#on thanksgiving. not even mentioning just a (mostly) native family having a bad thanksgiving in general. a bitter memory all around

[turtlemagnum]

when i was younger and hung out around my uncle a lot more than i do now, i remember whenever he referred to things regarding his native heritage, he always just called it "indian". called himself an indian, called the words he taught us indian, so on. since i was a little kid who didn't know any better, i didn't know that "indian" in the context of indigenous americans was a very broad, frankly bastardized term to paint a vast variety of cultures spanning two whole damn continents with one brush. it only occurred to me as i got much older than i was at the time that there'd be more than one "indian" language, and up until now since i had no idea what tribe(s) he even is i couldn't even begin to know where to look unless i found a download of every goddamn interlingual dictionary available and painstakingly checked every godddamn one for what their word for "thunder" is

the word he taught us meant thunder was hiloha. i didn't even know how to spell it until now, because he only ever said it aloud. literally just a few minutes ago, i decided to ask my grandma (his sister) if we knew what tribe(s) he belonged to. and apparently he's a mix of choctaw and makah. which gave me a lead, which led to me finding a dictionary on libgen, which led to me word searching "thunder" in the choctaw to english dictionary. it's the only word i remember him teaching us, and i'm unsure if he ever tried teaching us others. but it was his dogs name, and he was a damn good boy, so i remembered it clear as day. though, they normally shortened it to "hilo".

so, i guess what came out of this is that i now know a bit more about my uncle's heritage, and where to look for more research. so, if you're gonna have a takeaway from this, i'd appreciate it if you remembered the word "hiloha". it means thunder. and aside from being the name of a very good boy who deserves to be remembered, i think it's even more important to remember the histories, cultures, and of course the languages of all the indigenous folks who came before us and did their damndest to preserve their cultures in spite of it all.

[lserver362reviews]

What a show, what a journey, what a town! I started watching Northern Exposure during the week between starting the job of my dreams and leaving a really bad workplace (one that I was desperate to go to because I was fleeing a REALLY bad workplace) in March of 2022. I finished the series tonight, the eve of my departure for my adventure from Twin Peaks to Cicely. I have followed along with the Northern OverExposure Podcast (catch me on their episode on Season 6 Episode 4 The Letter) over this year plus and have had a wonderful time live tweeting my thoughts and interacting with Northern Exposure fans and the hosts of that show, Charles and Lee. I've lost track of how many people have responded to me watching the show, irl, with, "Oh I loved that show!!" My parents (My dad said, "you don't remember when we watched that?" and I had to remind him I wasn't alive yet), my boss (who "stopped watching when Joel left"-spoiler!), my coworkers (and their siblings), my friends (who are accompanying me to the Informal Moosefest this weekend in Roslyn). I've also been able to share the show with my loved ones (showing it to my step-sisters in Montreal and showing it to my sister- the episode where Maggie turns 30 (season 4 episode 1)-a month before my sister turned 30). The Thanksgiving episode (season 4 episode 8) will be a yearly rewatch for me and my family now (my aunt was willing to watch it twice this past year). This show is never ever predictable, but always self reflective, and incredibly quirky (dream sequences or a gimmick abound). The characters are beautiful and the storylines range from profound to bonkers. The representation for Native people, gay people, hypochondriacs, strong women, hip girlies, manic pixie dream boys, and wise, as well as unwise, adults, was crucial for the time it aired on TV (maybe not all of those archetypes really needed the representation but once I started thinking about this ensemble cast I couldn't stop). I will always love the Zydeco style theme for something set so far away from the home of that music, but that's what the show is about. Finding joy in a place that maybe isn't your home. I haven't even gotten to my ideal man, love of my life, absolute smart cute sweetie boy himself, Chris Stevens. I was already a John Corbett fan but his monologues as Chris sent me over the moon. Where can I get me one of those? And if I'm getting into character specifics I also need to mention Ruth-Anne and Ed's relationship. Ed interacting with anybody (whether on a spiritual plane (One Who Waits) or a physical person (Shelly)), is a great time, but him and Ruth-Anne just have such a beautiful connection. I'm looking forward to dancing on Ruth-Anne's grave this weekend. Also I loved Mike Monroe (sue me, HE'S A LAWYER!). This show did so much with what seemed like so little. It's a straight forward premise, as it's known to Spanish speakers, "Doctor en Alaska", but what unfolded to me was much much bigger. I can't say too much about the short comings of season 6, but I never hated it. Characters acted a little more strange than usual and things felt different, maybe sometimes a little stale, but it's still the same town. It's funny to me how a fictional place, so far away, can remind me of my own hometown and state. There really is something universal in the particular. I have loved (mostly) every minute of watching this show (Maurice took the longest to grow on me) and shouting my reaction to it into the void only to have others respond (thoughtfully and with enthusiasm). It's really indicative of where I'm at in my life and I feel incredibly lucky. So thank you, everyone involved in the making of Northern Exposure, the Northern OverExposure Podcast, and anyone who lets this town into their heart. You'll find me, and many others, there. Happy Moosefest everyone, antlers up! <3

[crashdevlin]

Wishverse- Turn Left

Author’s Note: The reboot begins. A big shout out to @bamby0304 for being awesome, helping talk me through some of this stuff and motivating me to make Wishverse happy, fluffy and smutty as all get out!

Summary: Y/n finds herself back in the beginning of November 2018, and she sets to fixing the mistakes she made.

Pairing(s): none yet

Word Count: 1200

Warnings: mentions of prostitution, mentions of non-con, mentions of PTSD, mentions of cheating (all of these things are bare mentions)

You bit your lip and picked up your cell phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, this is Dean. Is this... y/n?” A little gasp escaped your throat. It was him. It was him and he didn't know you and holy shit, how'd this even happen?

“Yes, I am.”

“I got your message and you're in luck: I'm free that week. But since that's a multi-day event you're asking for and you're a new client, we’re gonna have to meet up, make sure you even like me enough to spend a weekend pretending to be head over heels for me, then we can do details and shit. You busy tomorrow?”

You blinked. You weren't sure what you were doing tomorrow. Your tomorrow was almost eight months in the future… but you knew you were free at 2 PM because that's when you met with Sam at Starbucks. “Not for lunch, I'm not. Why don't we meet up at Biggerson's on Cedar Ave, discuss terms over a couple slices of pie? 2 PM?”

“Oh, you said the magic word, sweetheart. I'm definitely into grabbing pie. 2 PM. See ya then.”

“Okay, bye,” you said, telling yourself you were going to earn back ‘princess’ and turning the cell off. You brought up the news. November 2, 2018. You shook your head in amazement. How the hell had this happened? “Charlie!”

The small redhead padded out of her room and into the living room. “So, who'd you pick? I was gonna get you a date with, uh, Dean. Or Sam.”

“Charlie.”

“Yeah?”

“What is today’s date?”

“Uh, the second all day, why?”

You shook your head. “This is unbelievable,” you whispered.

“What is? That you just hired a hooker? I know! It's completely out of character for-”

“Char, do you believe in magic?” you interrupted.

She turned to you, fully, her eyebrows raised. “Is this you telling me you're a witch and the Wizarding World is real, because I'm gonna be honest, I don't think I would take that too well, mostly because I never got my Ilvermorny letter and if magic is real and I ended up a muggle, I'd be so disappointed.”

You shook your head. “I can't do magic, but I think I've had magic done for me.” You took a deep breath. “When I got up this morning, it was Sunday June 30, 2019. At the end of the day, I made a wish to change things and suddenly it's last year.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don't believe me.”

“I mean… I'm X-Files, but it's kinda farfetched, sweetie.”

You sighed, then smiled as you remembered something. “On Monday, this coming Monday, Roman stock is gonna go through the roof… like a hundred twenty points.. you're going to get an email saying that all supervisors are getting a percentage bonus because of it. It's gonna come out to a nice, even $1337. You're going to make a leet joke because you can't help it, then you're going to say something about how you have been internetting for far too long. After that, I want you to call me, okay?”

“Wow. You're really serious about this.” Her eyes were confused and intrigued and a little bit scared. “What happened in 2019 to make you wish yourself back?”

You shook your head. “I don't want to talk about that until you really believe me, Char.”

“Okay, well, can we talk about how Wish universes never work out? ‘Be careful what you wish for’ is, like, one of the most overused tropes in fantasy fiction.”

“Okay, true. Counterpoint: that's usually some powerful entity trying to teach the protagonist a lesson, to be happy with what they've got, and I honestly can't think of a single way this wish could make my life worse.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah.” You gave a tight smile. “But I can fix it. I turned right last time, but this time I turned left. Like I should have the first time.”

“Is that a Doctor Who reference?”

“Of course it is.”

“Wait.” Charlie's eyes fell on her laptop. “Is this about the hookers?”

“Escorts, and yes. I'll explain everything on Monday.”

“Okay? Well… who’d you pick?”

“I picked Dean this time.”

“And your first time?”

“Sam.”

“Oh, with the monster cock!” You flinched at her words. “You okay?” she asked, worried.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine this time.” You smiled, tightly, and took a deep breath. Charlie studied your face and you could tell she was warring between her rational brain telling her that you had to be fucking with her, and the nine years of friendship telling her that you just weren’t that good of an actor. You grabbed your phone and headed toward your bedroom. “Don’t worry about it, Char. Just forget it ‘til Monday.”

Your face in your mirror caught your attention as you passed your dresser. The vision of you before Sam, before the twenty-five pounds of stress-induced weight loss, before the sunken eyes from the insomnia, before the loss of yourself… it made you realize just how bad things had gotten.

But this time? This time things were gonna be different. Even if you couldn’t get Dean to want you, even if you never spoke to him again, you could get yourself out of the hole you put yourself in because of Sam… and maybe you could get Adam safe, somehow. Even if nothing came from the blank slate except the opportunity to completely distance yourself from the Winchester family after Thanksgiving, to treat them like a chapter in your book that needed to be edited down to almost nothing… if all that came of this wish was one good weekend with Dean and remembering what could’ve been for the rest of your life, you’d be okay with that.

You wanted Dean, of course, and you were going to use the knowledge of the man gained from six months of alternate timeline friendship to get his attention, but if that didn’t work… at least you weren’t stuck with Sam’s cheating junkie ass. You could move on.

As you lied down to sleep, a knock came to the door. “Hey. How do the midterm elections turn out?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, yeah. That’s in a couple days,” you whispered. “Dems take the House, Republicans keep the Senate. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets the vote and becomes the youngest woman elected to Congress. Two Muslim women tie for first Muslim congresswomen, Colorado elects the first openly gay governor. The… oh, what’s her name? You were really excited about… uh, Sharice Davids?”

Charlie squealed and slammed open your door. “Kansas elects a Native American lesbian?!”

You chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, and there’s gonna be another pointless recount in Florida that turns into a meme with the ‘What year is this?’ scene from Jumanji.”

“That’s… very specific.” Charlie eyed you suspiciously and back out of your room.

“And Beto O’Rourke loses!”

“You’re crazy! He’s got all kinds of celebrity support!”

“Guess we’ll see on Tuesday!” you called across the apartment. You got comfortable in your bed and looked up at your ceiling. A blank slate. Eight months of knowing what’s coming. A chance to fix everything, to change everything. “Tabula Rasa,” you whispered, closing your eyes.

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[bluboothalassophile]

A prompt where Roy introduces Raven to the Navajo (of whom she may or may not have relatives). If you have to give her a reason to meet them, well, the native americans have thier own magic right? Raven being headcanoned on having Navajo blood isn't the most explored concept, so here's an opportunity to expand on that if you want.

Hello,

Okay, I am going to be extremely honest with you, since introducing the idea I have for Raven’s heritage, I have been toying with a HfaB story idea for her and Roy. It has been nagging me since the introduction of Alice in the HfaB universe. Again, this is mostly because I have toyed with the notion of exploring Raven’s heritage, and because I have a dear friend who is a RoyRae shipper, @purplepenner​, and while I am not, I do love their friendship.

So I’ll give you guys the summary of the story and the title, which will probably be posted after I finish I’ve Got the Umbrella, and as a short like Welcome to Chaos:

Yee Naaldlooshii

The Wedding was set for September 23, it’s not the wedding of the century but it is the wedding of the family, and Roy’s rocky relationship with the Arrows and Flashes have him invited. As brother of the bride, not as a groomsman. His ‘date’ to the wedding, Raven.

Of course there is this road trip from Gotham City, New Jersey to San Diego, California. The Road Trip is naturally a good-natured cover up, coerced by Vic, Harley and Ivy for Raven to have a Thanksgiving with her blood relatives and reconnecting with her heritage. There’s also the bonus of Step Nine leading Roy to take a detour through Farmington, New Mexico, to reconnect with his foster brother and old roots. Alice has also offered them a room at the family ranch house.

So how is it that town’s children are disappearing and no one can dare to look for them?

Now here’s a snippet of the opening chapter…

Spoilers for Hopes for a Bastard…

Roy sat there in Gotham Siren’s HQ with Lian on hisshoulders; as she munched the crackers from Ivy as he watched the argumentunfold. It was a train wreck.

He had originally asked Raven to be his date for Artemis andWally’s wedding because asking Donna just seemed wholly inappropriate. Especiallywith how his tentative recovering was starting to have him stable. Also, he wasa single dad with a toddler, who adored Donna, an Outlaw, and an Arrow, he wasjust starting to really make a connection with his family. After almost twoyears of sobriety he found being sober, again, more important than anythingright now. Which was why Raven was to be his date for the wedding; which was tobe in Vietnamese fanfare at the request of the bride, with a Baptist ceremonyat behest of Wally.

It was going to be a hell of an event.

“I’m not going to Thanksgiving with her!” Raven snapped.

“Rae, you’re going!” Victor shouted.

“No!”

“You’re going.” Harley and Ivy deadpanned.

“She stalked me!” Raven sputtered.

“We know.”

“She has harassed me!”

“Rae, as your mama, I’m saying you’re going and that isfinal, and I will be seeing to it that one way or another your skinny littleass is over in New Mexico for Thanksgiving, and at that wedding; you’ll be backin time for finals, so get going!” Harley snapped.

“I packed your bag, Roy got it to the car,” Ivy supplied.

Roy almost laughed as Raven balked. But Jason, who was hungup in the BatCave because of a botched mission with Tim and Dick, wasn’t hereto valiantly save the little bird from the impending road trip.

“Come on Rae, let’s go,” Roy chuckled standing.

“WEEEEEEEE!” Lian squealed as she stole his hat and giggledin delight at being so high. Natural born archer this one.

“I hate you all,” Raven growled as she stalked off.

“Oh, come on, it won’t be that bad!” Roy chuckled as he slunghis arm around her shoulders.

“Roy, I’m being forced to interact with a woman who has beenbugging me since the dinner; which I ran out of to go save yours and Jay’s ass,last year, to come around, after I made a deal with her to be left alone if Isaid no,” Raven sighed.

“It’s not that bad Rae,” he promised.

“Roy, satanic cult after me,” she reiterated.

“You’re going. It’ll be fine, Lian and I got your back,” hechuckled.

“My knights in shining armor,” she sighed.

“Da’s lil bird mine!” Lian cackled.

“You know your da doesn’t share,” Roy mused.

“Well, she takes after both her dads in that regards,” Ravensighed. Roy caught his little monkey, swinging her around as he opened the cardoor for Lian. Lian nimbly clambered in, he strapped her in as he got the doorfor Rae. Raven sighed.

“Can I just put this on the record, this is a bad idea.”

“Yes, we already said it to Felicity, when she demanded megoing to the wedding of one of my best friends marrying a girl who is kind oflike my little sister,” Roy reminded Raven as they buckled in.

“I like Wally,” Lian giggled. “He fast!”

“Yes, he is.”

“You’re a dweeb, and I can’t believe you agreed for me to gothere for a week before the wedding,” Raven sighed.

“Well, you’re my date for these weddings.”

“And what happens when you get married? You and I going tothat together?”

“Well, I’d say yes, but I think Jason would murder me at thealter.”

“Why does everyone say that! We’re not together, dating, oranything!” Raven growled in frustration.

“Rae, you and Jay are magnetic, so get over it, accept theobvious, and also know you’re my date for Garth’s wedding as soon as he figuresout if he’s marrying Tula or Dolphin.”

“I have fifty bucks on him marrying Dolphin,” Raven said.

“Really? Cause I think it’d be Tula,” Roy said.

“Why is that?”

“Cause, Tula’s that girl,” Roy lied.

“We’re terrible people for betting on our friends’ lovelives,” Raven muttered.

“No, we’re only terrible people if we get caught betting ontheir love lives.  By the way, I need youand Jay not let me down and get hitch in a decade, so I don’t lose a grand to Donna,”Roy teased. He was only half serious; but neither Jay nor Rae needed to knowabout what was going on with the Bats and the bets to get them together.

“I will send you to Hell. Into the deep pits of Hell thatyou can’t even imagine,” Raven warned.

“You’ll thank me when you get hitched,” he grinned.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Raven warned him dismissively asshe pulled out some of her homework. Roy didn’t mention that the kisscam hadbeen his idea between himself and Stephanie, with Damian’s help. It was astart, but the looks those two had had was worth it. It was also a start. Butnothing drastic.

Roy sighed as they started to head out from Gotham.

It’d been a busy year, since Artemis and Bizarro had comeinto the fray of their little rag tag family. It was something different, andalien to how living with Ollie and Thea had been. Roy had kind of liked the waythe Outlaws was forming a family vibe. Despite Jason’s extreme disgruntledattitude about the communal living.

However, this wedding would be the first major family eventthat he would be attending without his ‘husband’, as Jason had been the oneattending every family event with him since he had agreed to Jason’s rules andliving with him. Jason had also, with great reluctance been attending everysingle Arrow and Bat family event. So, in all fairness, Roy was a bit nervousnot having his rock for support there as his best friend was currently tied upin the BatCave, drugged with a bad wound.

“You know this is the first time that I am going to a familyevent without Jason, it’s kind of daunting.”

“Don’t worry, your moronic husband will be fine,” Ravenmused.

“No one said Bats were smart,” Roy mused.

“I warned him, I wasn’t going to heal him this time around,”Raven muttered. “Also, you can’t seriously tell me that he has gone to everyArrow event. I have to yank his teeth out to get him to the Bats!”

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

pls expand on your ridiculous experiences during one semester at a fake college

okay I got a few asks about this so let me see what I can remember right now. These might not all be in chronological order

- At orientation, they were talking about the reservation near campus and all these pretty sites and this kid in the back of the auditorium goes “So uhh…heard this place might be built over a Native American burial ground?”

- The speaker: “…Let’s not think about that, okay?”

- The freshman were on campus alone for like a week and a half (other than the RA’s) before the other students and I just. The parties. Were out of control. An ambulance was called basically every night.

- I walked into the bathroom the first night there to find a girl literally dying because someone slipped something in her drink and she was having a Very Bad Reaction

- Sting- you know, the singer- ‘s son lived in my residence hall. This boy almost accidentally killed me on three separate occasions (while I was just trying to do my laundry)

- I told my family about this at Thanksgiving. Everyone in the room advised me to seduce him

- I ate breakfast in the dining hall exactly once. I got scrambled eggs. I noticed no one had brought out ketchup with the condiments and politely asked about it. I received glares from at least ten different people. Apparently people there don’t believe in ketchup on eggs.

- There were these two boys in my English class known as “The Lumbard Guys”. They didn’t live in my residence hall, but they would come over almost every night, start a party, and destroy part of the basement.

- At orientation this one kid got mad and set his shoe on fire to prove a point

- Also at orientation like??? My roommate disappeared???? And I never saw her again???

- Listen like…this campus just looked like the perfect setting for a horror film, but none of the people from the area got that. They all thought I was crazy until some comic from Comedy Central did a stand up act and said “Why the hell is this campus so creepy? I feel like I’m gonna leave here with someone else wearing my face!”. I felt way too validated.

- ALL OF MY CLASSES WERE SO FAKE

- My “math” class was actually a disguised home ec. course???? All we had were word problems that were incredibly detailed recipes or instructions on how to fix things. The teacher, who I swear to GOD was actually my Mr-Rogers-Wannabe guidance counselor from high school in disguise, spent more time trying to come up with names and backstories for the models in the text book than actually trying to teach

- I had to take a class called “first year seminar” because neither of my parents went to college. It was supposed to be teaching you about how the school works and stuff but SUPRISE BITCH WE’RE JUST GONNA YELL ABOUT RACISM AND PRIVELGE FOR AN HOUR.

- Literally that’s all we did. Just the whole class bonding over all these struggles we had gone through and getting fired up. Like, it was great, but I also ended up knowing very little about campus and school stuff bc that was the class that was supposed to be teaching me lmao

- My Psych teacher was fucking hysterical for the first few classes but then he just. Vanished. I had to drop the class

- My Fine Arts teacher just. Couldn’t stick to a teaching plan. Her entire wardrobe was scarves. She was very passionate about African masks. She had a flapper haircut. She spoke quietly, but with a marvelously forced tone of voice that I’m certain was her trying to sound impressive and hide a Boston accent. She didn’t seem to understand the year was 2014. She took us into the city to go to the Art Museum and we lost her in there, never to be seen again

- I’m not even kidding

- My “writing” teacher was my absolute fav omfg. She was this long grey haired hippie lady who worked as a nurse for the Grateful Dead and was still stuck there. She may or may not have hooked up with my uncle. I was her favorite student because one day I came in wearing a “HAIR” shirt. She wanted to take the class to England for the sole purpose of going on a Beatles tour

- But like…she did not teach a writing class omfg. She taught a social justice class. All we did was have informed debates about The Issues and listen to music and occasionally watch the Breakfast Club. Every time there was a big paper due on the syllabus, she’d just sit on her desk and go “I mean, I don’t have to cover anything, right? You guys know how to write!” Like I genuinely don’t think she knew what class she was teaching

- There was a boy who sat next to me in that class. He was deaf in one ear and used that as an excuse when he got caught blatantly not paying attention. It worked every time. But I was right next to him. I saw him playing Yu-Gi-Oh on some website on his phone under the table. One time we started talking about model cars and he pre-cummed.

- There was a boy who roamed the campus in a long black trench coat and a weird hat. I never saw his body and started to suspect he might not have one, just the theory of one. He took interest in me because I was the only person in class who ever got his Doctor Who jokes. He’d come up to me at dinner and blast quiz me on various nerd culture before running off and disappearing into the shadows. Just as I was starting to grudgingly accept I was probably going to have to eventually hook up with him for the greater good, I apparently offended him by saying I like Picard more than Kirk. He didn’t stick around to listen to my reasoning. Whenever I saw him after that he would loudly start talking about how great his girlfriend was. Everyone knew he was lying. I wonder if Kirk ever sucked his theoretical dick as well as I would have.

- I gave a football player a shout out on Yik Yak. He really appreciated it, and gave me some fries laced with weed as a thanks. That was such A Night ™ , I watched the Lorax and left the dimension.

- Every time we had dances, this creepy guy named Horace would find me and use my obvious discomfort to make me dance with him. He’d hold my wrists and shove his crotch on mine while vaguely swaying to the beat. I had to escape to the bathroom every few minutes. Finally the security just banned him from the events altogether. I can still see his face clearly in my mind.

- One night, I walked into the bathroom to find a perfect, untouched pizza laying on the floor…but not in a box. Someone literally just took it out of the box and laid it down. I’m still fuming.

- One time I was in the mostly empty library when I smelled something. I walked down the rows of shelves before rounding the corner, and found the President of the college hidden there, sitting on the floor, smoking, a bottle of vodka in his hands. We held eye contact for a solid minute. He slowly shook his head at me. I said “Sir, your house is like…literally across the street.” He shook his head more vigorously. I left the library.

- One night, I heard screaming. I looked out the window to find a girl in a giraffe costume scaling my building. People were throwing water bottles at her. I was concerned. I didn’t know who to talk to for answers.

- I was in line trying to pay for dinner. One of the lunch ladies climbed on top of the ice cream machine and refused to come down. Her friend came over and they started recreating the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Very few people acknowledged it.

- Someone jacked up the soda dispenser so it was only dispensing beer. None of the staff cared enough to fix it.

- I caught my RA in the middle of a drug deal so she gave me a coupon for free ice cream

- Also side note: The soft served ice cream machine on campus was actually a frozen yogurt machine. I had no problem with that, but like, advertise correctly, you know? Nobody else seemed to understand my confusion. Nobody else seemed to understand that froyo and ice cream are two different things. What the hell.

- There were just…so many moths all over the campus. A terrifying amount. When it started getting colder I was like, finally, I won’t be attacked by moths anymore! Only for even more moths to appear. I asked a local about it. “Oh, those are the winter moths!” What the fuck are winter moths? What the fuck, Massachusetts? My friend back home grew convinced that Mothman was in the area. I was inclined to believe her. Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can see are moths everywhere, waiting for the moment to strike.

-  I’ve encountered deer many times in my life. I know how they act around people. But the deer on this campus were just weird. They’d run out at people all the time. One almost shoved me into traffic.

- My roommate gave my phone number out to literally anyone she found who mentioned they liked to read or liked Doctor Who. She was concerned I had no friends. No one ever called.

- I met a small Greek girl in my Fine Arts class. Our first day of talking, she made me climb a mountain with her so she could get to tutoring, even though I had no reason to be in that building. Her roommates kept mysteriously disappearing. She was late to everything. She’d call me randomly to get food at 1 in the morning. She kept somehow breaking phones and tvs and other electronics. When I asked her how they kept breaking, she waved it off with “Oh, I have OCD. You wouldn’t understand”. I have OCD, and I still don’t understand. One time she invited me out with her friends from high school. I waited outside her building for two hours, while the other friends waited in the parking lot for two hours, because we didn’t know how to find each other. She eventually came outside at 10:30 pm. We went to Friendly’s. She made us stop at her house so she could grab something. We pulled up a long, winding driveway and stopped in a parking lot. At the end of the parking lot were stone stairs that lead up to a mansion on a hill. She ran inside and the rest of us stayed in the car, listening to High School Musical and talking about Supernatural. When she came out 40 minutes later we decided to try and prank her. It went wrong. We almost ran over her friend’s sister with the car. They invited me to a pumpkin patch. When I started complaining about my roommate, she asked me to move in with her. I thought about the other three girls who had seemingly gone missing. I politely declined. Six months after I left the school, I received a text from her asking for notes for an exam, and radio silence after that. I can’t find her on facebook. I fear she might have gone missing too.

- One night, as I was standing outside huddled in the cold, a boy came up and offered me a cigarette to help me stay warm. I turned it down, but he stood around talking to me for a few minutes afterwards. I felt absolutely no awkwardness at all. He was a musician from Colorado. He sang a bit of one of his songs. He was dropping out of school to go to California the next week. He told me I had beautiful eyes, but his were the most alive eyes I’ve ever seen so I couldn’t believe the compliment. We talked for about ten minutes and I fell a little bit in love. He had to rush off to a club meeting, but he told me he’d rather keep talking. He gave me the sweetest smile before he left. I didn’t get his last name or number and I never saw him again.

- There was a dance on Halloween. I couldn’t think of a sufficiently slutty yet classy costume, so I just went as Osgood from Doctor Who. When I got there there was a huge crowd, but people quickly grew bored and started leaving. There ended up being six people left (myself included). We stayed because we could see the upset faces of everyone who had planned the event, but actually had one of the most fun nights of my life. We- myself, the girl from across the hall, Trench Coat Boy, his tiny friend who never spoke, and a boy and girl I didn’t know who seemed to be professional dancers- danced nonstop for almost three hours. The strobe lights and poppy music solidified an unspoken bond. I had never and to this day haven’t felt as free as I did that night. The tiny quiet boy’s smile could have lit up a city. It’s etched into my mind. We all left the dance talking about the surreal feeling in the air, as if something had shifted. None of us ever mentioned the dance again. It’s still one of my fondest memories.

- For a solid month, there was someone in a gorilla costume running around campus.

- There was a rash of sexual assaults on campus. A gang of boys kept jumping girls in the woods. The only thing the school board did was give out free rape whistles at lunch one day. I missed that day, making me one of the only students on campus without a whistle. Later that night when I ordered pizza, the delivery guy tried to start up a conversation with me about all the assaults. He blamed the girls. I took back my tip.

- Sometimes the showers just…filled up with black sludge. No one knew why.

- The girls in the room next to me were very bizarre. They always shot me odd looks and whispered to each other constantly. I couldn’t figure out if they were sleeping together or not. They never washed their hands when we were in the bathroom.

- The doors to each dorm were thick and heavy and required effort to push them open. My roommate and I made sure to lock ours every night, and would triple check it. It swung open by itself almost every night. The channels on the tv would change with the remote equidistance away from us. Sometimes I heard humming in the showers when I was the only one in there.

- My roommate…deserves a whole separate post dedicated to her, honestly.

- She would call her mother and have her do her homework for her. She blasted music constantly, and it was either country or hard rap, nothing in between. She sexiled me constantly. I once walked in on anal. She’d meet guys on Tinder, fall in love with them after a couple of days, and then bring them into the school and into our room like it was no big deal. One of them made it clear he was a budding serial killer. She was in a new drama every week. One time someone called her a dilf on Yik Yak. She was firmly convinced her cousin was blonde because her aunt dyed her hair when she was pregnant. She tried her hardest to get me laid by a football player. She was the loudest drunk I’ve ever encountered. Honestly there’s just too much about her for this omfg

- John Zaffis, the famous paranormal researcher, came to the school on my birthday. I went because I’m a loser who’s been watching shows with him since I was a kid, and I was having a bad day so I decided it could be a treat. I sat in the front row. He held an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with me the entire presentation. He was impressed with my questions. He lamented about the fact he’s always cut out of movies or replaced by priests that look like him. He apparently came to the school every year around Halloween to do a ghost tour around the campus for the students. A girl allegedly killed herself in my floor’s bathroom. He apparently always got a lot of activity around the campus. Everyone in the freshman class started wondering if the rumors about the Native American burial ground were true.

- One time in “writing” class the teacher gave us a number and then whatever song came up as that when we put our music on shuffle we had to play for the class. I ended up with “Touch Me” from Spring Awakening. Midway through the song, the teacher from another class came to complain that they could hear everything. My teacher tried to defend that all music has an important message. “Molly, dear, tell her the message in this song!” I looked around the room and at the other teacher. “It’s about sex,” I said quietly. She stormed out of the room while the class started laughing.

- There was this girl that just had the natural ability to make anything boring. I feel bad saying that, because she’s such a sweet girl, and she’s smart, and she’s gorgeous, and she’s talented, but just…every time she says anything, it’s boring. I’m still friends with her on facebook, the talent transcends to writing as well. You could be having a fun, lively conversation and she could say something completely relevant to the point and yet it would still just be boring. It’s a baffling talent, I still don’t understand how she does it.

- There was a boy who’d come into my room. He lusted over my s’mores poptarts. He kept trying to hit the high notes in Broadway songs. He didn’t understand my sense of humor at all, so we both were constantly worried we were offending each other. He cried about Selena Gomez a lot.

- The dining hall only offered horrendous food. I had pasta almost every night because it was the only thing remotely edible. If you wanted good food, you had to go to Late Night, which was between like 10:30 and 1 I think??? They set it up specifically for stoners and people leaving parties. I was frequently the only sober person there. Except for the moths.

- The chief at the pasta place found out I like theater and got like…weirdly passionate about it. He kept telling me about different theater groups in the area and wanted to know if I was in the school musical. He asked me every time I went up for food.

- There was a disproportionate amount of large black birds to trees. It wasn’t hard to figure out why we so rarely saw smaller animals

- When I told my advisor I was thinking about leaving (mostly for financial reasons but also the fake classes were preventing me from getting an education I wanted, you know?), this little old man looked around his office as if checking for people listening in, then put his hand on top of mine, leaned in close, and whispered “Oh, you sweet little girl. Run as fast as you can.”

There’s definitely more but listen. This school was weird and fake and vaguely surreal and off-kilter. I am fully afraid that one day, years from now, I’m going to be driving through the back roads and pass the place where the campus should be, only I won’t find anything there at all, and won’t be able to find any trace of it ever existing. I won’t be able to find any record of it. I won’t be able to find a record of any of the people. Every time I think about this place I just get a weird feeling, like I somehow managed to escape the Twilight Zone but left a part of me behind in the process. Be careful when applying to college, kids.

[herdustisverypretty]

would you rather (autumn edition)

Tagged by @kelandry5​

I APPRECIATE THE TAG A LOT BUT I AM BOTH AUSTRALIAN AND PAGAN SOO UHHHH 

WE’LL SEE HOW THIS GOES! MAY OR MAY NOT BE HUMOROUS AND/OR OFFENSIVE. 

go apple picking vs go on a hay ride - apple picking as in like... picking apples off trees? or is this another way to say apple bobbing? cause i know what that is lmao that’s originally a pagan tradition associated with samhain. no clue what a hay ride is tho. I’M GONNA SAY NEITHER?????

scary vs sweet - in regards to what?????

sweaters jumpers vs boots

socks vs mittens - mittens are like... gloves with no fingers rite??? not fingerless gloves but like. i’m not explaining this well am i. 

bonfires vs football - ok wait i’ve gotta look this up, cause i am always getting confused between uk vs us vs aus football. OK ITS GRIDIRON. i mean i knew that was a thing but is that all you have in america??? those shoulder pads man... so tacky. so uh, neither, cause i’m hella scared of fire. I LIVE IN AUSTRALIA. THE RISK OF DEATH BY BUSHFIRE IS LITERALLY HERE AT ALL TIMES

trick or treating vs watching scary movies - we don’t rlly trick or treat in australia. i think this year we got one small group of kids. they rang the doorbell twice in quick succession and i was like “well if i was gonna open the door and smile and say ‘soz kids we don’t have anything’ I SURE AIN’T NOW” *ignored and blocked*

apple pie vs pumpkin pie - is pumpkin pie even a thing in australia? i don’t think i’ve ever heard it mentioned outside of spn. why do y’all gotta stick pumpkin in everything?

halloween vs thanksgiving - lol. i mean first, halloween is a commercialised/americanised/christianised theft of samhain (which i celebrate in may due to being in the southern hemisphere) (tho do not take this as my condemning and/or disapproving of halloween exactly - it’s a complicated situation), and second, i have a native american friend so i really am not supportive of thanksgiving anyway. also you know once an american my mum follows on instagram asked her how australians celebrate thanksgiving. lmao. 

bake pie vs bake cookies - uhh, pie isn’t rlly a thing in australia? i don’t think i’ve ever eaten a dessert pie that wasn’t a supermarket-bought frozen nanna’s apple pie. and i don’t even really like apple pie anyway.......

rain vs fog

black cats vs owls

ghosts vs wizards (look ghosts are fine, just dont fuckin do a seance ever)

harry potter vs halloweentown - at first i thought halloweentown referred to the halloween world in nightmare before christmas. but no, apparently it’s its own thing. who woulda thunk it

go hiking vs sleep in - what the fuck? do all americans go hiking in autumn?? uhh? WHY??????? i thought everyone on tumblr mutually hated exercise or is that just me

cinnamon vs nutmeg

reading vs writing

hot chocolate vs tea

live in a cabin in a forest vs 24/7 autumn - umm??? this is a weird one. i...i don’t understand the reasoning for choosing such totally unrelated things????? however, i would pick 24/7 autumn, because this spring has already gotten to 35+ degree days. no thanks!

candy apples vs caramel apples - ..there’s a difference? are these also different to toffee apples? cause i think i had one of those in the 90s at christmas once? it was weird. to quote river tam, i very much had the thought of “my food is problematic.” (and she remains the only person who can say that word) 

blankets vs pillows

roasted marshmallows vs roasted chestnuts - i’m a vegetarian so i’m not meant to eat marshmallows (no real loss there) and i don’t think i’ve ever even seen a chestnut in a store so?????

coffee vs apple cider - are these only meant to be consumed in autumn in america or smth? i feel like you’re lying to me. cause i know starbucks is a thing. as for apple cider, well, my sister and mother usually pick that as their drink of choice at family gatherings all year round soo??? again is this something that is only consumed in autumn in america? like eggnog at christmas? pretty sure we don’t have that too. and if we do, i don’t think anyone buys it. side note but what actually IS eggnog??? does it actually have eggs in it cause thats kinda... icky.. or is that just a name? 

red leaves vs orange leaves

braids vs bows - uhh?? they’re?? both nice??? *still confused by america*

scented candles vs the smell of freshly baked goods

carve pumpkins vs make pumpkin pie - again, we don’t do this. also fun fact! the original act of carving what are now known as jack’o’lanterns originated with pagan beliefs that carving turnips (pumpkins are native to america) with scary faces and displaying them in windows would help to scare away the demons and pixies and faeries that came out on samhain to cause mischief and eat children n shit. 

pumpkin spice lattes vs chai lattes - i’ve only ever had a chai latte once, and it wasn’t even mine, it was my friend’s from mcdonalds and i just had a sip. but it was nice! also gdi america stop putting pumpkins in everything!!! you’re as bad as me putting salted caramel flavour in everything (at least salted caramel is actually nice????). also i’ve heard starbucks pumpkin spice lattes aren’t even good anyway???? and that it’s not even pumpkin, but artificial flavouring. i think i will pass. 

coats vs oversized sweaters jumpers

beanies vs berets

candy corn vs peanut butter cups - yeah we don’t really have either of those either

s’mores vs apple crisp - NO IDEA what an apple crisp is but i’ve eaten s’mores pop tarts (ya i know they have gelatin sue me. mostly i just don’t like marshmallows. also i really like pop tarts.) and they were good so uh yeah. 

jump into a pile of leaves vs swing on a tire swing

corn maze vs haunted house - corn maze... i’m gonna assume that’s going into a corn field that’s been cut to be shaped like a maze??? why would you willingly go in that? you’re asking to be murdered. or abducted by aliens. ok i retract my previous statement. definitely go in that. 

bob for apples vs visit a pumpkin patch - ok obviously the previous apple picking then refers to ACTUALLY picking apples off trees. none of these sound appealing. 

whipped cream on hot chocolate vs marshmallows on hot chocolate - i don’t like cream in general, and we already know my stance on marshmallows: gross powdery little demons. 

WELL THAT WAS FUN. basically me just either dissing american culture or straight up not knowing what it means. glad we did that. 

i will now proceed to tag some americans. @6ubble-gum @humanitys-shortest-soldier 

actually i think thats all the americans i know. well i hope you enjoy seeing an australian witch being thoroughly confused by american autumn/halloween culture

[arcticdementor]

The best footballer’s autobiography of recent years is probably I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović. In it, the Swedish striker recounts his rise from an ethnic ghetto in Malmö to greatness. Zlatan (as he is usually known) is currently banging in goals for Paris St Germain.

…

Once you get past the obligatory snigger prompted by the phrase “footballer’s autobiog­raphy”, you can see that Zlatan’s book strangely resembles an earlier immigrant’s tale: Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Philip Roth’s classic novel about growing up Jewish in 1930s and 1940s Newark, New Jersey. Each man’s story illuminates the other. Moreover, each illuminates the increasingly typical yet rarely heard immigrant experience. Most of the talk about immigrants comes from politicians pontificating about them. These books are wonderful first-hand accounts of what it’s like to grow up in an immigrant family. Though Zlatan and Roth are separated by an ocean and four decades, the overlaps are remarkable.

Zlatan’s book is a confessional autobiography; Roth’s, fictionalised confessional autobiography. Roth’s narrator Alex Portnoy is, like Roth, a Newark boy born in 1933. (Roth, who recently announced that he had given up writing, turns 80 on March 19.) Both Zlatan and Portnoy are angry prodigies looking back on the ghetto from early maturity – Zlatan narrates aged 28, Portnoy aged 33. And both books, in large part, are odes to the native blonde girl.

Like many children of immigrants, Portnoy and Roth grew up segregated from the native mainstream. Portnoy explains (the novel is told as a long session with his mute shrink, Dr Spielvogel): “In my cousin Marcia’s graduating class from Weequahic High, out of the two hundred and fifty students, there were only eleven goyim and one colored. Go beat that, said Uncle Hymie.” In short, the dominant American caste of the day – white gentiles – was almost wholly absent from Newark. As for Zlatan’s concrete ghetto of Rosengård, in Malmö: “It was crawling with Somalis, Turks, Yugos, Poles and north Africans, but there were no native Swedes.”

…

Like many immigrants, Portnoy and Zlatan grow up under the shadow of a disaster happening in the old country. For Portnoy, it’s the Holocaust; for Zlatan, the Balkan war. Both boys sense mostly unspoken anxiety. Zlatan writes: “The war was something strange. I was never allowed to hear about it. I was protected … I didn’t understand why my mother and my sisters went around dressed in black. It was totally incomprehensible, it was like a fashion trend.” But he does know that his father’s Bosnian village was massacred and ethnically cleansed by Serbs. Early in Portnoy’s Complaint, 1941 is mentioned as the quasi-innocent date when Portnoy’s family moves from Jersey City to Newark. Later, however his sister reminds him where he would be had he been born in Europe: “Gassed, or shot, or incinerated, or butchered, or buried alive.”

Portnoy is an intellectual prodigy just as Zlatan is a sporting one, but neither man’s parents have the nous to guide his life-path. Like many ghetto children, both boys are caught between an old country and a new one, in neither of which they belong. No wonder they grow up angry. “That extended period of rage that goes by the name of adolescence,” muses Portnoy. He expresses his anger with words, Zlatan with words and violence. “I was aggressive,” Zlatan writes. “I pulled down trousers and held boys tight.” As his former headmistress once told a journalist: “I’ve been at this school 33 years, and Zlatan is easily in the top five of most unruly pupils we’ve ever had. He was the number one bad boy, a one-man show, a prototype of a child that ends up in serious trouble.”

…

Both men spend their youth feeling awkward, unsure of how to behave. They are at ease only in one place: the sports field. Portnoy’s game is baseball, where he masters every mannerism of the center fielder, so that he looks like a pro even though he’s not very good. He asks Spielvogel: “It’s true, is it not? – incredible, but apparently true – there are people who feel in life the ease, the self-assurance, the simple and essential affiliation with what is going on, that I used to feel as the center fielder for the Seabees?” The novel’s famous ode – “Oh, to be a center fielder” – helps elucidate why, in both the US and Europe, so many of the best athletes come from ethnic ghettos.

…

Both Zlatan and Portnoy yearn with wonder for that incomprehensible being: the blonde native girl who, miraculously, feels at home in the place where she lives. To attain her would be to conquer this alien society. But she seems unattainable. Zlatan recalls “being at the Borgar School in Malmö and seeing chicks in Ralph Lauren polo shirts and practically wetting my trousers when I wanted to ask them out”.

Thirteen-year-old Portnoy skates around a frozen local lake behind gaggles of gentile girls, and marvels: “The shikses, ah, the shikses … How do they get so gorgeous, so healthy, so blonde?” He dreams of skating up and introducing himself as a goy named Alvin Peterson. (“I have to speak absolutely perfect English. Not a word of Jew in it.”) But he is sure his big nose will expose his origins. Similarly, Zlatan (equally anxious about his own big nose) admits that hard as he tried in adolescence to dress like a posh Swede, he always ended up looking “Rosengård from top to toe”.

Both men first encounter the dominant native class aged 17: Portnoy goes to college in Ohio, Zlatan becomes a professional footballer. Gradually, through the medium of blonde native girls, they start to integrate. During Portnoy’s freshman year at college, he spends Thanksgiving in Iowa with the family of his gentile college girlfriend. Unused to Wasp etiquette, he is astounded when her father greets him before breakfast with the words, “Good morning.” It’s a phrase never heard in the Portnoy household. “At breakfast at home I am in fact known to the other boarders as ‘Mr Sourball’ and ‘The Crab’.”

Compare Zlatan’s wonder at his future partner, the perfect Swedish blonde Helena Seger: “She came from a model family from Lindesberg, one of those families where they say, ‘Darling, would you please pass me the milk?’, whereas we at table mostly just hurled death threats at each other.”

To Helena, Zlatan is “a miserable Yugo, with a fast car and a gold watch … who played his music too loud”. She teaches him about fish knives and forks, and how to drink a glass of good wine. (It turns out you don’t down it in one like milk.) Portnoy briefly shacks up with a posh Wasp who “knew how to eat her dessert using two pieces of silverware (a piece of cake you could pick up in your hands, and you should have seen her manipulate it with that fork and that spoon – like a Chinese with his chopsticks! … )”

…

Just as a generation of novelists told the story of Jewish America, and music the story of black America, the arts are now creating a narrative for the European immigrant experience. Zlatan was given a podium because he is a brilliant footballer, but there must be countless other second-generation kids sitting in their bedrooms around the continent, aching to tell their version.