#or maybe bobby wasn't originally meant to go by that but it either just ended up happening or once he got older he didn't want to be robert

[dreamsofzane]

Origins

It was 2009. The end of my senior year in high school. As per tradition, once I received my yearbook, I carried it around daily so that teachers, friends, and anyone else who felt like it could sign the back and crystalize their presence in my life.

We were all stepping out into the relative unknown. I guess I just had to be deep, so I used my yearbook photo caption as a declaration of how I saw myself and who I wanted to become in the world.

I can do the impossible, rise above the insurmountable, and reach the unreachable through Christ who strengthens me. It was was an adaptation of a scripture used in a song by Myron Butler.

When our yearbooks were printed, a friend of mine said something like, wow Ezra I saw your yearbook quote and it was all spiritual and serious. You're so crazy, I thought you would have put something wild in there.

I probably laughed, pondered on the sentiment for a bit, then tucked it away. But I never forgot it.

This moment was one of the first distinct times someone not only saw me clearly, but also perceived and verbalized the dilemma I existed in. It was a mirror moment for me. During that time I felt like I was straddling two conflicting worlds. And I so desperately wanted to fully belong to both. At home, I was a good Pentecostal storefront church boy in every sense of the word. I didn't see myself as just a church-goer. It was the essence of my life. It shaped my worldview. I was saved, and I yearned to be Holy Ghost filled. I barely had earthly aspirations. All I saw in my future was singing worship music. Maybe I'd go to Bible college and join a mega church's payroll, sing behind Israel Houghton, or somehow join Tye Tribbet & GA. Side-note for all my singers - that in itself was a pipe dream because to this day I am not a tenor, and back then even Tye's tenors were actually altos, very high-key.

On the other side of my double life, I secretly bagged my first real boyfriend right when I got baptized after freshman year. I loved all the secular music I wasn't supposed to be listening to. And just about every other joke that I made at school was something risqué and raunchy. That's how people outside of my family and church knew me.

I never really felt like I could be a whole person. I had no concept of what that meant. There was righteousness, and sin. Being in the world, but not of it. My feelings, my flesh – those were in conflict with God, and my job was to pick up my cross and deny everything else.

And baybee – those feelings?! My hormones were on fire and I wanted all the boys in my yard, watering my grass with milkshakes of every flavor. Because you know, high school was a diverse landscape. But if I didn't deny what I was feeling, back then I believed I would be riding the most lusciously, engorged, divinely-crafted – lawnmower, straight into Lucifer's hot burning bush as a result.

Over time the pressure to deny myself, built up so much that I had to leave the church and explore on my own. The years that followed felt solitary, ungrounded, and confusing to say the least. But I just had to allow myself to feel those things. And I'm so glad I did. I have to take a moment here to thank Bilal's All Matter & Who Are You, Erykah's Didn't Cha Know, and the movie Prayers for Bobby, for collectively forming a prayer circle around me during 2011-2012.

I could be projecting, but it's quite likely that the church adjacent boyfriends I've had over the years all lived with an unspoken heartbreak about having to either sever ties or awkwardly maneuver through their families of origin – families that were often times deeply religious, and thus explicitly, violently, and traumatically opposed our ability to even acknowledge our queerness – let alone claim it. But not one person I encountered who felt familiar to me (a trauma bond sort of familiar) seemed to really know what they were doing in earnest. Nor were they able to speak on it in full. Something always felt unreconciled. We were all young and unsure.

Ironically enough it was a moment during a church service that changed my life, affirmed me spiritually, and assured me that I had to leave the very home that raised me ideologically. More on this later.

What I will say now is that as hedonistic, irreverent, ignorant, or lost as I may appear to some – I was guided to where I am today. Perhaps because I opened myself up to it, the spirit world made itself known to me both within the settings I grew up in, and without.

I am the living result of generations of endurance. Love, grace and wisdom find their way to me. From the continent, to the island, to the concrete, through the altar call, through the divination. Somehow I continue to be found day by day.

BUT FIRST I HAD TO GET VERY LOST OKAY?!

Happy 30th Birthday to me!

Until next time – peace.

[angeltrapz]

do you have any ideas for fics that you’ve thought about but haven’t written yet? love your blog also :)

I do actually!! (+ thank you for the compliment <3)

One I've been messing with lately is the actual written fic of my Adam & Lawrence Adopt Corbett AU? That one I actually did start to write, but scrapped it due to it needing some reworking. I definitely plan to write for it someday, I just don't know when that day will be,,

Another idea, which actually will (hopefully) be a set of fics, is an expansion on the Laura Survives + Ends Up With Amanda AU (intersected w an Adam Also Lives AU) I mentioned in my fic abt them! I kinda just wanna elaborate on their lives after their tests and how they cope with it in the long run, with themes set around found family + realizing vulnerability isn't weakness, which is smth that I feel Amanda struggles w heavily. Mean besties/siblings Adam and Mandy + their partners who are very fondly exasperated!!

Something that I hope to write soon but I'm not sure when I will is a Diana sickfic where she needs to be picked up from school, but Lawrence & Alison are both at work and are unable to, so Adam does as he and Lawrence have been together a year at this point and he's picked her up at the end of the day before. He worries he's not going to be of much help but his experience (his siblings, himself, + his mother constantly being sick in childhood) and Diana's comfort in his presence basically mean he's worried for nothing. Lawrence comes home to them in a pillow fort, Diana in Adam's lap, a book somewhere beside them, both of them asleep and his heart just melts (he definitely thinks of them as the two loves of his life),, I love Chainshipping + Diana family fics and I haven't written a lot of 'em so!!

One that's been on the backburner for what feels like Forever though is an AU based on the idea that was in the original SAW III script: basically Strahm was going to find Adam in the bathroom and kinda do what Amanda did (mercy kill), but instead this AU centers around the idea of it being Rigg instead, who saves him - and this detour actually ends up saving Eric, as he doesn't open the door and the ice blocks aren't activated (Hoffman is DEFINITELY pissed bc he didn't anticipate it, but what can he do?). The endgame is Adam/Rigg/Eric but I haven't Super expanded upon that lol,, I daydream abt it a bit but that's it!! One of these days I'll write down key elements. (I'm not certain whether Lawrence is a disciple or not in this AU, so maybe Lawrence will be added too? and I don't rlly wanna leave Art out either,,)

This one's much less detailed but I wanna write a fic abt Mallick!!! I think abt the Fatal Five SO MUCH and I wish they got more characterization/that we at least got to know more abt them. It strikes me as odd that we haven't heard more abt Mallick in particular bc he's one of the few survivors of a game to actually appear in a following movie? I just think it's weird that if he's that significant in canon (he's obviously Very significant in my heart), why don't we know more abt him?? I also want Brit to be there bc personally I got the impression that she didn't survive, but a. that hurts me to think abt in regards to Mal and b. I believe it was said in a commentary track that she actually Did survive, just wasn't present at Bobby's meeting. (fun fact I find interesting: Brent Abbott from VI & Daniel Matthews were meant to be in that scene too!)

SPEAKING OF DANIEL I want to write. Just smth abt him. I love Daniel a lot & have ever since I first watched II. I feel this way abt Diana and Corbett too, but I've always wondered what happened to him after everything. Like yeah he was older than the former two I mentioned, but he was still a child, only 15-17 at the oldest, and I just. I don't know! I wish we knew more!!

And then lastly, I want to write a fic where Ashley Kazon (the first to die of the Fatal Five in SAW V via. the razor thing.) survives and ends up w Brit lmao!! I have no idea why or how that ship occurred to me but I kinda just wanna flesh it out a bit, see what happens, ESP since ashley is such a minor character who. Instantly is gone. (I also want to have Adam there bc I KNOW he and Brit wld get along. Mean gay/bi solidarity!! so basically maybe it'd be Brit/Mallick/Ashley, as in she's dating the other two who are not dating each other, and then also Adam/Mallick!)

There's probably a bunch more but they've not received nearly as much thought - save for my Alison/Tracy ideas, which I think abt often but haven't been able to construct a solid fic out of yet,, but this was fun to think abt so thank you!!