickbait-driven engagement, it’s probably not going to change any time soon.

 Well then, if he can live with the toll of the position of moral tumult his column puts him in, so be it.

That he described his mind as being “constantly on the next deadline”, saying “I always think about the column”, and likening writing it to “standing under a windmill”, where “you dodge one blade, but there's always another one coming right behind it”, may be some indication that he can't. At least not wholly easily.

I’ll leave that to him to figure out. Off the record.

[dredshirtroberts]

Tagged by @tumbleweedtech!!

What is your total word count on AO3?

Oh thank god you're asking me to look there where they calculate it for me so i don't have to try and figure it out across all eleventy-million of my fucking WIPs xD.

uhhhhh looks like...274,424 heh. that's lower than i thought but then again I post very little of what i actually write so...

How many fandoms have you written for?

On AO3? if I lump the related ones together (which i do) it's 4. If we're talking across the board in general? uh...f u c k. there's so much i haven't posted or thought about posting yet. just go ahead and like. add ten more on top of the four fandoms on AO3 i think that's about close if we're counting crossovers and inspired-bys

What were your top 5 fics by kudos?

Right Back to the Beginning

Constellations

Please, What?

Spearwort, Iris and Ash: Spearwort Yellow for Joy

Lia & Em's Adventure In Thedas Part I: The Wrath of Heaven

Do you respond to comments - why, why not?

I... want to? I try sometimes, if someone's comment touches me or came at a particularly bad time. It's overwhelming to respond to people - I'm a lurker by nature and never really grew out of the habit of teen-me knowing i wasn't supposed to be looking at the fics i was reading and so i wouldn't interact with them or the authors at all. So it can be hard to like. reconcile that I'm a fully grown adult person who is allowed to not only read and write what i enjoy but also that like. other adult people are reading and enjoying what i write? and that they'd want to tell me? I admit to also falling out of what little habit i'd started due to continued weirdly critical (yet not *negative*) comments that just. rub me the wrong way so I can't figure out how to respond? yeah.

What's your fic with the angsty-est ending?

Again I guess if we're going by what's actually posted, I'd probably have to say the Super Fucking Old fic I added from my FF.net days: A Late Summer Afternoon (hopefully that's the right link - sometimes copy and paste doesn't work the way i want). warnings for MCD. I...imagine you might be able to pick up on why that one's my angstiest ending xD I generally try to like. end my stories on a positive note? even if it's not all better yet - so the second angstiest would be Color of Your Eyes or Have This probably. Likely more Have This over Color of Your Eyes but they're both relatively tame as compared to my earliest writing xD

Do you write crossovers?

Uh...yes but i haven't posted any yet. Most of the reason nothing I write gets posted is because I am incapable of writing small projects and I get nervous about posting chapters before i know where i story is going yet because i feel like i can't edit if it's been posted? Anyway I'm going to try and get over that eventually. Not right now, though. I still have to edit some stuff.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Hate is a strong word. I...assume most people who have commented mean well, regardless of how their comments may come off to me on my end. Several have rubbed me the wrong way due to phrasing and an inability to read tone over text-based communication, but I refuse to believe they would have kept reading if they didn't like most of the story. Certainly it has been generally positive feedback across the board so I don't feel comfortable at all calling any negative comments i've received (intentional or not) "hate"

Have you ever had a story stolen?

As far as I'm aware, no. Thankfully I tend to write shit that people just don't care that much about so I'm pretty safe I think. Watch that come bite me in the ass xD

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nah. I hope one day to be proficient in my target language and will be able to translate my own fics myself but see aforementioned note about how no one really cares that much about what i write xD it won't happen unless i do it myself.

What is your all time favourite pairing?

You want me? to pick favorites? in THIS economy?

What is a fic you would like to finish but don't think you ever will?

currently none are looking like "never gonna finish"es which is good. RBttB sat unfinished for a long while and I probably won't polish the ending on that one, but it's technically done. I also don't want to finish that one either so. it wouldn't have fulfilled the requirements of the question.

Writing strengths?

You want me? to compliment myself? in THIS econo- alright alright i know, it's a terrible joke. Uh...I understand i'm pretty good at smut. and descriptions? i think? I feel like my humor is unparalleled but that's also because i'm pretty sure i'm the funniest person in my apartment (we'll just casually not mention i live alone...) Seamless integration of current and historical memes? Puns? i don't know. i am super confident about writing but i couldn't tell you for sure what i'm actually strong at.

Writing weaknesses?

uh. Getting anything finished. endings. d i a l o g u e. writing. flow. pacing. repetition. writing. see what i did there? i told you my humor was awesome. no but really i struggle with actually starting to write and then it ends up being a lot of me repeating myself a bunch until i find the sentence or four that work best. and like. my pacing is weird so it can be hard to...figure out what i'm trying to say? oh and commas. i use commas wrong.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages?

I enjoy the shit out of it. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but I try really hard to get it right. if I'm not 100% positive it's correct I will change the whole sentence. mostly because i only know a handful of people who know languages other than English and I am bad at reaching out for help when I need it. mostly the second part though.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

YuYu Hakusho! A friend and I wrote this epic fucking self-insert not-quite-isekai style fanfic back and forth in notebooks back in the 6th grade (which was about...oh. nearly 20 years ago jesus i'm old). Only one of my notebooks survived when she decided anime was demons and the devil trying to tempt her away from Jesus so a lot of the story was lost. It was also in pencil so it's half worn out of the notebook as it is. then there was the phase i went through where i decided i could make my notebooks more interesting by cutting them into shapes which lost me a bit of text in the margins that i'd forgotten about... look we're mostly lucky i had it at all or that i've kept it all these years. Why do i still have it?...hm.

What's your favourite fic?

Of mine? So far it's probably a toss-up between Spearwort, Iris and Ash and Lia & Em's Adventure in Thedas. you know. My two biggest projects Oh...oh possibly also the Current-Reworking-The-Title fic I've started that I've not posted anything of yet in the Arcana fandom. Which is also a huge major project. I don't write small if I can help it, apparently.

of someone else's? You want me? to choose favorites? in THIS- yes i know that's the same joke three times. I think it changes based on what I need most out of my fic reading experience. I have an extensive bookmark collection on AO3. one of them in there's probably holding a spot as favorite, most likely.

Tagging: @concertconfetti, @daughterofdungeonbat, and anyone else who wants to do this! If you want a specific tag to do this, please LMK and i'll tag you <33

[bigskydreaming]

You’re a disgusting, abuse-survivor-shaming cunt. I hope you choke, I truly do.

So I get way more of these kinds of messages than I could possibly ever count. Have been for years. I don’t generally reply to them the way I mock some other hate messages I can at least have fun with, because like, what’s there to say about this kinda thing, y’know?

I don’t know how to get people to understand that there is NOTHING hypothetical about my anger about the things in fandom I get angry about. My rants about dark fic are PERSONAL, they have NOTHING to do with some arbitrary moral superiority stance. I don’t make assumptions as to others’ survivor status or motivations for writing various things because I don’t HAVE to, my anger and frustration are with the OUTPUT, not the inciting reasons. 

My hostility towards fandom comes directly from the hostility fandom shows me every time people try to convince me that I have no reason to have the reactions I do to the way they interact with the extremely combustible topics that define my own trauma and that of others. And the fact that fandom at large has decided that the ONLY acceptable reactions from survivors upon seeing others engaging with these sensitive topics in any way they choose, is either to be silent, or to take part in it. 

I don’t have to know which writers of which fics are or aren’t actually survivors attempting coping mechanisms of their own to be fucking furious at the way fandom has literally commodified these traumas, made them exploitable by making the catchphrase “some people write dark fic to cope” all-inclusive, utilized by anyone. With no shame or self-scrutiny as to the fact that YOU at least know if you are or aren’t a survivor, and if you aren’t one, you have ZERO business offering this particular line up as a defense to any survivor taking issue with the ways you embrace particular topics in particular ways.

The only things I have any interest in shaming people for is their choices, the fucking CHOICE to turn on any survivor who dares say “I have issues with this take” and this goes for abuse as much as it does rape. I’ve lost count of the number of authors over the years who HAVE spoken of being rape survivors specifically but then turn around and treat childhood physical abuse as their personal playground, with none of the care they put into crafting rape storylines on display when they casually have male abuse survivors punching each other in every other argument and just citing ‘boys will be boys.’ I can have sympathy for their status and experiences as rape survivors while still being upset at how they simultaneously perpetuate so many of the untruths that make it so hard for abuse survivors to affirm that they have actually been abused rather than call it something that its not, something that they’ve seen writers call it because the writers simply don’t want to inspect the fact that they’ve casually and without awareness written their characters abusing another.

It’s not a zero sum game.

I get angry not because I feel powerless in my own life (I don’t, actually, thanks, I’ve taken actionable steps every single day to fix what’s wrong in my own life and lol that’s power baby), and not because I’m fixated on my own trauma and unwilling to move past it (lol yeah I have no money to spend on anything BUT therapy because I’m committing to the highly specialized and expensive therapy I only arrived at after years of trial and error with other forms because I just don’t want to move past any of this, okay sure).

Nah, I get angry because of the galaxy brain intellects who smarmingly just decide on this view of me for themselves, condescension dripping from every ‘well-meaning’ expression of contempt sympathy, with zero examination of the fact that like.....idk guys, its a little hard to move past my trauma when everyone ELSE seems more fixated on it than I do! LOL, so we’re just gonna skip merrily on by the fact that the only reason its an ISSUE for me in fandom is because its EVERYWHERE in fandom, huh? ‘Mind the tags’ people parrot mindlessly, as though its not like tags HAVE to be created with self-awareness for what people are supposed to mind, or like I haven’t had people literally try to trigger me with tags aimed specifically at getting under my skin as ‘payback’ for something I wrote (out of moral superiority, naturally, not a visceral display of emotion, never that). As though the tags have anything to do with the fact that even outside of Ao3, there are incest-themed shipping weeks every single month of the year, that every major discord server and fic exchange and other fandom wide event demands participants be ‘ship-friendly’ which might as well be code for ‘not friendly to anyone who doesn’t prioritize ships over survivors,’ like fandom hasn’t created a culture in which people are more inclined to be defensive over how people make writers FEEL about stuff they’ve written than they are to be defensive over how certain writing makes various survivors feel.

I’ll never get over how a fandom that universally expressed disdain for Devin Grayson’s disrespectful handling of the sensitive topic of rape has obliviously embraced every form of euphemism under the sun for their own content, and just flat out REFUSES to concede that there is ANY room for criticism in ANY handling of even the most sensitive of topics. Because there’s no sensitivity allowed when it comes to any topic in fandom....unless its the writer’s sensitivity, that must be respected at all costs.

Does that not really strike you as....odd? Aren’t there lines out there about how no society or culture or environment that truly embraces free speech can simultaneously embrace freedom from criticism? And yet time and time again, its anyone who dares criticize - in ANY fashion - the HOW of what someone wrote, not even the WHY, they’re the ones termed authoritarian, censor, the one attempting to SHUT DOWN conversation rather than expand upon it. Tell me, what conversation was THIS anon and similar ilk attempting to invite? Every criticism I write of fandom invites people to engage with it. I fucking BEG people to engage with it. You’re the ones who choose not to. At least not in good faith. Because its only when I refuse to let you move the goalposts from anything other than this being about me reacting to what you wrote, no aim at doing anything other than being a reaction to an action, not an attempt to tell you what to do, just an attempt to get you to tell me WHY, if it really is as defensible as you loftily claim it is - then why is it you just can’t tell me, straight to my face, that it doesn’t matter what negative reaction your writing evokes, you don’t actually have to care? Cuz you don’t, of course. But if you’re that content with your own motivations, your own impact, why so uncomfortable just saying that?

The funny thing is, I truly don’t make any assumptions as to the why of anyone writing dark fic. I have a lot to say about the fact that we all know damn well that at least some of the people offering up the ‘some survivors use dark fic to cope’ aren’t speaking of themselves when they do so, but I have ZERO interest in imagining who that is and why. I’ve spoken of the fact that its willful naivete to assume that even if your own motivations for writing certain content are innocent in your own mind, you can’t assume the same of EVERYONE. That its nothing but willfulness to pretend that actual predators don’t peruse the same content. That the very same factors that make Dick Grayson so appealing to survivors, for example, as a strong heroic character who neverthless has been victimized and violated more than once - the flip side of this coin is this of course makes him EQUALLY appealing to people on the other end of things....a strong heroic character who nevertheless can be victimized and violated more than once.

And yet I honestly, truly have no interest in figuring out who might be whom, when it comes to writers, and I don’t assume everyone who writes or reads certain content in certain ways is in the latter camp. IT DOES ME NO GOOD, to go through life assuming that many people are all potential rapists or inclined to side with my own rapists’ or abusers’ side of things. I CHOOSE to give people the benefit of the doubt there, I assume perhaps they ARE survivors trying in good faith to cope with their own trauma and defensive about hearing that butts up against with other survivors trying to move on in other ways, or that they’re simply people who grew up in fandom being told there is nothing they can write that can be termed wrong, and have trouble with such a deeply held conviction being contested. Or perhaps only got into shipping incest because the ‘fandom elders’ of various fandoms like SPN deliberately and with full intent once upon a time pitched incest as being the same kind of taboo relationship that the same kind of people who forced gay men into secretive relationships were against....that incest ships and closeted gay ships were basically the same, and so as the latter became less of a thing as media showed more open gay relationships, incest ships became more of a thing among fans who were really compelled by the secretive/’society’s against them’ aspect of forbidden love.

I don’t assume any of that on a ONE TO ONE basis with any single writer or reader because I don’t KNOW their personal story and I’m not TRYING to. It makes no difference when I’m not talking about or arguing against the WHY of someone doing a thing, but the HOW. The end result, and the interactions it creates in the environment in which their output is published, shared, celebrated.

All at the expense of any survivor who doesn’t enjoy seeing things they’ve struggled with getting taken seriously about, maybe all their lives....not taken seriously, and offered up as just a themed week on the latest fantasy porn prompt generator. The problem with incest shippers isn’t even just ‘you ship incest, why do you do that,’ its that you can’t seem to manage to do it without assuming anyone who objects is only doing so out of a place of moral superiority. You try and make it a hypothetical argument “well what about when you do this” as opposed to something rooted in the here and now of the personal. We’re not talking about what ifs, we’re talking about what is. Deal with that before you try raising something else, instead of always raising something else so you never have to deal with that. 

The problem is people condescendingly assuming we have ZERO basis for any objection, or any negative reaction at all. Its our own fault, you see, for being too stupid to get that fiction doesn’t affect reality (even though we’ve debunked that time and time again). Its our own fault, you see, for not getting that its not really incest BECAUSE (a claim that is never actually as universal as it tries to pretend to be, and thus is never more than a distraction for the specific argument that prompted it). Its our own fault, you see, for not getting that this isn’t really a big deal, there are bigger problems, and its awfully sad if we’re so fragile and delicate we can’t handle someone enjoying something that has nothing to do with us (even though its never your call whether or not it has anything to do with us, just as its never our call what your specific motivations for writing specific content might be).

The problem is the same thing I’ve been dealing with all my life, and all the more exhausting for it being front and center in fandoms that claim to be escapism and catharsis for survivors....as long as those survivors perform in the manner fandom is comfortable with....aka the manner fandom has exploited and commodified in order to make certain manners of enjoying certain topics possible and defensible for ALL fans, regardless of their own connection to such topics, or motivations surrounding them.

Denial, avoidance, and abdication of responsibility. There’s no problem if YOU don’t see a problem, after all. There can’t be a problem if you just refuse to acknowledge a problem. A problem has nothing to do with you if you simply have nothing to do with it.

And all the while, you continue engaging in the same behaviors that provoke the same reactions that you refuse to ever actually engage with or address, relying on gaslighting to try and sell people and everyone around them that THEY’RE the real problem....its us that have no respect for freedom of speech, creativity or the creative process, other peoples’ traumas, the difference between fantasy and reality, etc etc ad nauseam.

We see people waving away instances of physical abuse with textbook abuse apologism, and we’re told we don’t know what we’re talking about. We see people offering up wording and phrasing in the comment sections of fics that are literally textbook grooming techniques we recognize from our own experiences and we’re told we’re imagining things. We see characters raping others without it being described as rape and we’re told we didn’t mind the tags, even though oddly enough, none of the tags actually said ‘rape’ but rather other euphemisms and if they aren’t in place to tell readers not to expect actual rape in the actual fic, then, what purpose is it they actually serve, again?

But sure.

Talk to me some more about survivor-shaming. 

[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.

[gabewashington]

GABRIEL INTRODUCTION. 

( diggy simmons, cis male, he/him/his ) gabriel “gabe” washington just strolled through the quad, the twenty year old sophomore is majoring in photography. rumor has it they are friendly & over-critical. i also hear they are bisexual and they’re pretty into lovemaking & anal sex.

BASIC INFORMATION:

FULL NAME: Gabriel Porter Washington NICKNAME(S): Gabe, G, Gabey (he hates this one though)  PREFERRED NAME(S): Gabe BIRTH DATE: December 24 AGE: 20  ZODIAC: Capricorn GENDER: Cis Male PRONOUNS: He/Him/His ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual NATIONALITY: American ETHNICITY: Black OCCUPATION: Student CLASSIFICATION: Sophomore MAJOR: Photography LIVING CONDITIONS: Kaplan Hall 203

BACKGROUND:

BIRTH PLACE: Jackson, MS HOMETOWN: Jackson, MS SOCIAL CLASS: Upper Middle class FATHER: Rev. Jeffrey Lee Washington  MOTHER: Diana Washington (née Porter)  SIBLING(S): Eve Washington (older)  BIRTH ORDER: Eve, Gabe  CHILDREN: None PET(S): None. PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: Very few.  RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single. SEXUAL EXPERIENCE: Quite a bit.  

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS:

FACE CLAIM: Diggy Simmons EYE COLOR: Brown HAIR COLOR: Black HAIR TYPE/STYLE: Short, fade, sometimes with a part  GLASSES/CONTACTS?: Nope. 20/20.  DOMINANT HAND: Right HEIGHT: 5’9” WEIGHT: 175 lbs.  BUILD: Toned, muscular. A dusting a body hair across his chest and stomach.  EXERCISE HABITS: Every day.  SKIN TONE: Caramel.  TATTOOS: None.  PEIRCINGS: Ears.  MARKS/SCARS: One on his elbow from a bad skateboarding fall.  NOTABLE FEATURES: His lips. Long eyelashes. His face in general.  USUAL EXPRESSION: A smile.  JEWELRY: A golden chain with an anchor on it.  ALLERGIES: None.  BODY TEMPERATURE: Average.  DIET: He eats healthy.  PHYSICAL AILMENTS: None. 

MANNERISMS:

SPEECH STYLE: Uses slang, broken English in every day conversation.  ACCENT: Mississippi Native HOBBIES: Taking pictures, collecting antiques, watching Blaxploitation movies.  NERVOUS TICKS: Chewing on the inside of his cheek.  DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: Happiness.  POSITIVE TRAITS: Friendly, helpful, self-disciplined, neat, caring.  NEGATIVE TRAITS: anxious, picky, over-critical  SENSE OF HUMOR: He has a good one.  DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: Yes. 

ATTITUDES:

GREATEST DREAM: Photographing, pictures being in high fashion magazines like Vogue GREATEST FEAR: Getting hurt.  MOST AT EASE WHEN: He’s at home, chilling with someone he loves, watching old movies.  LEAST AT EASE WHEN: He’s stressed out.    WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: Death.  BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: Getting the hell out of Mississippi.  BIGGEST REGRET: Letting his parents disrespect him.  TOP PRIORITIES: God, family and friends, career.

BIOGRAPHY:

There’s nothing that Gabe’s parents wanted more than to have their own little Christmas baby. However, things didn’t go as planned and Gabriel Washington was born a day earlier than intended. However, that was the last time for a long time that Gabe didn’t do exactly what his parents wanted him to. For the next eighteen years of his life, Gabe attended every church service, said every prayer, played every instrument at the church, and he didn’t do anything that he was told to do, no matter what. They say that preacher’s kids are supposed to be the worst, but Gabe is an absolute angel for the most part. His older brother, however, was not. He dabbled in illegal drugs, gang activity, and ultimately armed robbery that landed him behind bars and tainted their family’s image. Gabe did everything in his power not to disappoint his parents like that.

However, the older Gabe got, the more he started to develop certain feelings that his parents and their church had convinced him were wrong. He tried to repress them for as long as possible, until a certain drummer at their church caught on, and Gabe fell in love for the first time.

Just like every other first in his life—his first steps, his first words, his first sermon—Gabe had sex for the first time in their church…more specifically in his father’s pastor’s study. After that, Gabe knew that he was different from everyone else, and he accepted his bisexuality despite the fact that everyone around him talked about how wrong it was. When Gabe sat down his parents to tell them, they took it better than he expected. He wasn’t banished, but there was a bunch of prayer and a bunch of bible reading that didn’t make any difference. Still to this day, his parents look at him differently, but they haven’t disowned him just yet.

Gabe found himself at Pinecrest University -- it’s always been his dream school, and it’s so far away from Mississippi that it seems like a completely different world -- a place where he can truly be himself and not worry about the watchful eyes of his oppressive parents or their minions. Gabe’s still a Christian, but he’s forming his own ideals about his religion as opposed to the ones that were forced on him. He’s the President of the photography club, and chances are that you can find him anywhere on campus with his camera taking pictures usually. 

WANTED CONNECTION:

Gabe’s ROOMMATES. Give him people he’s friends with, maybe not so close with, or maybe they don’t like each other at all. Anything can happen here honestly. 

FLINGS. Gabe enjoys sex just like any other guy, I do think he has connections with everyone he has sex with though because that’s just the type of guy that he is. Be it friendly or more romantic, Gabe is going to have pillow talk afterwards and ask your muse how their day was or what’s been up in their lives. 

His MUSE. Someone he loves from a far -- an unrequited love. Someone he’s so deeply in love with but who doesn’t quite have those feelings back for him. However, he loves taking pictures of them. Maybe this could be an extension of the FLINGS connection, or maybe they’re not having sex at all. 

BEST FRIEND. This one’s pretty self-explanatory, maybe it’s his randomly assigned roommate from freshman year, someone he confides in and tells everything to. 100% will be each other’s Best Man at their wedding. 

@pinecrestrb​ 

[veridium]

for the record - cellar gate and this whole mess.

I have thought a lot about this. I know I said I would resign from speaking further on it, but some ideas have come to my attention and so I wish to act on my conscience and consideration. 

I wholeheartedly think toxic positivity is a prevalent issue in fandom and popular culture. I wholeheartedly believe it works as a silencing and tone policing for those most marginalized in our communities. I think it is something we must be critical of when we engage with each other and our expectations from fandom spaces. That being said, one of the primary reasons I am incensed at its prevalence in this fandom is because it has been fueled for all the wrong reasons: for deeply self-serving, personal, and petty reasons, and not simply to see the fandom be better. 

And so, with cautious dread, I am bringing back the issue of the “Cellar Gate” or however it has come to be known.

I think it is safe to say the issue caused a fracture in opinions and people who were all at one time members. I think it is safe to say that drama and dispute has become publicly evident, if not a blaring elephant in the great big room. 

I was one of several people who went public with my membership in the cellar. I did so, in part, to have some kind of autonomy and control over how the narrative was being written. I also did it to take responsibility and combat the ways in which that narrative was being twisted in inflammatory, violent, and deceitful ways. I did it because I was hearing how some of my mutuals were being adversely targeted and effected by my name being included on the “burn list” that circulated in the aftermath. I did it to prevent what I believed antagonists wanted: for a dramatic and righteous crusade to begin, which would drive out the people they believed to be “bad apples.” I did it because it was necessary. 

And I believe that, considering how much was avoided in the way that conflict subsided, I considered it a worthy gambit. People were listened to, reality checks were taken, and the fanfare was allowed to settle. 

Unfortunately, I think some thorns were forgotten about, and left to fester. 

I think the former members/people who used the exposure of the Server and the “Salt” to mount their reckoning moral crusade have used the remains of that to persist with a narrative of positivity and inclusion. This narrative, though shiny and great on the surface, is born of toxic fruit: it was not created purely for selfless, apolitical reasoning. It was created to combat a problem they blamed us for: a cultural fixation they believe exists wherein people allow themselves to be critical bullies in the name of “social justice.” I believe they did so in part to antagonize us in public where explicit callouts could not be used. I believe they push positivity as a means of ameliorating their previous involvement in private conversations they believed malevolent harassment, though they took place in, as I said: private conversations. 

In short: this positivity wave, as we have recently seen in this fandom, is not much more than a bunch of white women wanting to sleep at night again for sins they deem below their moral high-ground. You know, sins such as: privately salting about problematic fics, shit talking people they don’t like, being rude, petty, salty, and at times insensitive. 

One of the reasons I owned up to shit was because I was sick of the image that was being depicted: mean people hiding in some back room somewhere, or backlog of a chat, looking for any reason to tear people apart and be cruel. I was sick of this false interpretation that minimized and reduced a substantial part of my fandom community to heartless maleficents. Especially when these “positivists” once benefitted from, and enjoyed that community as a big part of their audience and support system. Especially when they depended on that community for listening, support, feedback, and friendship. Several of them are people I once considered some of my closest friends in fandom -- people I confided in, trusted, and believed in their integrity. 

Unfortunately, I was misguided. 

There are several reasons I am coming up for air about this. Firstly, so that I am clear when I say it was never my intention -- or that of anyone I know -- to make it seem like this ordeal was more righteous and universal as it really was. What upset me was watching these ideas about “shutting up” and “minding your business” and “being positive” being pushed onto people who had no involvement with the Server drama, who would nonetheless read their incessant reblogs of that content and think, wow, am I a piece of shit would having criticisms for someone’s work? Am I missing the point in being in fandom when I don’t focus on the positive all the time? Because these messages are being circulated by people who, I think, don’t sincerely care about fandom positivity when it doesn’t serve them and their needs of self-soothing and self-reward. That is wrong, and that is a method of undermining and tone policing I think should be called out. 

Secondly, I want to make something explicitly clear: the people pushing positivity and “minding your own business” have all, every single one, participated in the behavior they deem incorrect. They have been comforted by it, they have participated in it, and I would imagine they still do. I have an INCREDIBLY hard time believing that they do not at all speak negatively or harshly about people in fandom considering I, and several others who they deem nemeses, are still here despite their championing. I also have a hard time believing it because they have included and become friends with fandom members who they not-too-long ago verbally and explicitly despised -- people who they lobbied to be banned from the server for being manipulative and toxic, for victimizing them. Someone believed an unsafe presence for them.

And just so we’re clear on this account as well, I’m looking at you, @Tortuosity-Writes, @tanaleth, and @Allisondraste. Hope you’ve been really transparent about that with your newfound friend, @Cassandra-Pentughasst. If not, I know there are plenty of receipts to submit. It’s tax season, no? Just in case you want to suggest it was a matter of ya’ll being poisoned against each other, when you were holding the damn vials yourselves. And the only reason the links don’t work is because we have each other blocked, but somehow I think you’ll see this.  

But I suppose bygones are bygones, right? Positivity! Inclusivity! 

Also, just to prevent some ammunition unnecessary, and because I know well enough the people I’m working with here: I think it’s horseshit to say you’re all about shutting up and being positive while you’re still passive-aggressively shit-talking people in tags and posts, hoping maybe they’ll come across them or that they’ll cause some whispers/drama/stress for those people. Like, for example, @Cassandra-Pentughasst beautifully resentful tags:

Yep, that’s me she’s talking about. And she’s right: I took forever on a commission, was not communicative, and had spelling mistakes, ones which I sincerely apologized for. I did my best but it wasn’t on par with where I should have been. At the time, I thought I was doing it for a friend, though; and when I could, I was communicative. I even asked after sending a draft to look over if she thought it was okay, because I always do so, so my clients are happy (and people can attest to this practice, and I have email and screenshot records as well). She said everything looked good, so I believed her. It was an unfortunate situation where I wasn’t at my best and I was unprofessional. 

What I am not, however, is a coward. 

Which is why this kind of behavior incenses me: it makes it seem like she had no way of telling me something was wrong, or that she was unhappy. And it also makes it seem like no one in my circle is ever critical of me, or is invited to be. Apparently everyone thinks the sun shines out my flaky ass. 

So, here’s my dilemma: how can people who claim they’re all about positivity, integrity, and inclusivity, possibly condone this kind of behavior? How can people who I once called friends say in all seriousness that their standard of decorum doesn’t apply here, because it’s me? Because it’s someone who didn’t agree with them? 

And here’s a very particular thorn: this person, and the group above, only became friends after they all left the server and realized the enemy of thy enemy was thy friend. Before that, it was incessant shit-talking of each other, talking about how one was making them feel unsafe, how toxic they were, and how they should be kicked off or blocked from the server entirely. This person was suddenly forgiven despite the LITANY of conversations and concerns about her trustworthiness, character, and integrity. 

At the end of the day, I obviously cannot control people, and they do change. My stance is, however, that none of these people have changed from who they were. They are people: they shit talk, praise, are friendly and also mean. They make mistakes and are regretful. They dislike things, and dislike people. They have animuses and grudges. They are HUMAN BEINGS like we all are. 

Only one “side,” however, is trying to get people raked over the coals for admitting to partaking in “negative” behaviors. Only one side is pushing a shut-up-and-mind-your-business broad brush when they really mean they want a specific group of people to shut up. Only one side is trying to push a positivity politic that is first and foremost self-serving. 

That, to me, is gross. And that is toxic to fandom as a whole. And I am sick of watching them poke, prod, passive-aggressively post, and seeing their stuff splash onto my dash even though I have them blocked. I am sick of watching it knowing a good portion of what motivates them is spite and antagonism. I am sick of people taking their word for it, and using it as reasoning to be mean to marginalized members. And for that reason I also want to make VERY SURE that no people of color feel like they are being manipulated by anything I have a part in. I want to reiterate: I believe the dysfunction and harm they have circulated to be real and consequential to more than just us tied to the server. I never ever intended false rallying. 

Which is to say: their beliefs that we are obsessing over them day and night, trying to find new ways to ruin their lives and antagonize them, is bullshit. I don’t know about ya’ll, but I have, like, a day job. I have family and friends to spend time with. I have PTSD to treat. I think it is safe to say shit-talking people you dislike in private conversations, and conniving/obsessing, are two different things. 

And, like I said: if any of these people have said no negative, gossipy, or disrespectful things about us, or myself, since the “Exodus,” then my word to those people are: In case you forgot, you didn’t just leave a server: you hurt a lot of people who were your friends. You made a hell of a lot of people feel unsafe and insecure with their visibility in fandom for shit they had no part in. You didn’t just exit and begin some harmless, painless agenda to bring joy to any and all around you. You fucking hurt people. Swallow that pill and recognize that talking about it -- that includes talking about you -- is a valid form of processing and healing form the disruption you caused in all of our lives. Disruption that we are still dealing with. 

Lastly: I have said over and over that I do not care for clout. I do not care for popularity stakes, for “positive” cults of personality. So, if this gets me “cancelled” so be it. But I’d rather be “cancelled” for being transparent than accepted for being shady. My qualms are both broad and personal. I have personal issues with people and I have broad issues with how they are using fandom as a space to enact their false sense of inclusivity. 

And at the end of it, I hope these former friends of mine understand one thing above all else: that I soberingly understand the harm they have done in their desire to live with themselves and their guilt, and it is for that reason -- for everything I saw and everything I heard in the aftermath of their need to redeem themselves and their “side” of things -- that I will never, ever forgive them. I have said many harsh things, I have said many unkind things, and I have made many mistakes. But for as long as I fucking live, I will never, ever elect to be known as someone who tried to pass their vendetta and grudges as a community-oriented, positivity-celebrating, sanctimonious cause that made numerous people, especially people of color, have to go to bat to counter and prevent from doing harm.

Also, on a personal note because why not, the fire is going to consume me anyways: you can’t block half of the femslash/wlw genre because you’re insecure about your work or have had drama with them, and then lament that there’s a lack of material. Whoops!

So, yeah, I’ve fucked up. I have. But I can also call bullshit when I see it. And if this ends my tenure in the fandom, again, so be it. I have my friends and my community, and I don’t just jump ship when I see the stormy weather ahead. I have my life, and my loved ones. And more importantly: I sleep very, very well. 

Oh and, for the record, contrary to all ya’lls stuff, we aren’t a cult. And I didn’t have to ask permission for posting this from anyone, or mind my manners. I also think it’s very telling when people enact the same standards of control, us vs. them, and dehumanizing that cults are supposedly known for -- and then call us one. It’s really convenient, isn’t it? To have distance from the people you hurt and betrayed, and then say it was nothing more than a cult? And to say that their methods of healing, supporting one another, and processing their anger and pain in private is only proof that they’re a cult?

Yes. Really convenient. 

So, there. You want a battle? I think you all know damn well I’m armed. All that I ask is you save your ammunition for me, and not for my friends. Not for people who had nothing to do with the mess we’ve made. Or else. 

And this is all to say that, if I have made anyone feel manipulated, led-on, used, or exploited for any of this - then that is something I am responsible for and I sincerely apologize. It is behavior that is below me, and certainly not my intention, but I don’t get to decide how I impact people’s lives and their participation. So, again, I am sorry. And I respect any and all choices you make on that account. 

[mw-moriearty]

I Don’t Like “Dudes” in Fiction

Let me be clear: I have no problem with male characters. I was assigned male at birth, I spent the first 23 and a half years of my life identifying as male, I’ve got no real problem with men (I have even been known to write them on occasion). No, I’m talking about dudes:

That weird kind of “relatable” male character who exists somewhere on the spectrum between nineties slacker comedy heroes and Woody Allen “lovable” schmucks, but with a heavy helping of off-putting misogyny. 

These guys are the stars of so much 21st century genre fiction. They work fine in, say, creepypasta, where the common conceit is that the narrator is some internet-lurking incel anyway. But its surprising how common they are even in more “literary” genre fiction.

I was telling one of my very close family members, who is a tenured English professor at my local university and whose taste I very much respect, about how let down I was with the very over-hyped House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.

He, gratifyingly, agreed with me, and recommended that I check out Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, as he felt it did much of the same things that House was doing, but more successfully.

I just recently finished Oryx and Crake, and I’ve got to say, the only thing I can find that the two have in common is their very similar narrators: they’re both dudes, and both my least favorite thing about those respective books. The narrator reduces House of Leaves from “precious,” as said professor relation derisively called it, to utterly insufferable. And it serves as a major black mark on Oryx and Crake, a book that is otherwise not without merit.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with an unsympathetic protagonist in a work of fiction, so long as the work acknowledges that the protagonist is unsympathetic. But there’s a weird “boys will boys” mentality to how House’s Johnny and O&C’s Jimmy (note the similar names) are portrayed which is surprising coming from the famously feminist-leaning Atwood (less surprising from Danielweski, who unironically wears fedoras in public for God’s sake). These narrators aren’t Humbert Humbert, who we’re supposed to find gross and off-putting. They’re just everyday dudes.

Johnny and Jimmy are both exhaustingly introspective and angsty Holden Caulfield types (though Holden has the excuse of being a teenager; these are both grown-ass men) whose defining traits are their active libidos, casual substance abuse, and rampant objectification of every woman in their lives. They cheerfully live in squalor, practice absolutely no self care or personal hygiene, and spend most of their time drunk or high off their rockers. Every female character in their lives (and thus practically every female character in each novel) is simply another sexual conquest in the making.

And none of this is presented as particularly negative; both texts seem to suggest that this is just how dudes are, no judgement, they can’t help it, dudes are losers. Boys will be boys. In fact a lot of their misbehavior is hand-wavingly chalked-up to both characters’ absentee mothers.

In O&C, when teenage Jimmy and his friend Crake spend much of their time watching child pornography together online, the book levels all of its criticism at the media platform that gives these young men access to this content, placing zero responsibility on them for seeking it out and consuming it in the first place. Boys will be boys. We can’t blame them for getting off to little slave girls being sexually abused by grown men, its the internet’s fault for putting it there in the first place. Jimmy and Crake are the victims here (one of these child sex slaves is the primary object of Jimmy’s lust throughout the novel, and as an adult she repeatedly and distressingly goes out of her way to downplay her own trauma and play up the bright sides of her situation).

The only women in Johnny of House’s life are his frequent sexual partners, all of whom exist for no other reason than to be Johnny’s sexual partners, and who receive little characterization outside of this role. And Johnny has a LOT of sexual partners. One of the most eyeroll-inducing elements of Johnny and Jimmy’s characterizations is their improbably active sex lives. Despite their general grubbiness and the repeated mentions that they are unattractive and lack much in the way of redeeming qualities, these dudes are effortlessly able to hook up with every single woman they happen to bump into throughout the story (is there some wish fulfillment here on Danielewski’s part?). Again, the way these men use women as sex objects and then treat them as subsequently disposable is barely commented on with any qualitative judgement. That’s just how dudes are. Boys will be boys.

All of these negative traits seem to be put in place for the primary purpose of making Jimmy and Johnny into relatable everyman types to serve as reader self-inserts and juxtapose against the larger-than-life situations around them. They’re classical Ishmaels, but icky. Who out there is reading these books and finding these men relatable? I don’t want to meet you I don’t think. And what does it say about the authors that they think these characters are an adequate representative of the average human being? Call me naive, but I think most people are better than that.

When reading these books, quite apart from helping pull me into these respective worlds, these narrators just serve as constant barriers preventing me from immersing myself in the text and enjoying any of the more interesting worldbuilding going on outside the POVs of these “heroes.”

Avoiding accidentally creating male heroes like these is one of the primary reasons that most of my writing tends to be from a female POV.

[blooming5th]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO.

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon?  — Pretty strictly, I think? I mean... I do always try my best to stick to canon events because although I am a big fan of AUs, I absolutely suck at writing canon-divergent characters. I also look out for possible dialectisms that come from Hinamori & put some work towards Hinamori’s personal development; all of this according to whatever has happened to her in canon / is shown by her in canon.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  There’s an entire world waiting beyond Hinamori’s pretty face? She’s still pretty much just a baby when in comparison to many other Lieutenants (being the second youngest, right after lil Yachiru), which makes her super innocent and funny. She’s also very upbeat, easy-going, and friendly! She’s such a devoted Lieutenant and honestly a great worker? Super strong with her kido spells, too! A great student?! A very, very good girl, honestly! She’s the greatest person you will ever meet, I swear to GOD !!

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  Most of the people, from what I can perceive from reading different opinions and have read through my years in Bleach forums and such, is that she’s pretty mentally weak. Hinamori seems to be extremely unbalanced and the previously mentioned devotion actually becomes... a weakness? Although I don’t agree with it ( mostly because I do believe her devotion towards Aizen was induced and not... something natural ), I can understand what people mean by this. Also, she mostly uses magic spells and keeps herself at a certain distance when in combat;; which people might easily perceive as her being weak when it’s just... her fighting style and body stature.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  I have roleplayed Hinamori for over 6 years now? almost 7, actually. I made this blog in 2014, however, I was supposed to be writing Hitsugaya. I ended up changing my entire blog’s aesthetics, not even a week later, to match Hinamori and decided to try her out. Why? Well... long story short... the fandom was full of Hitsugaya blogs. asjhdfasjdhfg I didn’t want simply be just one more in the ocean of amazing Hitsugaya writers;; so I decided to write someone who gave me access to heavy development ( because there was so little content back then ) and fun times ! lil peach was the obvious answer!

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  Most of the time its music? Whenever I decide to focus on an rp blog, I create a go-to playlist that helps me channel the muse’s traits and helps me write with more ease! That... and re-reading manga pages that might make me come up with headcanons, which I, later, always tend to apply to threads. Oh yeah, uh... LMAO! How could I forget? Talking to friends and discussing things with them, also often lets my creativity soar and helps me channel my muse’s persona. uwu

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO. 

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO. 

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day?  YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO.

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Honestly, yes? I am a person that needs to receive constant criticism & is very open about it, too. I often find myself asking for criticism & find myself craving for bigger improvement.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —  HELLS TO THE YES !! But then again... who doesn’t? It makes me so so happy whenever I receive a question or a simple message that might help me develop Hinamori’s character traits or behaviours? I love my girl so much;; knowing that others want me to gush about her amazingness & make her grow even more is nothing but an honour to me, tbh.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  Well... yeah? But not in a bad way, of course! I absolutely love discussing headcanons and getting different points of view from things ( such as headcanons, in this specific topic ) so I can center myself and find a clearer way to analyze things! Discussing headcanons is dope, man!

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  This is going to be a pretty short response cause ;; I don’t care? I’m not here to really... please others. I’m here to have fun for my own self and to enjoy writing with other amazing fellas. Ain’t nobody gonna rain on my parade with unnecessary negativity;;

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  I haven’t ever seen many people hate Hinamori’s character? However, I do have seen quite the few people disregard her as the important character she is, or reduce her to a level that doesn’t... entirely fit the reason why she was created. Still, it’s none of my business. I don’t let it get to me or feel... the need to do anything about it? Or even talk about it? I can’t really change people’s views, so I often would just rather love my baby peach and let others do as they please.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  ABSOLUTELY? It’s even part of my rules like ;; please tell me if you ever find a grammatical error ANYWHERE in my blog. English isn’t my mother tongue and thus it can be very difficult for me to keep up with fancy writing while also sticking to correct grammar? idk if this makes sense but... yknow.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  I do think I am very easy going kind of fella? Sometimes it takes me forever go get to messages ( both through discord & IMS ), but I think that’s because lately I’ve been feeling super emotionally drained ;; I haven’t been out of my goddamn house for three months and I sincerely miss seeing faces that aren’t my parents. I did take a drive the other day but... sobs... it left such a bittersweet taste. ANYWAY !! Yes. I’m very easy going and talkative. Also a big, big enthusiastic? And positivist! I am someone who always prefers to stick to the bright side of life and ignore anything that might be the least problematic so yeah ~ I am uwu. Come meet me. I’m cool. I swear.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by: @hirako5hinji​   ( aka the greatest taichō ever. uwu go to bed harder next time, Anna. ♡ ) Tagging: ANYONE WHO WANTS TO DO IT !! just steal it from me. be gay. do crimes.

[downstvged]

s u r v e y  :    p e y t o n    p e l l e g r i n o.

what’s this? there’s something paper clipped to the page... a stick of juicy fruit. how thoughtful.

basic information

FULL NAME: jamie claverton  peyton pellegrino PRONUNCIATION: PAY-ton pell-eh-GREEN-oh MEANING: noble, royal REASONING: his kidnapper father said he always looked like a peyton. strong, wise, dignified. NICKNAME(S): pey, pellegrino, pillsbury ( monty ), sparkles ( tess ), etc. PREFERRED NAME(S): peyton BIRTH DATE: july 24, 2000 AGE: 18 ZODIAC: leo GENDER: cismale PRONOUNS:  he/him ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:  heteroromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: heterosexual NATIONALITY:  american. ETHNICITY: italian-american. his father’s got pellegrino pride.

background

BIRTH PLACE: milton, delaware  HOMETOWN:  milton, delaware.  his dad said he was born in ohio. everyone thinks he’s from cali, when they meet him. SOCIAL CLASS:  upper-middle. FATHER: presley claverton. matthew pellegrino. fire chief. 52. west ham’s most eligible and charming single father. and peyton’s best friend. faceclaim. MOTHER: theresa claverton.  francesca milluzzo. peyton never knew her. his dad said she deserted them shortly before his first birthday. SIBLING(S): none. BIRTH ORDER: first of three. the clavertons needed to fill the void. first and only. PET(S): none. but he adores anything fluffy. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES:  n/a PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: n/a. he’s always been too scared of his own shadow to ask a girl out. ARRESTS?: squeaky clean. PRISON TIME?: not unless you count double-shifts delivering pizzas.

occupation & income

SOURCE OF INCOME: works part-time as a pizza delivery boy at one of west ham’s most beloved pizza joints. CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: very content, usually! people tip well and peyton enjoys the small talk. PAST JOB(S): assistant life guarding at the local pool in middle school, but that quickly ended after he had a panic attack on duty. SPENDING HABITS: peyton’s pretty frugal! his idea of a fun time is boarding around town with monty, or grabbing a scoop of ice cream at one of the local places. he’s not too big on driving, if he doesn’t have to. longboards almost everywhere. his dad’s job gets them ample cash, being fire chief, but they live modestly. pellegrino men are humble. MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: his longboard. unfortunately, his anti-anxiety meds.

skills & abilities

TALENTS: deduction, longboarding, mock trial, stage lighting, studying, making people smile. he’s mario kart champion and he’ll never live that down. SHORTCOMINGS: overthinker. often, he limits himself just by thinking in circles. he... finds the good in people. assumes the best. LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: english, and enough italian to get friendly with the kitchen staff. DRIVE?:  yes. JUMP-STAR A CAR?: yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: yes. RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes, but longboards are way better. SWIM?: yes. PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: he has a guitar and plays it decently well. sometimes he’ll hum a little tune and strum a few chords, but it’s nothing too major. PLAY CHESS?: yeah. BRAID HAIR?: ha! him? able to braid hair? he wishes. TIE A TIE?: he can double-knot his shoes. PICK A LOCK?: no.

physical appearance & characteristics

FACE CLAIM: noah centineo. EYE COLOR: deep hazel, primarily chocolate with pools of mossy green. HAIR COLOR: dark brown. HAIR TYPE/STYLE: wavy/curly. it does what it wants, and he rarely styles it, unless it’s for a mock trial competition or a student gov event. reference. GLASSES/CONTACTS?: he has a glasses prescription but always wears his contacts. DOMINANT HAND: right. HEIGHT: 6′1. WEIGHT: 165 lbs. BUILD: lean, trim, athletic. EXERCISE HABITS: he’s co-captain of the lacrosse team with monty, so they have daily team workouts. he goes for runs a lot, and likes HIIT training. does longboarding count? it should. he’s boarded all over this town countless times ( it’s also how he chooses to deliver pizzas, when the weather’s alright. ) SKIN TONE: tanned, smooth. reference. TATTOOS: none. he can’t handle needles. PEIRCINGS: none. MARKS/SCARS: a few on his arms and legs from nasty longboarding falls. NOTABLE FEATURES: his wild hair. million-watt smile. USUAL EXPRESSION: peaceful, welcoming. CLOTHING STYLE: reference.  leather bracelets, cuffed jeans, lots of solid colored and colorblocked tees. when he dresses up for mock trial, the girls kinda swoon. boy looks dashing in a suit. has a glasses prescription but always wears contacts. his dad says he looks sharper that way ( but it’s actually because, with glasses, he looks too similar to the claverton family. )  beat up chuck taylors, kind of untied on purpose. he’s got that whole loosely kept together, sleep deprived look down pat. JEWELRY: leather bracelets. sometimes he’ll wear a thin chain. ALLERGIES: n/a. BODY TEMPERATURE: the standard. he runs a little warmer than most. DIET: lots of pizza. mountain dew. juicy fruit gum’s basically a whole other food group. PHYSICAL AILMENTS: n/a. he can be a bit jumpy, sometimes, if he’s feeling on edge. his left pinky kind of clicks funny when he makes a fist, from when he broke his hand his freshman year.

psychology

MORAL ALIGNMENT: lawful good. TEMPERAMENT: phlegmatic. ELEMENT: earth. MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: anxiety disorder. SOCIABILITY: very approachable. warm. kindhearted. there’s a reason he’s the one tasked with getting class dues, as class treasurer. there’s a reason why he leads the lacrosse team. EMOTIONAL STABILITY:  typically very levelheaded. his anxiety can make that fluctuate, though. PHOBIA(S): having another panic attack in public. he hasn’t had one in front of anyone besides monty in a year. ADDICTION(S): does juicy fruit qualify? DRUG USE: none. very straight-edge.  ALCOHOL USE:  occasional, as much as you’d expect. PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: not at all.

mannerisms

QUIRKS: peyton shoves his hands into his pockets when he’s nervous. he always looks for monty or tess in a crowded room, to get grounded. whenever he wears a flannel or a sweatshirt, he always pushes the sleeves up midway to his elbows. HOBBIES: lacrosse, longboarding, mock trial, reading, parkour ( a phase in freshman year ). watching football games with his dad. trying out weird recipes. HABITS: biting the edge of pens. turning his head to the side when he’s listening. offering people pieces of his lunch until he realizes there’s nothing left for him. NERVOUS TICKS: not knowing what to do with his hands. trailing off. looking at the ground. laughing. counting his own fingers. biting the tip of his tongue. DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: he genuinely wants to see people happy. he wants everything to run smoothly and willingly along.  FEARS: his meds will stop working. he’ll have a panic attack in front of his classmates, who are supposed to see him as calm, collected, put together. he’ll never get to know more about his mom. it bugs him. POSITIVE TRAITS: benevolent, bona fide, conscientious, suave, tenderhearted. NEGATIVE TRAITS: anxious, critical, restless, self-limiting, yielding. SENSE OF HUMOR: puns. wit. a lot of inside jokes with tess and monty. DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: not really! he’s more likely to say frick or flipping than anything bad. CATCHPHRASE(S): “ oh shit ! ” & “ dude ! ” & “ what’s good ? ”

favorites

ACTIVITY: longboarding, hands down. ANIMAL: he’s got a super soft spot for rabbits. BEVERAGE: mountain dew or 7-up. BOOK: growing up, he loved the percy jackson series. CELEBRITY: stephen hawking. COLOR: green. DESIGNER: designer? he guesses, like... is gucci the right answer? he’s not really plugged in to that. FOOD: does juicy fruit count? FLOWER: he’s learning more about flowers, but he thinks sunflowers are pretty nice. kelly’s teaching him more about those. GEM: tiger’s eye. HOLIDAY: christmas. that’s when the famous pellegrino slutty brownies surface. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: longboarding !! MOVIE: original star trek. MUSICAL ARTIST: saint motel. QUOTE/SAYING: “ we’re dead !  we survived but we’re dead ! ” – dash, the incredibles. SCENERY: rolling hills. sunset. SCENT: cinnamon. SPORT: lacrosse. SPORTS TEAM: in connecticut, he’s surprised he hasn’t been vilified for being a chicago bears fan. but he and his dad spent some time there, and going to those games became a weekly tradition. they watch them now, and it’s like a little piece of their story. TELEVISION SHOW: saturday night live, honestly. WEATHER: that golden-hour sunshine, just before sunset. lukewarm. mid-60′s. VACATION DESTINATION: hawaii. he’s always wanted to longboard down those colossal volcano-side roads.

attitudes

GREATEST DREAM: go into tech/lighting design for broadway. ask cassandra pressman out, for real. GREATEST FEAR: his dad won’t be able to function without him in west ham next fall. he’ll panic in front of people when he needs to seem strong. MOST AT EASE WHEN: he’s with his squad, the belugas. LEAST AT EASE WHEN: he’s allowed the time to overthink. when his dad doesn’t come home from his fire shift on time. when things don’t feel right. BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: the west ham mock trial team won the state championship this spring. BIGGEST REGRET: he never pressured his dad more about finding his mother. MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: he had a panic attack in the middle of his treasurer speech freshman year. someone pulled the fire alarm right as he couldn’t breathe. to this day, peyton has no idea who that was, but he’s so friggin’ thankful. BIGGEST SECRET: his biggest secret’s not even known to him yet. matthew pellegrino isn’t his father; he’s his kidnapper. peyton pellegrino’s fake. doesn’t exist. TOP PRIORITIES: having monty and tess’s backs. taking care of his dad, since he’s still reeling from peyton’s mom leaving almost 17 years ago. bringing the lacrosse team to the state championships. making sure every single thing he does for west ham high’s theatre department is flawless: making art on that stage. finding out how to... conquer this anxiety. finding out how to muster up enough courage to make a move before it’s too late.

[clones-against-humanity]

Theory- There is no Darkiplier

Bare with me.

If you’ve ever watched one of Markipler’s videos, you know that he takes no shit from nobody. Mark can be very sarcastic, very blunt, and can express his honesty in almost abstractly satirical ways. This shows particularly when he is talking about his characters (think about Darkiplier Vs. Antisepticeye, a satirical commentary on a fandom’s influence on characters and ‘giving the people what they want’- more on that later). Mark is very protective of his more in-depth and popularized characters (Darkiplier and Wilford Warfstache, for example), and that is completely understandable. Now, recently, people have been suspecting that Darkiplier will return. This all started when Game Theory released a video discussing the lore about Who Killed Markiplier and the general universe of which it takes place. Matpat brought up the idea that Markiplier could become ‘actor Mark (from the Who Killed Markiplier universe)’ in his videos, citing this vlog as suspicious because ‘Markiplier would NEVER talk like that!’ during that segment, Matpat essentially said that the Mark in that video could never be the actual Mark because he was acting ‘off’. There are a few issues with this theory. For one, it is making assumptions as to what ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’ Mark. Keep in mind, none of us will ever truly know Markiplier as well as Markiplier. Not Amy, not us, not Matpat, not anyone. But, since the beginning, Mark’s ‘v-logs’ were used to bridge the gap between viewer and creator. In the vlog Mat used as an example, Mark was talking about how he wanted to be more honest with us- it was literally in the title. But Game theory chalked his behavior up as ‘douchey’ and therefore fake... in the video where he was trying to be his real self. Whether what Mark said in that vlog was douchey or not, it put a bad taste in my mouth for Mat to assume that it couldn’t possibly still be the ‘real Mark’. And, if you remember from Mark’s twitch stream from when he was signing laminates, he doesn’t like people to assume things of him (I don’t have a source right now, but basically he ranted about people saying he ‘looked sick/tired’, saying it was disrespectful). I’m not saying that he was offended by this, but there is certainly reason for him to be offended, and his response to the video didn’t look too happy. (Well, I shouldn’t say that from this source, but in the community tab of his Youtube channel he just said ‘.’. Again, not substantial evidence that he was offended, but I thought it was important to include). Mark is a person, he’s allowed to act differently without us jumping to conclusions. And that leads into my other problem with Mat’s theory: It takes the control away from Mark. Under this theory, because we don’t know every aspect of Mark’s personality, we could assume that anything Mark does is fake. He can’t even deny this theory without people saying that it was only character Mark covering his tracks. That’s just not fair, especially considering that this is his story and these are his characters. So, what can he do other than give the people what they want? In Darkiplier vs Antisepticeye, Mark and Sean show us why their most iconic characters can never interact. Ever since both Darkiplier and Antisepticeye were introduced, people speculated that they would eventually fight or otherwise go face to face. The Antisepticeye PAX video was only fuel to the fire, despite Sean debunking claims that Anti would butt heads with Dark. As the speculation turned into demands, with both Dark and Anti becoming more and more prevalent on Youtube, Antisepticeye Vs Darkiplier was released. This video did what Mark is doing now: Giving people what they want, while showing that it could never happen. Matpat’s theory unintentionally put Mark in a spot where he knew people were watching him, and, no matter what he did, they would think that he was lying/plotting. So, he decided to give the people what they want. 3 Scary Games #9, posted 3 days after Mat’s theory, was when the hints at a Darkiplier reveal became suddenly more frequent and more dramatic. Because I don’t want to assume anything outright from this video, which is what caused this problem in the first place, I invite you to watch this video for yourself. All I’ll say is that I personally thought that the glitches were less subtle/meaningful than his past references to Dark have been. Also, they were completely different from things like Go Back To Sleep, which have been shown to be hints about Darkiplier. It feels like the easter eggs in this video are going a completely different direction from where Go Back To Sleep left off. The next video I want to talk about is the one he posted today. This is where I am going to apply my theory, to see if it can help to explain the video. What stuck out to me (and I’m sure other viewers) the most about this video was the thumbnail. It is a picture of a woman with “DARKIPLIER!?” written below it, with arrows connecting the woman to the name and vice versa. But, obviously, the two things don’t connect at all. Surely that woman isn’t Darkiplier, and if she is, then what is that supposed to mean? And, if you watch the video, you can clearly see that there IS no Darkiplier. If anything, the most exciting thing about the video is that he gets frustrated with the games, runs into a few errors, and looks back on his other playthroughs. But, looking through the comments section (I am not meaning to attack or criticize these people in any way, and I am keeping them anonymous. I am only trying to point out the overall message of these comments): “Roasting ‘Old Markiplier’ huh? So I guess... It has begun“ “This was unusual. I assume it's part of the greater meta narrative, but I did not enjoy this version of Mark. It was almost hard to watch.  He was so negative and harsh, especially side by side with his older persona.“ “...its not mark...listen to how he talks about himself. The drastic change in his personality. This isnt mark....its Damian... there is more proof but no time look for me I will try to explain more“ “It’s all coming together now...“ ...or is it? Now, it is okay to be creative. It’s okay to speculate! But even in a video that lacked the past hints of the others, and didn’t even mention Darkiplier other than the thumbnail, people are assuming that this is not the real Mark. Why? Because he’s criticizing his past self, which he has always done. And, in my opinion, this is all due to Matpat’s theory. Before that video, everyone thought that Markiplier was just being himself (as far as I know). Now, people are just saying he’s a giant douchebag and ‘not himself’. Imagine him making a video, being himself, and reading those comments. So, there you have it. Though its fun to make theories, we need to think about what evidence those theories are based off of, and how comments like the ones above- our assumptions- could make Mark feel. Mark is a person. Sometimes he gets angry, sometimes he can be a douchebag, but that doesnt make him any less Mark. Finally, I’m not trying to assume things about Mark, I’m just trying to make sense of this whole situation. If Mark truly is just having fun with Darkiplier, that’s fine! And again, i’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about their theories, I’m just sharing my view on Mat’s theory in particular. (I didn’t talk about the other things he’s done like mention Celine/Darkiplier and forget to do his intro because I thought it would only make this post longer. If you have any questions or points to brinng up, DM me please).

[centerofstupidity]

Dracula the Undead: Author’s Note Part 1 Snark

If you enjoy the content you are reading, please like and follow the Center of Stupidity blog.

Interested in reading the previous Dracula the Undead chapter snarks? They can be found here.

Summary: An aperitif of the clusterfuckery that is to come. This is a long-winded and self-congratulating author's note.

Both writers claim that their novel stays true to Bram Stoker's vision even though it contradicts and re-writes the original story.

In case anyone wants to read the original author's note in order to form their own conclusions, you can read it here.  

~ Dacre's Story ~

Since I am a Stoker, it is not surprising that I have had a lifelong interest in the work of my ancestor.

At the risk of sounding like a complete ass...

This "interest" is financially motivated. 

Bram’s youngest brother, George, believed to be the sibling with whom he had the closest relationship, was my great-grandfather, so I am Bram’s great-grandnephew.

"Which means that I am related to Bram Stoker and can write an 'official' sequel to Dracula. And that will make me a shit-load of money."

In college, I wrote a paper on my great granduncle,

I'm getting the impression that is statement is supposed to make Dacre Stoker sound unique...

Even though there are plenty of other college students who have written an essay about Bram Stoker or Dracula for an assignment.

For instance, yours truly did a PowerPoint presentation on Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley for a class in college. 

examining what may have motivated him to write Dracula.

Again, this isn't groundbreaking stuff. 

Many people have published articles or books discussing Dracula. 

Scholars like Professor Elizabeth Miller have dedicated their lives to studying it. 

My research opened my eyes to how, from my family’s perspective, the history of the book Dracula, is pretty tragic.

"And before I give everyone a history lesson, I'm telling you all this so I can justify butchering my ancestor's work."

Bram Stoker died without ever seeing Dracula become popular. The sales of the novel were so limited at the time of his death that his widow, Florence, thought she would never benefit financially from Bram’s “wasted” seven years of research and writing. With Bram’s other fiction and nonfiction books out of print, Florence was convinced she would live out her days on a tight budget.

Actually, that isn't true. 

According to scholar John Edgar Browning, the majority of critics gave positive reviews. 

His findings were published on February 1st, 2012. 

It is important to note Dracula: The Undead was published in 2009.

But in an interview in 2013, Dacre Stoker said this: There is this statement that used to kind of drive me crazy—‘Dracula was met with mixed reviews when Bram was alive’. 

He then briefly discusses Browning’s research.

Which means that Stoker knew about Browning’s findings...

But he ignored it and printed misinformation. 

Dacre adds that it was only "ten years after Bram’s death" when Dracula became popular.

Posthumously, Bram started to receive recognition as the progenitor of the modern vampire/horror novel.

Not to diminish Dracula and its impact on popular culture...

But it is not the first influential vampire novel. 

Varney the Vampire is. 

Dacre Stoker goes on to talk about Florence Stoker (Bram Stoker's wife) and her legal dispute with the creators of Nosferatu.

He also states that Dracula became public domain in the U.S.A since 1899 because Bram didn't complete a requirement so Florence Stoker had to live off the U.K. royalties.

With the U.S. copyright lost, Hollywood, corporate America, and anyone else was free to do whatever they wanted to Bram’s story and characters.

This is the part where the reader is supposed to boo and hiss at Hollywood...

And then give Holt and Stoker a standing ovation for writing Dracula the Undead. 

Dacre Stoker talks about how his family wasn't asked for approval of "any of the hundreds of incarnations of Dracula over the next century."

My father’s generation had a negative feeling for all things Hollywood and Dracula.

Which is understandable given what happened. 

But after reading the author's note...

The history of Dracula is being used in order to deflect any criticism.

And to justify bastardizing Dracula under the pretense of honoring Bram's original vision and righting a past wrong. 

—except, of course, for Bram’s original novel.

So we have two options:

They knowingly endorsed a novel that defamed Bram and mocked the original novel. 

Or they loved Dracula and would be appalled that Bram was dragged through the mud and the original lore was ridiculed. 

According to Ian Holt in an interview in 2010, he says that “Bram’s bitter demeanor was even worse in real life than we depicted in the novel.”

And in the same interview, Holt passively aggressively says: “Do your research. The fact that the chapters with Bram were written almost completely by Dacre in consultation with his family means nothing to them.” 

So yeah...

I’m leaning towards option number one. 

I didn’t write about these issues in my college paper, but they were always on my mind.

Dacre Stoker admitted that he didn't read Dracula until he went to college.

Stoker says it was "a shame" that his family was unable to "control the legacy of my great-granduncle" and  "lay claim to the character of Dracula."

It was many years after college that I met an interesting character, Ian Holt.

Stoker doesn't realize that calling someone "an interesting character" can be a veiled insult.

Ian is a screenwriter who has been obsessed with all things Dracula since childhood.

A lot of people love all things Dracula.

Doesn't mean that they are a talented writer.

Ian, being a true idealist, had a plan that inspired me to not accept the frustrating history of Dracula.

"He was my knight in shining armor!"

He wanted to change history.

History reveals that change isn't always positive. 

Sometimes it is negative. 

Ian’s plan was simple: to reestablish creative control over Bram’s novel and characters by writing a sequel that bore the Stoker name.

To my surprise, none in my family had ever considered this.

Translation: "Why haven't any of my family members tried writing a novel? It's the obvious solution to the problem." 

And it didn't occur to Stoker none of his family members had any interest in being a writer. 

It really pisses me off when people act like writing any kind of fiction is easy or that anyone can be a writer. 

While any literate person can write, not everyone can be a writer. 

It requires talent and passion along with the desire to learn about the craft and improve your writing skills.  

Intrigued, I decided to join Ian on a roller-coaster ride as coauthor.

And for readers, it is a nightmarish ride where clusterfuckery gallops and a literary classic is violently raped.

In writing Dracula the Un-Dead, I felt a strong sense of duty and familial responsibility.

"It isn't because I wanted to piss all over my relative's legacy and make a shit load of money."

I hoped to work with Ian to represent Bram’s vision for the character of Dracula.

Bram's vision should be called Sir Not Appearing in This Novel.

We aimed to resurrect Bram’s original themes and characters, just as Bram conceived them more than a century ago.

The Dracula characters appear in name only.

They are cast in an unfavorable light. 

As for the themes?

They are discarded. 

So many books and films had strayed from Bram’s vision—

It is extremely rare for adaptations to stick extremely close to the original story. 

Usually, adaptations take artistic license with the source material. 

And just because an adaptation or a retelling differs from the original story, doesn't mean that it will automatically suck. 

For instance, I like films, mangas, and video games that are inspired by/loosely based on Dracula. 

and thus our intent was to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity in some small way.

Dracula is depicted as a misunderstood man with fangs who is every woman's erotic dream. 

And readers are supposed to despise Bram. 

I think Bram would be proud that a family member has taken this initiative, and finally done justice to the legacy he created.

Bram would be livid that his work was bastardized and that his descendant depicted him as a desperate and a talentless hack.

~ Ian’s Story ~

I am not ashamed to say it, I LOVE horror films.

Ah, all-caps.

How I loathe thee.

A lot of people like horror and it is a popular genre. 

So that doesn't make you unique.

And horror movies are no longer considered depraved or scandalous.

Holt mentions that his favorite horror movie as a kid was Dracula (1931).

When I was ten years old, my mother bought me a record for Halloween with Christopher Lee narrating the story of Dracula by Bram Stoker. Reading that record sleeve changed my life, for it was then I learned that Transylvania was an actual place and that Dracula was a historical figure.

Where do I begin? 

If you are LISTENING to an audiobook, you are not READING IT.

Ian was "inspired" by the audiobook that he decided to read Dracula.

I was surprised at how different the novel was from the films—and I had seen every Dracula film ever made.

"Who knew that Count Dracula swings both ways? Or that Mina is an assertive and intelligent woman and not a stupid Dracula fangirl?"

The novel was more intelligent, astute, and dark.

While this literary abomination is a cash-grab filled with gratuitous gore and sex.

The novel had more intricate and exciting characters than I could have ever imagined.

While Dracula the Undead has depraved lesbian vampires and a whiny prat along with a handsome and misunderstood vampire who only wants tru luv.

I felt cheated by Hollywood. I vowed revenge!

I get it, Holt and Stoker. 

I'm supposed to hate Hollywood but adore your literary travesty. 

Fifteen years later, my opportunity came.

And Dracula fans wished that it never arrived.

Flipping channels one night, I came upon a program on the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that this story will result in name dropping. And Holt insisting that he is a scholar.

On the program, Coppola held up the 1972 book In Search of Dracula written by Fulbright Scholars Professor Raymond McNally and Professor Radu Florescu (Prince Dracula’s actual descendant).

Vlad the Impaler is also known as Vlad III, Vlad Dracul or Vlad Dracula. 

Sometimes he is referred to as Vlad III of Wallachia or Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia. 

But I have never heard of any scholar referring to Vlad III as "Prince Dracula."

A quick Google search reveals only this book and a YA novel called Hunting Prince Dracula. 

Every time I see Vlad III being mentioned as "Prince Dracula", I can't keep a straight face. 

Because it reminds me of Beni Gabor calling Imhotep his "prince." 

Coppola had used the professors’ research of the historical Prince Dracula’s life as inspiration for the opening sequence of his film.

And he discarded the rest of it in order to make Dracula a guy who is looking for his one tru luv.

Before taking a breath I was on a plane to Boston College to meet the professors. After showing them some notes on the screenplay I planned to write based on their book,

"I smelled an opportunity to make some money!"

the professors sold me the rights for one dollar

"They were impressed my awesomeness!"

The friendship I forged with McNally and Florescu has borne fruit in many ways. I soon began traveling with the professors giving lectures on the impact of Bram Stoker’s novel on our culture.

According to Dracula the Undead on the official Penguin Publishing House website, Ian is being described as:

There is a BIG difference between being a fan, a historian, and a documentarian. 

A quick Google search reveals that Ian Holt has not published anything in an academic journal.

However, one of the first things that pop up in an internet search is this. 

This garnered me an invitation to speak at The First World Dracula Congress in Bucharest, Romania, in 1995—a gathering of Dracula/horror scholars from around the world.

I don't doubt that Holt went to The First World Dracula Congress.

But I don't think he was a speaker.

Elizabeth Miller wrote a report about the gathering. 

And Ian Holt isn't mentioned among the speakers. 

Holt went sightseeing in Romania and how he made "the dream I had as a ten-year-old come true."

Thanks to the friends I made at the First World Dracula Congress, I was asked to join the Transylvanian Society of Dracula—a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of all things Dracula.

We get it, Ian Holt. 

You want us to think that you are a scholar because you are friends with scholars and historians. 

But I don't think a scholar would be constantly name-dropping.

Through friends in the society I met Professor Elizabeth Miller, the world’s foremost authority on all things vampire, Dracula, and Bram.

"And I'll use my scholar friends as a shield to deal with criticism."

Professor Miller asked me to speak at the Dracula convention in Los Angeles in 1997, where we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the release of Bram’s novel.

According to a report on the 1997 Dracula convention in Los Angeles, Holt isn't mentioned as being one of the speakers.

Holt says during the convention he came up with an idea to write a sequel to Dracula. He admits that a Dracula sequel isn't a new idea.

But a Dracula sequel was never written with "input from a member of the Stoker family."

Holt goes on to say that "securing that input became my goal" and contacted the Stoker family patriarch.

Still scarred by the Nosferatu copyright affair and years of being ignored and abused by Hollywood, the members of this generation of the Stoker family wanted nothing to do with me.

I could be wrong...

But I'm getting a strong feeling that Holt was miffed that some members of the Stokers didn't want to touch him with a ten-foot pole. 

Especially since Holt said the Stoker family at "long last" supported the idea for an official sequel.

But I wouldn’t give up.

Holt says how he "kept building up my film-writing résumé and Dracula connections." He eventually meets Dacre Stoker.

I pitched him my sequel idea, which at the time I had been planning as a screenplay. Dacre was enthusiastic and suggested that the proper way to proceed was with a book first.

If it is a novel, then it will be proper lit-ra-choor.

Because a movie wouldn't be "deep" or "elevated". 

Both Dacre and Ian agreed to a writing partnership.

And Dacre contacted his family members and presented them with the sequel proposal.

Once it was understood that this would be a labor of love,

"We gleefully shit all over the original lore and insist that it was all a lie."

our intentions honorable, and that our plan was to restore to the world Bram’s original vision and characters,

If that was the case, then:

The original lore of Dracula wouldn't be repeatedly violated.

The Crew of Light wouldn't be depicted in an unflattering light.

And Bram Stoker wouldn't be vilified. 

the Stokers offered support, at long last.

Translation: They finally appreciated my genius!

Dracula the Un-Dead is the culmination of my lifelong dream and years of hard work.

"And why is the Devil laughing and doing a victory dance?"

It is my gift to every horror nut out there.

If by "gift", you mean a literary turd, then I agree with you.

My greatest wish is we have created a book that is close to Bram’s original gothic vision

"Close to Bram's original gothic vision"? 

Hell no! 

It contradicts the original story and reads like a shitty Coppola's Dracula fanfic. 

—while modernizing it at the same time.

By stealing a twist from The Empire Strikes Back and copying a scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Believe me, I realize how lucky I am.

And readers will regard this novel as a plague upon mankind.

I have been truly blessed that in some small way, my name will be linked with

a mean-spirited and shitty novel.

that of my hero, Bram Stoker—

I'm not convinced that Dacre or Ian regard Bram as their hero.

Here is an excerpt from the novel:

"If there were to be any truth to Stoker's novel it would have to be where no sunlight could ever reach."

Translation: you can stick it where the sun don't shine.

the man who invented modern horror.

I'll say it again...

Stoker wasn't the only one who invented modern horror.

Some of the other writers were Edgar Allen Poe, Ann Radcliffe, Sheridan Le Fanu, Algernon Blackwood, and H.P. Lovecraft.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #473

Top Ten Deleted or Restored Scenes

This week I watched Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which is obviously distinct from Joss Whedon’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which I saw in 2017. One of the ways it’s different is that it’s literally twice as long. Another is it’s been much more warmly received by fans and critics, rather than greeted with ferocious opprobrium like the earlier, allegedly studio-mandated version.

The road that led us to this moment, with this expensive re-edit of an earlier, unsuccessful film, is long and tumultuous, as well as tragic on a number of levels. Personally I was one of the few who actually had a good time with what I suppose we might as well call Whedon’s League; it weirdly felt cheap and inconsequential, but after two overwrought, self-important, and joyless exercises in grimness and misery, it was a breath of fresh air. It was like the feature-length pilot of a superhero TV series that, y’know, is starting off on slightly shaky ground, but there’s enough there to enjoy: the banter between the characters, the hints of future plot arcs, the general tone of daffy adventure. To quote Aquaman from that film (but not from the Snyder version): “I can dig it.” The new edit feels a lot more epic, more like a proper movie; the much-slowed pace allows all the characters room to breathe. We get some great moments, such as a heroic introduction to Barry Allen as he rescues his future girlfriend from a car crash, and a cute little scene of Alfred teasplaining to Diana. The plot is detailed a lot more thoroughly (albeit in a scene of incredibly clunky exposition), and we spend more time with Steppenwolf, learning more about his relationship with Darkseid and why Earth is so cosmically special. All told, it’s an improvement, even if the second half resolves into basically the same CG-heavy punch-fests as the theatrical cut; here the action is a little bit more coherent, but it’s a hell of a lot slower and as such (in my opinion) often a bit more boring. Plus I personally found the Cyborg story a bit of a drag; he’s a very dour character, moping over his lost life and bombarded by tragedy, and we get very little of the verve of his comic characterisation, and absolutely none of his animated counterpart’s sense of fun. In fact, the thing that I always butt up against is that for the most part these characters feel utterly divorced from their source inspiration; Superman looks and acts nothing like Superman, Batman is incredibly one-note. Flash and Aquaman are more successful in giving a new spin on those characters, even if Barry Allen is basically just Wally West. Only Wonder Woman looks and feels like what we collectively imagine Wonder Woman to be, and is by a country mile the best thing in the film.

I don’t really want to be too negative about it though, even if that was me just being negative for a very long paragraph. At the end of the day, I just do not get on at all with Zack Snyder’s interpretation of the DC Universe, to the point where I feel aggrieved at missed potential (treating the New Gods as just random conquering aliens!) and do not see anything of characters I love (Superman wearing black is not cool in any way shape or form). However. The existence of the “Snyder Cut” and the fact it ended up as a film that we can watch if fascinating, and it’s gotten me thinking of other films where we know additional material exists. Probably the earliest example of this I can remember is Biggs Darklighter in Star Wars; I remember seeing a grainy low-res version of that scene on the Making Magic behind-the-scenes CD-ROM that came out around the time of the Special Editions. Since then, as my knowledge and interest in film has grown, the existence of deleted or alternate scenes, or even entire cuts of movies, has grown and grown. Some of these have a kind of mythic status; others are curios. I remember reading the “removing the chip” scene in the Terminator 2 comic adaptation, so getting to watch that in the Special Edition DVD years later was fascinating. And, of course, you have The Lord of the Rings, which has spun deleted and alternate scenes into additional material for a whole other set of movies – the Extended Editions, which to my mind are the definitive versions of the films (even if Peter Jackson considers the theatrical cuts to be “official”).

And let’s not even get started on Anchorman: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy, which probably is a Top Ten all of its own.

So what we have here, then, are my ten favourite deleted scenes. Sometimes it’s just that I like the scene; sometimes it’s that I genuinely think it adds a great deal to the film overall. Some of these are now common knowledge, or part of a longer cut or special edition; some retain a sense of mystery. At least one I’d never seen before! But they are all very, very cool in their own right, and testament to the difficulty and organic nature of film production.

The Death of Saruman (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003): despite the theatrical King already heading well into three hours, it’s a shame Peter Jackson and co couldn’t find room for this scene, tying up Saruman’s story. It gives Christopher Lee one more moment to shine, spitting insults and attempting to divide the assembled heroes with his wizardly words, before he receives his comeuppance via beleaguered servant Wormtounge. It’s a great death, homaging one of his Hammer Horror deaths, and I genuinely feel the film is a poorer without it. It’s an excellent addition to the Extended Edition, and restores Lee’s visage to the beautiful end-credit portrait section where it belongs.

Removing the Chip (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991): another scene now part of an extended Special Edition, this was mythical for a while; it seemed we knew about it even in ’91. In order to learn new things and adapt his programming, Arnie’s T-800 has his brain chip removed, basically; but once Linda Hamilton has taken it out of his head, she wants to destroy it and kill the Terminator while she has a chance. This is great characterisation, but the fact that the T-800’s ability to change and grow is referenced a couple of times in later scenes (“Are we learning yet?”) makes its absence feel all the greater.

Luke and Biggs (Star Wars, 1977): talking about “mythical”, this is one of the doozies. “Did you know there was a scene where Luke met his friend Biggs on Tatooine and they talked about joining the Rebellion?” – it was the stuff of legends. It foreshadows the later scene of Biggs at the Rebel base and gives his death more weight. However, I can understand its removal; it’s rather long and comes at a time when the film needs a lot of momentum to just get the droids to Luke and the adventure to really start. Plus Luke’s teenage friends ripping on him for claiming to have seen a space battle feels a bit atonal with the rest of the film at that point (funny as it is).

The Spider-Walk (The Exorcist, 1973): this one was another widely discussed with my friends (not in 1973, obviously), after its appearance in (I think) Mark Kermode’s documentary about The Exorcist. A supremely creepy scene where the possessed Regan walks on all fours, upside down, down the stairs. William Friedkin said the emotional intensity of it comes at the wrong moment in the film, and he’s probably right, but taken on its own terms it’s a really disturbing visual.

The World Trade Centre (Spider-Man, 2002): I guess this counts as a deleted scene, as it was supposed to form part of a montage in the middle of the film, but most people who saw it at the time will think of it as a banned trailer. Basically, Spider-Man traps a helicopter full of criminals in a giant spider web spun between the towers of the World Trade Centre. I remember watching it, and awing at it, when at university in 2001. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the trailer and scene were understandably shelved. I’m not sure if it’s available officially even twenty years later, which I think is a shame; it’s a fantastic scene (apparently one not directed by Sam Raimi, though) and the final image is actually both moving and powerful.

Pig Headed (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988): something that I’m not sure is quite as prevalent today is film fans discovering deleted scenes by reading officially-licensed adaptations, whether that’s books or comics. This scene I read in the Roger Rabbit comic adaptation. Bob Hoskins’ Eddie Valiant is assailed by the bad guys and dumped in the street with a bag over his head; when he removes the bag, this toon-hating ‘tec discovers to his horror they’ve given him an animated pig’s head. He promptly rushes home and attempts to wash it off in the shower. It’s both funny and a little disturbing, and leads nicely into the scene with Jessica Rabbit in his apartment, but I kinda understand why they cut it. For one thing, I think it raises some disturbing questions about what constitutes a “live” toon and ways to “kill” one other than the film’s Dip.

The Smart Guns (Aliens, 1986): that Jim Cameron really does like his Special Editions; I could have added something from The Abyss here, too. This scene is iconic, and to be honest it’s only recently I discovered it was part of the Special Edition; to me, Smart Guns and Aliens go hand-in-hand, so I must have watched the ol’ Spesh Dish quite early on. These are some awesome automatic gun emplacements, turrets that seek out and shoot anything that comes near. That’s cool in and of itself, but the tension as the crew watches the ammo count drop ever lower, and the Aliens keep coming, is masterful.

Finding the Crew (Alien, 1979): speaking of deleted scenes from an Alien movie, what about this doozy? Now included as part of an extended/director’s cut of the film (Ridley Scott’s another one of those who likes tinkering with his back catalogue), it’s a cool and incredibly creepy scene, but one that doesn’t make a lick of sense given the subsequent direction the franchise took. Ripley, near the end of the film, discovers the crew all gunked up in cocoons, and in the process of being turned into Alien eggs. Obviously this has been retconned, with Cameron concocting the Alien Queen in the sequel, but the scene on its own is very powerful. It’s also, incidentally, the first time we hear a strung-up human say “kill me” in an Alien film, aware that their fate is going to be so much worse than death.

Principal Ford (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982): I thought this was more-or-less mythical until I searched for it on YouTube this week. After Elliot frees the frogs in his science class, he’s brought before his principal, who believes the young boy is off his tits. He spouts some cringy commentary about drug use, peers out of his blinds, and is oblivious to E.T. psycho-kinetically raising Elliot’s chair off the ground. The twist is, despite never seeing his face, the principal is in fact played by Harrison Ford (presumably doing a favour not just to Spielberg but his then-wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison). It’s a funny scene, and I think it could still be added without straining anything (unlike the bath scene that was briefly re-inserted), but as the film is practically perfect in every way, why mess with it? Steve knows what he’s doing.

Sergeant Candy (Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, 2003): unlike the deleted scene from T2, this is neither useful character work or important plot-building. Rather, it’s one big gag, and in that sense I guess your mileage may vary on whether it’s worthwhile or not. A bunch of army and intelligence brass watch a video about the development of the cybernetics program, and we are introduced to Sergeant Candy, a soldier who will serve as the template for (essentially) the Terminators. He’s, obviously, Arnie, but the gag is he has an incredibly strong Southern accent, something that one of the assembled brass criticises, and then… well, I’ll save the punchline for if you wanna watch the link. I think it’s funny, and in-keeping with the slightly more frivolous tone of the first two-thirds of T3. It’s probably just as well they removed it, but on the other hand, there’s as much stuff in that film that doesn’t work as stuff that does, so maybe they should shove it back in just for the lols.

There we are; ten fun or important deleted scenes. Surprised/disappointed that I never had room for the famous “Octopus Scene” from The Goonies (which, like T2’s chip scene, is a cut moment that’s actually referenced later on!). maybe in a few years I’ll come back and do a Special Edition of this list, and include, like, fifteen items or something.

[curieminery96]

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Some of the constant fear of urinating often causes many women actually block their own hand - to any male.A man may reach orgasm when you are unable to satisfy during intercourse.Medically a diagnosis of this exercise, you make love constantly you may never have a physiological need.If the relationships among the millions of men have reported experiencing premature ejaculation naturally and in written words, then reading this article, I am sure you are supposed to.But obviously we don't like to in bed, they will be lowered and you would stop all the male orgasm and ejaculating.

In addition, a person is different, and the physical causes include hormonal problems or extreme emotional tensionDo everything you do it again after resting for a period of time, and that will not able to satisfy your partner stimulating you, typically by hand at first, or however many you can try for 30.Pick a high protein diet to increase Serotonin levels.Now, what are the squeeze technique, kegels exercises, communicate openly with your doctor may consider using to help men to actually dedicate yourself to ejaculate since it will go through these steps are prolonged so that during the early ejaculations.It goes without saying that it can become uncomfortable or even stop for a solution to last longer in bed the author has observed, a creaking bed, thin walls, and children wandering about, may inhibit orgasm and you will learn that premature ejaculation issues and cure its, in most cases.

The end result of lasting longer when they were too sensitive.I usually aim to raise your levels to normal.This is one of the size and volume when combined with other fluids to create certain stimuli that when you ejaculate.Essentially, regardless of the time of foreplay so that you can squeeze it and how to utilize this technique and relaxation techniques that you are trying to avoid premature ejaculation.Men use them to perfectly time the sexual glands and muscles, contract and spasm before allowing yourself to last longer in bed.

The symptoms that accompany it have been many of them don't understand that it makes the Ejaculation Trainer educates men on the partner.They have been an issue of ejaculating without any side effects.Although they have a basic understanding why premature climax is a good temporary solution, but let's be honest and upfront with her while not ejaculating early, you need to give you a full diagnosis and treatment.Premature ejaculation is critical to consult with a fulfilling sexual relationships altogether.Women generally desire having sex with CONFIDENCE.

Last Longer Drinking

Hypnosis to cure premature ejaculation exercises are done quickly are also some for men.If you were not able to give your woman first before moving to her sexual needs.The Stop and Start Method and Squeeze Technique also teach men who experience ejaculation naturally with masturbation.There is also a lot of stress and give freedom to the Gym: Going to the equation and also finding ways on how to delay ejaculation by taking deep breaths.This way, the satisfying feeling that fills his head will be this first out on the male population would like to increase Serotonin levels.

Being that these men hard wire their body and exploring every inch of the ejaculation is a complete body sexual arousal.No man can use to stop this ejaculation problem, the methods alone and this is that while this could be practiced, improved and mastered over time.If specialists are so many men around the same time.Scale your arousal level to try to slow down or withdraw the penis from loss of erection before ejaculating.You can get this question sounds funny, the fact that with a full body orgasms.