#should have used a colored background…… damn Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[canarysage]

…make reply icons?

reply icons (or as i call em, replycons) are a weird kind of edit. they’re in the same genre as rentry or carrd graphics—i.e., that you can do whatever you want with no real rules. that said, these are some guidelines i follow

i. make your canvas much wider than it is tall

there’s no exact measurement for this. my reply icons for this blog are 600x150, but they’re fairly uniquely small. the general consensus at least amongst my peers is about a 4:1 or 3:1 ratio will work best.

the reason why your replycons should be wider than longer is because it keeps them from taking up a lot of space. here’s mine as an example:

enough space to be visible, but not so much as to be obnoxious. that should generally be your goal.

ii. collect a wide variety of expressions

this’ll be limited depending on your characters, but it’s best to have a good variety of expressions. i also save my files with whatever the expression is to me for easier searching but you don’t have to do that LOL

also, i feel obligated to mention it, but you don’t have to stick with just one character. you can use a whole group, either an in-game group (i.e. leo/need) or a visual group (i.e. blonde characters.) they don’t even really need to match, though it’ll look better if they do. with this blog and my old ones, i used a variety of characters with the same color palette so i could get the expressions i wanted.

iii. just make the damn thing

ah, the worst part of all editing—actually editing. god fucking damn it. now that you’ve got your canvas and your character(s) it’s time to grit your teeth and make some replycons

first thing i usually do is narrow down a theme. this can be as simple as a color or as complex as something like “cybercore” or whatever -core scratches your brain. for these replycons, my theme is just attempting to match the rest of my blog layout. god fucking speed.

it can sometimes help to make a thumbnail like this ^ but that’s 100% optional. i like to do it for tutorial purposes and it helps me to get my thoughts from my brain and into photopea. your thumbnail need not make sense nor be cohesive. it’s just for you to know

a good way to start is to make a shape and make it interesting—i usually make a shape and give it a border and some fun lines, rp style, but you don’t have to do that. all of those things can be done with just the shape tool. you can also find existing icon masks on tumblr or resource rentries (make sure you credit properly!!) and you can find some templates, like mine!

once you’ve got a theme and a base, start adding shit.

^ pretty easy base. i pixelated the lines around her eyes and added eyes, and added a stroke and drop shadow to the shape to make it easier to see! if you’d like, you can stop there. but i think it needs a background and some details so i’m going to keep going

background complete! for this i just used a color fill and went rasterize > filter > noise > add noise but you can add whatever you like—patterns, wallpapers, solid colors, etc. it’s up to you! i also added a small stroke around my character png so as to distinguish her from the background a little further :)

this one is a little blank on the left side so i’m gonna add some text and details!!

there we are. i added the cd png to break up the monotony of my base, added text because it’s my personal preference, and added a chibi so the text is distinguished! if you do add text, make sure it’ll be readable in any modes—light and dark. i typically add both a black and white stroke for this, and a drop shadow can help a lot, too!

an important thing to note here is any extraneous images of the character you add can’t be too distracting to the main image. if i had, for example, done this:

the new png is obviously too distracting, right? it takes up too much space and completely draws the eye away. this is even more true when the base and the png have conflicting expressions, like so:

because now i can’t tell what emotion you’re conveying—is the replycon happy or sad? what part do i focus on??

so it’s best to keep any extraneous decals pretty simple, for the sake of clarity. it’s also best to remember that english-speakers read from left to right, and native speakers are conditioned to interpret most things that way. you’ll want to draw the eye in that direction as you work, and not the other way around. hope that makes sense lmfao

iv. save as a psd

once you’ve got all your layers and details situated, make sure that you save your replycon as a psd. this is imperative, because it enables you to make new reply icons as the occasion arises, or you can recycle the basic components for a new theme!

if you’re unsure on how to save as a psd, click file in the upper left-hand corner and then ‘save as a psd.’ i recommend labeling it so you can file it more easily; i’m naming this file cobaltpegasi replycons, which is an easy template—just stick your url in instead.

once you’ve done that, keep adding expressions until you have a suitable amount of replycons! i usually made about five to ten to start with and then add new expressions as i see fit, but you can do whatever works best for you.

also, when saving your replycons, it helps to sort them by what emotion you think they convey. for example, my canarysage replycons are sorted by character and then by emotion—so this one is labeled “len smug” because that’s how it seems to me

you don’t have to do that, but i find it helps a lot when trying to find specific ones, especially if you have a lot.

v. go forth and use them

now that you’ve got your replycons done, you can use them! go forth and clear out those week old requests in your inbox (🤨) or whatever it is you want to do with them. that is all. canarysage signing off <3

…so that’s how you do it.

[kinktae]

novocaine pt. 4 || (M)

↳ PART OF MY REWIND SERIES

Going home was hard – painful even. But falling back in love with Jimin, the boy you left behind? Downright gut-wrenching.

pairing: punk!jimin x reader

word count: 8.7k

genre: 1990s au, exes au, angst, smut

warnings: 90s slang, alcohol, fighting, car sex, oc has dead parents, bittersweet ending

A/N: PLS MAKE SURE REREAD 1-3, I KNOW ITS BEEN A FAT MINUTE BUT PLEASE CONSIDER ALL CHAPTERS WHEN READING THIS ENDING

01 | 02 | 03 | 04

┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

PART FOUR (FINAL)

“You’re gonna break my damn neck!” Jimin complained, eyes shutting as you moved his head closer to the shower’s stream.

“Shh,” You giggled, fingers gingerly rinsing your boyfriend’s head. 

Jimin was fully clothed, head thrown over the tub’s edge, insisting that he remain dry as you washed the orange dye from his hair.

Just the other day you had MTV playing in the background as Grams and you were making cookies when the video for The Flaming Lips’ She Don’t Use Jelly came on. You hadn’t heard the song in ages; Hoseok used to belt the nonsensical lyrics religiously on early morning bus rides to high school. But more importantly, you had never seen the music video and became consumed by the lead singer’s tangerine-colored hair. 

It quickly became a topic of conversation between you and Jimin, nudging a shoulder into his side anytime you’d pass by an orange car or a shelf of hair dye. A week of your less-than-subtle teasing had gone by when he finally begrudgingly agreed to dye his hair orange. You were beyond excited, even if he had only agreed to get you to finally shut up.

So here the two of you were, kneeled on the tile floor of your bathroom, random splotches of bleach and dye on your shirts, the sound of The Smashing Pumpkin’s latest CD coming from your room.

“You should be grateful you have a girlfriend that’s willing to dye your hair for free.”

“Is that what you’re doing? I thought you were trying to drown me.”

“Alright, you big baby,” You rolled your eyes, reaching over him to turn off the shower head. “I’m done.”

“Pass me a towel, please?” 

His eyes were scrunched shut, hand flailing about for the towel rack aimlessly. Chuckling, you passed the wet-haired boy a towel, sitting back on your heels as you watched him pat his face dry.

“Here, let me get your hair.” You offered, grabbing the towel back from his face and onto his head, careful to be gentle as you had bleached it earlier today.

Jimin sat obediently, quietly admiring the way you took your time and cleaned the dye-stained skin around his hairline. He loved having your attention; you were always so gentle with him. His chest tightened as you hummed along to the song in the background, oblivious to the splashes of orange dye that had found your cheek.

“Oh my god. It’s hella orange.” You giggled. 

Jimin pulled you onto his lap, partly to help you work more comfortably, mainly because he liked having you close.

“Does it look bad?” His warm eyes peered into yours, sounding somewhat unsure. 

Brows furrowing, you paused to press a kiss on Jimin’s pouting mouth. As if there were any universe in which Jimin looked bad. Seeing as his frown ceased to let up, you kissed him once more, “You look great, Minnie. My little pumpkin.”

“Real convincing.” He glared. Stealing one more kiss from you, he helped you off him and back up off the bathroom floor.

You watched intently as he moved towards the bathroom mirror. You weren’t anticipating him to hate it, but should the situation present itself, you had made a point to buy an emergency bottle of black hair dye, ready to remedy the situation at a moment’s notice. 

Jimin said nothing at first, merely tilting his head from side to side as he ran his hands threw his newly orange, somewhat damp hair. A smile broke across his handsome face.

“It’s actually pretty sick.” He grinned, clearly pleased with the final result. You let out a breath of relief.

“I told you! Admit it, I was right, you look fucking hot. No one ever trusts my artistic vision.” You sighed dramatically, earning you a chuckle.

“Alright, Picasso. Remind me again the plan for tonight?” He rolled his eyes, reaching for the hairbrush he had laid out on the sink counter earlier.

“Well,” You watched as he sorted through his hair, “Hobi left a message saying he scored all of us tickets tonight for the drive-in theater but failed to mention what time or what movie it was.”

Jimin chuckled, “Typical. And you tried calling Hobi’s line?”

“No one picks up. I went and knocked on his door before you came over. The Jungs are out of town so he’s probably kicking it at Gwen’s.” You shrugged.

While you could in theory go and look up Gwen’s landline in the phone book, it seemed like a tremendous amount of work just to locate someone who quite literally lived right next door. He’d show up eventually. He always did.

You sighed, “Man, I can’t believe that old drive-in is still kicking. I thought for sure it went under in the time I left town.”

Jimin nodded, “Nah, it’s still around. But the only people using it are the old folks who were around when it was first built. They’re still playing the same ten shitty movies on repeat.”

“Let’s just get ready and go hunt him down in an hour, yeah?”

And so the two of you spent the next hour readying yourself, Jimin styling his new hair and you waging war against the blue eyeliner Gwen had somehow convinced you to purchase.

It was just around the one-hour mark that you received a call from the very person you had been hoping to find.

“Yo, kid! Come on out, I got two tickets with your name on them!”

Jimin and you ran out onto your grandmother’s driveway eagerly, laughing as Hobi slammed on his car horn melodically, a bright smile written across his face.

“Great timing, we were just about to go break down your door.” You smiled, grabbing the two bright yellow admission tickets that Hoseok had dangling out his car window. “Thanks, Hobi.”

“Where’ve you been, man?” Jimin questioned his best friend.

“Why? You keeping tabs on me, Carrot Top?” Hoseok giggled, eyeing your boyfriend’s new hair. 

“Funny.”

“I’m playin’, it looks fresh, dude. I dig.” Hoseok assured, holding his hands up as if to show he meant no harm.

You rolled your eyes, “Lemme guess, you were at Gwen’s.”

“You kidding? Her place? Her dad’s sheriff— hell no!” Hobi shook his head before a greasy grin took hold of him. “Besides, I’ve got the open crib, a pretty girlfriend, and stamina like a racehorse.” 

Jimin’s giggle was instantaneous, immediately clueing you in on what exactly Hobi was implying.

“You pig. I rang you and knocked on your door!” You scrunched your nose at him.

“Like a racehorse, kid,” Hobi emphasized, only furthering your frown.

“Jeez, okay, got it… TMI.”

“So we ready to watch Jurassic Park or what?” Hoseok first pumped the air.

Jimin’s eyes went wide, “They’re playing Jurassic Park tonight?! Sweet!”

You too were shocked. The film had come out only a few years ago.

“How the hell did that lame-ass drive-in get the license for a film that recent?”

“Got the old lady to pull some strings.” Hobi flashed you both a smug look, reaching over to pop his collar out theatrically.

“So your mom gave you the tickets? Councilwoman Jung sure has pull in this town.”

You were thoroughly impressed. Hoseok struck out in the parents department. Not only did they tolerate his tomfoolery throughout his teen years, but as his mother was on the city council, they were often occupied with work, giving Hobi free reign to do as he pleased as long as he remained out of jail. 

His mother’s words, not yours.

“Oh Nah, I got the tickets myself.” Hobi corrected.

You squinted at him, suspicious, “…Should I even ask how you got these tickets?” 

“Depends,” His voice lowered suddenly, eyes flickering from side to side, “are you gonna snitch?”

“No?”

“I broke into the ticket booth last night and just grabbed a bunch of tickets from the drawer.” He shrugged.

Your jaw fell, “Hobi!”

“Dude!” Jimin burst out laughing. 

“What?!” Hoseok’s eyes went wide, as if entirely innocent of any crime. “Why are we wigging out? It’s not like I stole money from the register! Besides, is it my fault that so many places here are easy to break and enter?”

“Tell that to Gwen’s dad when he finally locks your ass up.” Jimin teased. Your childhood friend tutted, shifting his car into reverse.

“Whatever. You still took the tickets, ungrateful bastards. Your hands aren’t clean either. The movie is in twenty minutes. I dropped Gwen off at hers so she could go get changed so I gotta bounce and pick her back up. You guys need a ride?” 

“Nah, we’ll take my car,” Jimin assured him.

Hoseok began to pull out the driveway, window still rolled down. “Meet up at mine after for drinks?”

“Sure. Thanks, Hobi!”

“See ya later, man!”

The three friends waved goodbye to one another as the eldest pulled out onto the street and drove off.

“Do you really think he and Gwen were busy fucking all this time?” Jimin pondered the second Hoseok was out of earshot, making you scowl.

“I think that Hobi is like a brother to me and if I think about it too much I’ll actually barf.” 

Jimin chuckled, throwing an arm over your shoulder as the two of you made your way to his car.

———

“A medium popcorn, one Junior Mints, and Buncha Crunch please.” You smiled at the concession’s attendee.

You were about 20 minutes into Jurassic Park and could make out the sound of the film as you ordered Jimin and yourself some snacks. He had offered to go make the snack run himself, of course, but seeing as it was his favorite movie playing, you decided that the sacrifice would be yours to make.

Handing over the necessary cash, you moved to the side, watching patiently as the attendant assembled your order. Just then, someone else approached the concession counter. You glanced over at the person not particularly interested, before realizing at once just who the next patron was.

“Yoongi?” You called out before you could stop yourself.

A head of faded mint hair turned towards you, his dark eyes meeting yours, and took on an expression that you could only guess mirrored your own. The kind of expression that can only be shared between two people who had their tongues down each other’s throats not too long ago.

A pregnant pause fell between you. 

“Y/N. Hey.” He breathed after a beat.

Chewing on the inside of your lip, you contemplated your next words, wondering what exactly to say to your boyfriend’s ex. You know… the one you had tried to have sex with.

Thankfully, the arrival of your popcorn and other snacks made it so you didn’t have to respond, a flustered ‘thank you’ escaping your lips as you grabbed your order.

“Uh, two medium sprites,” Yoongi told the attendant once she moved to take his order. You tried your best to look occupied, not wanting to look like you were waiting on the mint-haired boy even though you most definitely were.

Within a minute, he moved towards you, drinks in either hand and a sheepish smile on his face.

“So, uh… this is awkward.” He admitted honestly, joining you as began to walk away from the concession stand, deciding the spare the innocent concession girl from the unfortunate conversation that was about to unfold.

“Super awkward.” You affirmed with a nervous chuckle, hands gripping around your bucket of popcorn.

He nodded.

“Hey, so,” He came to a stop suddenly, halting your stride. “I’m sorry if I caused problems for you the other night. I wouldn’t have��� I mean, I didn’t know that you were… We were also both probably way too drunk–”

“No, no, honestly, don’t sweat it!” You were quick to cut him off, not wanting him to assume that he had done anything to make you uncomfortable that night. “I didn’t know who you were either. You seemed cool and hot and, you know… I wanted to. So… yeah. ”

Wow. This just nearly beat the moment Jimin walked in on you two in the scale of awkwardness. At least you weren’t sober then.

Yoongi nodded once more, “Cool. I also wanted to. But, um… listen, you’re a cool chick and all but you should know there’s someone else. Plus, there’s the whole you being my ex’s ex thing…”

Oh god. Was Yoongi… rejecting you? Fuck, he totally thought you were still coming onto him. How utterly humiliating. 

“Yeah, no, gotcha. That can literally never happen again. It’s all good.” You laughed, purely because of how ridiculous this entire conversation was. He grinned back at you, remembering exactly why he liked you in the first place that night at Guyi’s.

“No hard feelings?” He offered you a crooked smile.

“Deal.” You mused, eyes falling on the two drinks in his hand. “So are you here alone?”

You watched in interest as Yoongi suddenly turned a shade of pink.

“No, actually… I’m here with a coworker.” He told you, a certain bashfulness to his tone.

“Oh, a coworker.” A knowing smirk grew.

“I’m kind of seeing him, I guess. I don’t know, it’s too soon for labels.” He shrugged.

“So you’re seeing your coworker. Scandalous.” You teased.

“Again, sorry. If you were literally anyone but Jimin’s ex-girlfriend–“

“Oh, shut up.” You rolled your eyes at his joke, making him laugh.

The sound of various screams rolled over the area, catching both of your attentions, undoubtedly belonging to the moviegoers in response to a scary scene that must’ve just played out.

“I’m not really into dinosaurs,” Yoongi admitted lightheartedly to which you giggled, agreeing.

“Where do you work by the way?” You made casual conversation. “I just realized I never asked.”

“I work at a daycare.” He told you, making your smile drop.

Right. The daycare. 

You supposed that was the thing about ghosts. They tended to haunt you.

Your chest felt hollow once more as he took a sip from one of the drinks. “Not huge on snot and boogers but the pay is decent so who cares, right?”

“Whatever happened between you and Jimin? I mean, why did you guys break up?” You said suddenly. 

It had just made its way out like word vomit, desperate to change the conversation. The last thing you wanted was for him to ask if you were at all familiar with the property.

Yoongi looked at you in surprise for a split second before shaking his head.

“Jeez, how ironic.” He said, mostly to himself.

“Huh?”

“No, nothing I just… it’s funny you asked me that. Because it was you. You were the reason we broke up.” He confessed, bringing the straw of his drink back up to his mouth.

Weirdly, a feeling of guilt washed over you at his words. It rendered you silent.

“At the time it pissed me the hell off. He was dumping me for an ex-girlfriend he hadn’t seen in what? Four years? Took a hit to my ego for sure.”

All you could do was stand there looking dumb. You hadn’t the slightest idea how to react to what he was saying. Part of you was… delighted? Happy that Jimin wasn’t as dedicated to that relationship as you feared he might’ve been. But another part, a much more prominent part, felt awful. Terrible that you had hurt Jimin so deeply that he couldn’t even commit himself to another person. That he couldn’t move on.

“But anyway, it was for the best. Weirdly he did me a favor. No point in being hung up on a guy who was still hung up on the past.” Yoongi paused suddenly, scrunching his nose as he shook out his mint locks. “Dammit, I sound like such a cliche bitter ex, huh?”

“At least you’re not the shitty ex who broke his heart.” You offered half-heartedly.

Yoongi stared at you for a moment, allowing himself to freely admire the girl who had captured Jimin’s heart all those years ago. Despite your otherwise neutral expression, there was a gloom around you that he couldn’t quite ignore. 

He pressed his lips together, wondering if he could offer you any solace.

“If it makes you feel any better, there’s no guarantee it would’ve worked out even if you had stayed.”

Your head tilted in confusion. Yoongi stole a piece of popcorn cheekily, popping a piece into your mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you told me yourself that night. You’re a city girl. You would’ve wanted to go see the world eventually and everyone knows Jimin has no plans to ever leave this tiny ass town. Maybe you just got the inevitable over with. So don’t beat yourself up over it.”

You were suddenly acutely aware that Yoongi had no idea that you and Jimin were back together. A wave of nausea rolled over you as you considered his words.

He was right, of course. You had always dreamed of making it out of here. Even when you were young and running down the halls of your grandmother’s house, your adventures took you far away, towards weather unlike your own, towards faces and cities you’d never recognize. 

So what was it that you were doing now? Getting closure by opening up a chapter with Jimin you had closed years ago?

Jimin was the boy who had his kids' names picked out when he was in elementary school. He was the boy whose biggest dream was remodeling his parents' home so that it would one day fit his own family, the family that he wanted to start here. He was the boy who looked for you months after you went missing, and who ended a relationship because he was unable to let go of the past. He put his life on hold for you. And who was to say he wouldn’t do it again when you left?

Your feet felt heavy as if you were sinking into the dirt of the drive-in lot, crushing guilt piling onto you.

“Hey.” A voice called out, making both Yoongi and you turn to face whoever was trying to grab your attention.

It was Jimin. Of course, it was. You had gotten caught up in conversation, taking far too long to get snacks. It was only a matter of time that Jimin would head over to check in on you. His hands were tucked away in his jeans, expression unreadable as he eyed the two of you from where he stood.

“Oh. Hey.” Yoongi replied, eyebrows pulling up in surprise. His surprise was quickly replaced with confusion as Jimin walked over, pressing a kiss to your cheek as he took the snacks from you, always the gentleman.

“Sorry, I took so long. We bumped into each other and lost track of the time.” You explained awkwardly to your boyfriend through warm cheeks.

“I see that.”

You could see the way Jimin’s jaw was tense as if swallowing back words that weren’t exactly pleasant. You almost see the puzzle piece coming together in Yoongi’s mind as he looked at the two of you interact.

“Well… it was nice seeing you again. Good luck with everything.” You waved Yoongi goodbye, already heading back where Jimin had set up the car, eager to walk far from the second most awkward situation the three of you had found yourselves.

“You too.” You heard Yoongi called back, a note of disbelief in his tone, one that you forced yourself not to dissect further.

———————

You did your best to keep your eyes on the screen ahead of you, but the tension in the car was palpable. Jimin was taking those sharp short breaths through his nose like he always did when he was angry. You licked your dry lips.

“You’re upset.” You broke the ice.

“No, I’m not.”

You tilted your head against the car seat’s headrest, facing your troubled lover.

“Yes, you are.” Your tone took a soft timbre. “You’re doing that angry sulky thing you do.”

“I don’t sulk,” Jimin said, bottom lip jutting out ever so slightly.

“Minnie, you sulk.” You chuckled but failed to receive a chuckle back in return from him.

You straightened up in your seat.

“Nothing is going on between Yoongi and I.”

“I know.” He said.

Your brows furrowed at his words, “Okay. Then is it something else?”

Jimin said nothing, eyes pressed against the movie screen but clearly not paying attention to the film at all. You sighed.

“Can you roll your window up?” You asked. Your boyfriend met your eyes curiously, seeing that you had done so on your side before complying and rolling his up.

The second his window was up, you were unbuckling your seat belt and maneuvering yourself across the car and onto his lap.

Pressing kisses onto his neck, you felt as he noticeably relaxed, a soft sigh falling from his pillowy lips.

“Talk to me.” Your mouth traveled onto his jaw, kisses sweet and reassuring.

“I love you.” Was his breathy response, hands gripping to sides of your thighs, pulling you closer to him.

He couldn’t say how insecure seeing Yoongi made him feel. He didn't know how to say that if you left him once, what was to stop you from leaving him again? If he wasn’t good enough to make you stay all those years ago, what would be different this time?

“I love you too, Minnie.”

His hand found the side of your cheek, drawing your mouth into his, kissing you with intention. 

You pulled back suddenly, “Wait, this isn’t talking.”

“Don’t wanna talk. Just wanna touch you.” His voice was lower than usual.

Your face flushed at his honesty, unsure of whether to press further. Ultimately you gave in.

“Okay.” 

Your fingers curled into his t-shirt, tongue finding his, heavy breaths filling the small space of the car as you lost yourselves in each other.

Breaking the kiss with a groan, you pulled up at your shirt. You nearly laughed at the way Jimin had already begun to tug at your bra clasp before you had even successfully removed the garment from you. 

The lacy bra fell down your body, tossed aside mindlessly as he pressed a kiss onto your chest, hand working your soft flesh. You let out a breath as he sucked the supple flesh into his mouth, thumb rolling over your pert buds.

“Wait, drop your seat back, I don’t want someone from another car seeing.”

Jimin nodded, leaving your chest to comply with your request. Immediately though, his hand found the back of your neck, pulling you towards him and into a kiss.

Making out in Jimin’s car was admittedly nostalgic — the two of you having spent many afternoons fooling around whenever you got the chance. And maybe that's what the two of you were going for, slipping back into each other in a way that came naturally.

You rolled your hips into his desperately, every inch of you buzzing at the way you could feel the way he had hardened underneath you.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He muttered as his thumb lolled over your sensitive nipple. You whimpered.

The sound took him back to the night of the bonfire when he had buried his head between your angelic thighs that night of the bonfire, your greedy fingers tugging at his scalp as you cried against the feeling of his tongue.

Fuck, he was hard.

His hand reached down to undo his jeans in desperation, the pressure of his strained cock in his thigh jeans too much to bare. His actions caught your attention, your teeth finding your bottom lip as you watched the anguished boy reach into his underwear and readjust himself. 

Suddenly, his mouth was on yours again, hand angling one of your thighs so that he could grind his hips against it. 

You were getting far more worked up than you anticipated, his hot mouth leaving marks across your exposed skin. You needed more of him.

“Do you wanna fuck me?” You asked innocently, hand pressed against his abdomen.

“Fuck yes.”

“Hm...”

Your hand dipped into his underwear, eyes glimmering in mischief as you pulled his cock out, wasting no time in working the shaft. 

“Fuuuuuck.” Jimin’s voice was drawn out and pleading, chest rising and falling in rhythm to the pace your hand had set around his cock.

“Does it feel good, Minnie?” You cooed teasingly, sucking a bruise into his pretty neck.

You preened as his hips suddenly jerked up, a whine pushing past his swollen lips before he cleared his throat.

“You’re gonna fucking kill me. Sit on my cock already.” He begged.

You smiled into his skin, head moving back up to kiss him as you ran your thumb over his red tip, swallowing his moan.

“You feel so good in my hand though.”

You weren’t lying. Hot, engorged, and pulsing under your fingers, his cock was truly a fine piece of craftsmanship. If it weren’t for the cramped location that was the front seat of his car, you would’ve had your lips wrapped around him, using your tongue to remind yourself of every vein and ridge.

“I promise I’ll feel even better inside you.” He groaned.

“What’s the rush? I don’t remember you ever turning down a handjob.”

“And I don’t remember you being such a fucking tease. Clearly, things change.” He tutted.

You frowned at his tone but allowed one of Jimin’s hands to push its way between your legs and down your underwear.

You stifled a noise as he ran his fingers up and down your slit.

“Oh, love bug, you’re so wet. That for me?”

You fought back a blush, somehow still flustered at the way Jimin’s dirty talk after all these years.

“You got yourself this worked up over touching me, yeah? Fuck.”

A shutter ran through your body, pleasure running over you as he toyed with your clit. Your hand fell from his member altogether, finding leverage against his thigh as you pushed yourself closer to his feathery touches.

Your hips moved on their own accord, mouth opening as a silent moan tumbled out.

“Bet that feels so good, huh? So cute.” He praised, pinching one of your cheeks.

“Now whose teasing?” You pouted. 

A whimper escaped you against your better judgment as his fingers suddenly made their way down, spreading you open as he lightly pressed against your entrance.

“Acting so tough but losing the act as soon as I touch you.” He placed a kiss against your head, spurred on by the way you had suddenly become pliant and placid under his touch. “You're practically sucking my fingers in.”

You weren’t certain if the whine that greeted him in response was from his words or the way he pulled his hand back every time you tried to sink onto his fingers.

“Please.”

“Sorry, angel. I’m not gonna finger fuck you. Just gonna sit here and play with what’s mine.”

Jimin was not usually particularly possessive but god was it hot.

If his fingers hadn’t immediately moved back to roll over your clit, you might have had the energy in you to complain, but instead, you found yourself plaint in his arm, thighs trembling.

“I’ll... shit... I’ll cum if you keep that up.”

“Bummer. Guess there won’t be any need to fuck you then.”

“Dammit! Just fuck me, Minnie!”

“Hm... I dunno, I think I’m going to need a little bit more convincing before I do–“

“Oh, please, please!” You were rambling before he could finish his sentence. “Fill me up, Minnie. I need it so badly. I can take it I promise.”

“H-Holy fuck, okay. Dirty fucking mouth. Come here, baby.”

And just like that, you pushed yourself back up onto your knees, moving to hover over Jimin’s painfully erect cock. 

Your boyfriend’s hands cradled your hips as you aligned the two of you, kneading the soft flesh tenderly.

“I love you.” You promised as you sank down. He threw his head back as you fell into the rhythm that felt as natural as breathing with him.

“Damn right you do, you're my fucking girl. Mine.”

He loved the way you moved with him - loved the way you felt like the piece he was missing. He loved everything about you and couldn’t help but shower you with praise as you rode his cock, wishing he could give you more than just car sex. He felt helpless near you, nowhere near as confident as he came across. You were spectacular in every single way, smiling as you leaned over to kiss him.

——

“Tell me about New York City,” Jimin ran his fingers down your arm.

The two of you had long forgotten about Jurassic Park, now reclothed and cuddled up in the back of his car.

You raised an eyebrow, “Honesty? It’s loud and dirty. Not to mention traffic is shit.”

“That sounds… terrible?”

“It is,” You breathed, “But it’s not. It’s the perfect place to disappear. No one gives you a shit about what you’ve got going on, no matter how fucked up you feel. Everyone is just trying to deal with their own chaos and get through the day.”

“Sounds kind of lonely.” He muttered. You hummed in contemplation, wondering how it was that you felt just the opposite. It was weirdly comforting to know that no matter your story, those in the city had seen worse.

“Did you know that when you’re deep in the city, there isn’t a single star in the night sky. Not a single one.” You recounted.

Jimin tilted his head, “What do you mean there are no stars?”

“It’s like they’ve all gone missing and the sky is just this massive empty black hole.”

“How can there be no stars? Where do they go?” He laughed.

“My theory? The city needs so much power to run that they had to steal every star from the sky above them… Though I’m told it’s something called light pollution that just covers the stars.”

“I like your theory better.” He smiled.

You turned towards the massive screen, watching as dinosaurs wreaked havoc.

“There’s a complex above the bar I used to work at. They have a rooftop that you’re not technically supposed to access but everyone does anyway. At night you have the most perfect view of the city skyline. The sky is just this hazy gray color but the further out you look, the lights from the surrounding buildings start to look like little stars sprinkled on the ground. I’ve always thought of it as New York’s version of the night sky. Like looking at the world upside down. It’s just… spectacular.” You marveled.

You could still see it so vividly in your mind, how the empty sky glowed and the buildings twinkled.

“You’ve always had stars in your eyes,” Jimin said suddenly, eyes fixated on you. You turned to meet his gaze.

“Hm?”

There was an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face, “Do you remember the first night we met?”

You blinked, taken aback by his abrupt question.

“Hoseok introduced us. Second year of high school. Homeroom.”

Jimin shook his head.

“Do you remember the last home football game of our freshman year?”

Freshman year? Football game? Yeah, you remembered that.

“I mean, yeah. That was before I decided I hated school functions and only wanted to hang out with social rejects and lowlives. First and only high school football game I attended. Why?” You pondered.

“You and Hoseok were standing on the top of the bleachers. I think the two of you were trying to figure out how to climb the announcer building without dying or getting caught.” Jimin went on to recount.

“Oh, snap! I remember that! We did it, too. I remember it took me ages to convince Guyi to come climb up. Hoseok got a bunch of kids to come and join us… You were there?”

Jimin nodded at you, also remembering the way you and the thick-framed girl were close back then.

Jimin actually remembered much more than that. He recalled almost vividly how he and a few friends were called to follow the rowdy boy he knew from history class and how he led them through the bleachers and toward side the side of a building. There were two girls sitting on top already, the louder of the two turned around and waved at the newcomers, before turning back towards the sky, legs stretched out in front of her as she chatted with her best friend.

The other girl you were with, which he would later learn was Guyi, was sitting away from the edge, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she shivered at the night’s chill. She looked uncomfortable and he could hear her muttering about wanting to go back down but you insisted that the view of the stars was better where up here, leaning back on your palms as you faced the night sky.

He was taken by you immediately and spent the rest of the time on the roof glancing your way in hopes even just a quick peek of how the twinkling lights reflected off your irises.

You were all he could think about, even as the principal came screaming at you guys to come down. He thought of you as his older brother Jihoon drove him back home, silent in his seat as he stared up at the very same sky that captured your attention. He thought of you throughout that following summer and the very first day of your sophomore year, when he finally worked up the courage to tell Hoseok how he felt, leading the more extroverted boy to introduce the two of you.

And he had loved you ever since. Even now he loved you, eight years later, sat on Hoseok’s couch as you and the people you grew up with all played a drinking game, the movie since wrapped up, and the function heading back to Hoseok’s place.

He watched as you smiled and laughed with the others and imagined a world in which this could become your guys' new normal. Where every day could be just like how things were and he could just love you as easily as breathing.

But real life was never as easy as fantasies. Real-life consisted of messes and trauma and hurt feelings; there was no glossing over the past four years. And the more Jimin drank from his cup, the harder it was to keep up this game of pretend the two of you agreed on. One day you would have enough and you would leave him again. 

He knew this was temporary - he agreed to it after all. He had kept you in this town despite how much he knew it hurt you to be here. Truthfully, as he sat on the couch getting far more inebriated than he should’ve, Jimin was angry. Perhaps with himself, perhaps with the world, perhaps with both — it didn’t matter in the end. 

Because every day with you meant waiting for the day you would leave and what was he to do but keep on loving you?

He felt helpless.

“Where did you go?” Were his words as you sank back next to him on the couch, having been eliminated from the game taking place at the coffee table. Hoseok, Gwen, and a few other familiar faces were still sitting around it, laughing and joking with one another drunkenly.

“Huh? What do you mean? I was sitting right there.” You giggled, glancing down at the cup of liquor that Jimin had in his hand. “Don’t tell me you’re still a lightweight, Minnie?”

He was boiling, and the words were spilling up and over faster than he could make sense of.

“Where were you, Y/N? I tried to find you I– You left me.”

Something was wrong. You could hear it in his words, and see it in the way his glossy eyes threatened to spill over. He brought his cup back up to his mouth, taking a large sip. You took it from him the second you realized just how drunk he was.

“Hey, that’s enough… let’s go outside, okay? Get some air.” You were up on your feet in an instant, eyes flickering over to the group to see if anyone had heard.

“You left me,” Jimin repeated.

“Jimin. Please.” There was a desperate look in your eyes, clearly not wanting to have this conversation with other people present.

Blinking away the lump in his throat, he got up from the couch and followed you out of the room, slipping through the sliding glass door onto the patio.

The patio door shut with a quiet click, the chill of the cold night greeting you both.

“How did you just... pack your bags and leave it all behind? Leave us behind? I thought you loved me.” Jimin wiped away at his cheeks blindly, unsure of when he started crying. 

“I did— Minnie, I do.” You tried your best to keep your voice level, growing emotional at the topic at hand and at the man you loved hurting.

“Was I not enough of a reason to stay?”

Your mouth opened and closed repeatedly as you struggled to answer him. You, just like him, were intoxicated and nowhere in the right state of mind to be having this conversation.

“I mean, fuck, love bug! You just left!” His voice pitched up in disbelief, clearly not aware of his volume raising as well. 

You were trembling. Though from the cold or the guilt you weren’t sure.

“I-I know, I-”

“You just left and never came back? This is your home–”

“Don’t fucking say that!” You snapped, surprising both you and Jimin.

A tsunami of emotion crashed into you.

“My parents are dead, Jimin. And I know you get it, I know you lost your brother but… Minnie, I couldn’t breathe! I-I felt trapped, and… god, after they died— it was me who was dying. Yes, I was wrong to leave but I was young and hurting and.. I just couldn’t let this town kill me too.”

Your hands found your face, covering it as a wave of melancholy rushed over you. 

“I was supposed to be in that fire. I ran off to Grams because of a stupid, meaningless fight with my mom. After they died, I spent an entire year wondering if I shouldn’t have just died right there with them.”

You couldn’t bear to look up at Jimin. You couldn’t bear to see the pity in his eyes as you laid out the worst of you for him to hear.

“The second I stepped out of this town was the first real breath of air I had taken since they died. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life but I know that this town stopped being my home the second they died.”

Any and all anger had melted away from the orange-haired man.

“Y/N–”

You looked up suddenly, frown furrowed and eyes blurry with tears.

“I don’t need forever. I just need right now, okay, that’s what you said to me the night of the bonfire. You said that, remember?”

“I remember.” He sounded sorrowful.

“I love you, Minnie. I never stopped loving you. But they’re gone.” You mourned, breaths uneven. “And they’re everywhere I look in this town. I mean… why can I come back but they can’t? How is that fucking fair?!”

You were nearly inconsolable, watery eyes barely widening as your face was suddenly taken into Jimin’s hands, his thumbs brushing past your wet cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. You’re right. I’ve already asked so much of you. This town has taken too much.” His eyes searched yours. “I... I wish you would’ve told me. When they died… for a year you said nothing. I thought you needed your space so I gave it to you, but I never would have if I knew you were planning to leave. What if I could’ve helped? You helped me when we lost Jihoon, remember?”

“I know...” Your answer was lackluster. Because you didn’t have an answer for him. You didn’t know why you pushed away those who loved you when your parents first died.

Was it teenage naivety? Was it fear of losing anyone else? 

You wished you could give the sweet boy a solid answer. But you weren’t even sure that sober you could. God, he deserved so much more than you had given him.

“It was you and me against the world, remember? Through all the shit and garbage life throws at us. You were my person. You still are.”

“I just… there is so much out there, Jimin. So much this small town can never offer. If you only saw the cities, the kinds of people that come in and out.” You emphasized, suddenly inspired.

“What if… what if you come with me.” Your voice was small, knowing the impossibility of what you were asking him.

His eyes told you the answer to your question he even spoke.

“Bug, I… My family needs me here. Everything is here… I don’t know if I can just leave. This… this is my home.” His brows fell, rubbing your cheek apologetically.

“I know. But I can’t let you put your life on hold for me. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I strung you along for another four years. When I leave I don’t want you holding onto me. You deserve to move on and find a life here like you’ve always wanted.”

“The life here that I always wanted was with you.” Jimin cried, pulling you into him. 

You buried your face into his neck and for a moment the two of you just held each other and cried.

“I’m sorry.” You said, knowing that neither of you could do this anymore.

“I’m sorry, too.” He held you tighter.

The game of pretend had drawn to a close and neither of you had won.

—

Your grandmother was awake and doing a crossword in the kitchen when you walked back home later that night without Jimin.

“Hi, darling.” Your grandmother greeted, only noticing the way your hair stuck onto your wet cheeks once you came into the kitchen light. 

“Oh, bless your little cotton socks, come here.”

She held you as you cried — she cried too, knowing that this meant goodbye in more ways than one. 

She slept in your bed that night, holding you close in a way that she did for your mother and that your mother once did for you. There was so much you could never repay your grandmother for. You’d spend the rest of your life calling her from every city apologizing if that's what it took for her to forgive you for choosing to leave once again. But even if hadn’t told your grandmother you were leaving, even if she didn’t help you pack your bags that very next morning, she would forgive you because all she ever wanted was for you to follow your heart. 

The same heart that had her drop you off at Jimin’s the next day.

Your knuckles rapped a somber tune onto his door, the sun pleasantly hitting on your skin, very polar opposite to how cold your insides felt.

You could hear a scuffling from inside the shed, suddenly embarrassingly aware of how little soundproofing Jimin’s room had. Thank goodness it was far from the main house.

“Y/N?” Jimin called out, the door handle turning. 

Panicking, you gripped the handle, holding the door shut.

“Wait! Don’t open the door.” You warned, not exactly sure what came over you.

“Why? Bug, what’s wrong?” Jimin sounded concerned but let go of the handle regardless.

You fought with your thoughts for a moment.

“I can’t... If I see your face I’ll...”

You were a coward. You swore this time you wouldn’t just disappear, you had seen the pain you had caused him. But even still, even when you came to tell him you were leaving, you couldn’t bear to see his face. You could not see the face of the man you loved so much and tell him you were leaving him. You just couldn’t. 

You didn’t feel strong or brave or anything Jimin insisted you were. Hand pressed against the closed door to Jimin’s room, you felt small and pitiful, far from someone who should be asking what you were about to do.

“I’m going to say something. It doesn’t need a response now, okay?” You called out, loud enough so he could hear.

You swallowed roughly, your throat dry. “My bus ride back home is today. Noon.”

Silence fell.

Your heart was pounding in your throat, nearly blocking out the words you had spent all night rehearsing.

“If you don’t show up, I’ll go. And I won’t come back. I mean it. I want you to move on. You have to try. Don’t give up your life for me.”

Jimin was just on the other side of the door, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, having just rolled out of bed. You didn’t explain yourself further, and perhaps you didn’t need to. He mulled over your words in his head. 

If he didn’t show up, you’d hop on the train and slip out of his life forever. 

“But if you show up...” you trailed off as if losing your nerve. But he understood all the same.

If he showed up to stop you, you’d stay. 

You knew he could never physically ask you, but if he wanted you to stay, you would. Just seeing him would crumble your resolve and you’d stay with him here forever, even if it killed you.

“This isn’t a test or anything.” You said after a moment as if the thought came to you suddenly. “I know you love me. You don’t have to prove that to me.”

His shoulders sank, realizing what you were asking of him. 

“I just... I didn’t give you a choice last time.”

Your words wrapping around Jimin like an old shirt— warm but ill-fitting.

How many nights had he dreamt of you saying those exact words? How many times had he pictured the night you left going different, with you telling him your plans of leaving and him convincing you to stay? Nothing would’ve changed and you’d go back to spending every night tangled up together and every day in his passenger seat, window cracked and wind brushing past your hair as you sang along to one of his playlists.

All he ever wanted was to go back to loving you like he used to. Loving you and imagining the life the two of you would build here.

“I-I’ll stay here and… and love you and figure out all my emotional garbage. I won’t leave you again.” Your voice was shaking. “If you ask me to, I’ll stay.”

Tears found Jimin’s eyes. 

From the moment he met you, way back in high school, you had talked about seeing the world. You had big dreams that couldn’t fit in this tiny town. You were larger than life and he always knew to an extent that he have to spend the rest of his life running in order to catch up to where you were.

He just never thought you’d run further than he could go.

Don’t give up your life for me, you had said as you offered to do exactly that for him.

He saw the spark behind your eyes whenever you spoke of the city. He saw the way you turned into a shell of yourself at old memories. He would break his own heart ten times over before he would ever keep you here. 

But you would break your own heart ten times if it meant you could save his heart from breaking again. Because if he wanted you to say, you could try to be happy here. Maybe you could try to be happy and try to be with Jimin and try for a nice ordinary life. You wouldn’t stay for you but you would stay for him. 

Because you loved him far more than you loved yourself.

“If this is goodbye, then just know that… I love you. And I’m sorry.” 

Sorry was all you could ever feel in this town. Sorry for all the hurt you caused and the mess you always left behind. Sorry for yourself and the life you would never get back. Perhaps it would’ve been better if you had turned down Jimin’s advances that night at the bonfire. More likely it would’ve been better if you hadn’t come back at all. 

But the one-sided conversation through Jimin’s door was your best attempt at undoing a fraction of the hurt you had caused him, however pathetic it was.

——

You were standing amongst a crowd of moving bodies, watching anxiously as other buses began to board.

“He might show up.” You muttered to yourself. “It's not too late, he might show up.”

“Darling!”

You heard your grandmother call out, and you scoured the crowd before finding her, a breath of relief finding you. She had driven you to the bus station and left momentarily to use the bathroom for a moment — you feared you might have to board your bus without seeing her again.

“They just called for my bus.” You said the second she was within earshot. She looked around with you, watching as a line began to form in front of your bus. But your eyes wandered further, looking past the line, past your bus, and Elvie knew at once who you were looking for.

“You don’t have to go, you know.” She placed a hand on your cheek, pulling your attention back onto her.

“I know…” You nodded back at her, biting on the inside of your cheek.

“…But you want to.” She acknowledged. You were her blood after all. And no time apart could undo the way she knew her grandchild.

You met her eyes regretfully, guilt written all over you.

“I’ll call you every week.” You promised.

She pinched your cheek, “Even every month would do. I will miss you greatly. And I love you dearly.”

“I love you, Grams.” You pulled her into a tight embrace.

“Stay safe, darling.”

The two once estranged family members shared one final hug before the final call for your bus rang out. Shooting the bus station one final once over for a shade of orange, you waved your grandmother farewell and joined the line, boarding and sitting on the bus within a few minutes.

Elvie stayed at her spot for ten minutes, watching as the bus drove off and took her grandchild with it, waving goodbye even when you were too far to even see her.

A tear ran down her face as she clasped her hands together, hoping that you might find whatever you are continuing to search for.

A man joined her just then, emerging from behind the wall where he had been hiding, yanking off his grey beanie to reveal a bright mop of orange hair.

“There you are. Thought you were going to stand behind that wall forever.” Elvie acknowledged him, wiping away her tears.

“Sorry... And sorry to bombard you while you were on the way to the bathroom. Did you manage to slip it into her bag?” He asked.

“Of course I did. She was too busy looking for you to even notice.” Elvie reassured, watching as Jimin stared off in the direction you had left.

Jimin wasn’t sure when you’d find it, but eventually you’d find the black cassette tape he had dedicated to you all those years ago.

“It’s a playlist I made of all the songs that remind me of you.”

If it weren’t for you rummaging through his car, the tape would’ve continued to slip his mind— a forgotten relic forged from the time in which he swore he would never see you again. Carefully selected songs forming a cacophony of bitterness, longing, anger and sorrow.

After you left him this morning, Jimin lay across his bed, listening to your mixtape for the first time in years. An emotional time capsule in the form of plastic film and faded sharpie. He remembered vividly what every song meant, he remembered every raw unfiltered feeling he held for the last four years.

He held onto you for so long.

"Thank you for giving that to her."

“I have to ask… I mean, you showed up. You could’ve given her that mixtape in person. Why hide?” Your grandmother pressed.

“I had to see her. But I knew if she saw me she wouldn’t have left, and she would’ve continued to hurt herself just for me.” Jimin’s eyes welled up with emotion. “She deserves so much more than that, even if she doesn’t see it yet.”

Because you were the girl with stars in her eyes and big dreams and he was just the boy who loved you just enough to let you go.

------------------

THE END and before you yell at me, please respect my artistic vision EEEEP!! I love these characters and want what is best for them and the only way to do that is to honor the life that both truly deserve, even if that means it's not a life with each other. I thought long and hard about how to end this series, just putting that out there bc I know a bittersweet ending can be disappointing. AAHHH ILY MWAH! <3

[nerdyenby]

I get most of my news either online or from a newsletter I subscribe to, but I’m feeling pretty good right now about our democratic candidates so I sat down to watch Walz’s debut at the Philadelphia rally and here are the highlights (imo, of course)

“Before I was elected vice president or elected a United States senator, I was an elected attorney general, and, before that, an elected district attorney and, before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. So in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who scammed consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” -KH

KH talking about fighting for a future where every American can afford to own a home hit me so hard. Why is that such a fantasy? Why have I never even considered it possible?

I am obsessed with the confidence, this is the energy I need. We have plenty of reasons to be afraid but goddamn did I need someone to stand up and calmly declare that we will be okay, and I am so fucking glad it’s a Black woman.

A history teacher as our next VP <3

Their motif of fighting for the future is so much more potent coming from a woman of color and a man who has dedicated so much of his life to youth and to supporting them and their futures. Like damn, maybe the kids really will be okay. Fighting poverty, securing free school lunches for kids, protecting bodily autonomy, and founding his schools first GSA as a straight white man? I don’t know much about Walz but what I’ve learned so far has earned him a lot of respect in my book.

Fuck, Harris talking about Walz’s background and reputation in his school has me tearing up.

“We will win.” Okay, yeah, I’m crying now. These two make me feel so safe, it’s not fair I’ve never felt this way before.

Friendly reminder that one of our main political candidates does not value disabled lives and will openly say as much. Trump wants us dead, don’t let him win.

“Tim and I have a message for Trump and others who want to turn back the clock on our fundamental freedoms: we’re not going back.” -KH

“After Roe was overturned [TW] was the first governor in the country to sign a new law that enshrined reproductive freedom as a fundamental right.” -KH

“Ultimately in this election, we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in? A county of freedom, compassion, and rule of law or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?” -KH

“We love our country, and I believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.” -KH

“Don’t ever underestimate teachers.” -TW (preach)

“It was my students, they encouraged me to run for office. They saw in me what I was hoping to instill in them: a commitment of common good, a belief that one person can make a difference.” -TW

“Now, Donald Trump sees the world a little differently than us. First of all, he doesn’t know the first thing about service. He doesn’t have time for it because he’s too busy serving himself. Again and again and again, Trump weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand. He mocks our laws, he sows chaos and division, and that’s to say nothing of his record as president.” -TW

“Some of us in here are old enough to remember — I see you down there, I see those old white guys — some of us are old enough to remember when it was republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now what they meant was the government should be free to invade your doctors office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: mind your own damn business. ” -TW

“When Vice President and I talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make your own healthcare decisions and for our children to be free to go to school without worrying they’ll be shot dead in their classrooms.” -TW

“Vice President Harris’s idea: freedom is a ticket, for education to be that ticket to the middle class. Not crippling debt, air that’s clean, water that’s pure, communities that are safe.” -TW

TW: “Donald Trump isn’t fighting for you or your family-” random audience member: “You are!” Walz: *allows himself a breath of a laugh before continuing on just as strong as before*

“I gotta tell you, pointing out just an observation of mine that I made, I just have to say it. You know it, you feel it [the republican candidates] are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.” -TW

“So we got 91 days. My god, that’s easy. Well sleep when we’re dead! Over those next 91 days and every day in the White House, I’ll have Vice President Harris’s back, every single day, and we’ll have yours.” -TW

This is the broadcast I watched

[thetorturedpoetsfest]

Welcome to Day 2 of The Tortured Poets Fest!

Click the links listed below to check out all of the content our lovely Tortured Poets have created for all of us today! (and go to our bio to access the rest of the AO3 Collection)

✍️ Barty or Lily or Benji or Fabian by @katie-blackcat

Ship: Regulus Black/James Potter

Rating: M

Summary:

Regulus and James broke up 5 years ago. This is the story of where they have been and where they are now.

Does he ever think of him? Of the nights they spent curled up in each other’s arms? Does he wonder? Will I always wonder…?

🕯 So Hogwarts by bookish_clf

Ship: Daphne Greengrass/Ron Weasley

Rating: E

Summary:

Daphne Greengrass, Senior Correspondent for Foreign Wizarding Affairs at the Daily Prophet, is forced to cover the Conference Championship Quidditch game when the entire sports department falls ill with Spattergroit.

At the game, she’s surprised to find the star Keeper of the Wimbourne Wasps, Ron Weasley, has grown up from the scrawny Gryffindor she knew at Hogwarts into someone quite…sturdy. When she snags an interview with him post-game, things spiral from there as she’s thrust into a whirlwind romance with Wizarding Europe’s most valuable player.

🗝 They Tried to Warn You About Me by @midnightstargazer

Ships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Narcissa Black Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks, Alice Longbottom & Ted Tonks

Rating: T

Summary:

They say you’ll know your soulmate by the way the world bursts into color when you meet them. Andromeda has always been warned to avoid hers at all costs - and when Ted’s friends learn who his is, they tell him she’ll never choose him. But over the years, the two are drawn together. Is a life filled with love and vibrant colors really something to fear?

📜 who's afraid of little old me? (you should be) by Sagiko_AKA_RegulusBlackKinnieBITFW @themoonthesunandthestarsbetween Ships: Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, Peter Pettigrew/Severus Snape; [Background/future] Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Regulus Black/James Potter, Mary Macdonald/Lily Evans Potter Rating: M Summary: “I don’t have to tell you a damn thing, Peter.” Lily shook her head as she walked up, choosing to stand beside Dorcas. “I know what you two have been up to- I know you’ve been opening your useless legs for an utterly useless man. Now, leave.” “I’m not afraid of you.” Peter sneered.

“You should be.” Lily smiled politely.

🖌 you don't have to be alone (when you're the place i wanna go) by @quiethauntings

Ship: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

Rating: E

Summary:

"You’ve claimed the shit bed,” Sirius says from the doorway.

Remus looks up, suddenly aware that for the first time in years, it's just the two of them.

“You don’t like sleeping next to the door.” It comes out before he can think of something different. A fact he’d learned when they were twelve, the first summer they all stayed with the Potters’.

He should be embarrassed, remembering something like that, but Sirius tilts his head. Bright-eyed and soft. He smiles, and it’s worth it.

Or, an unexpected invitation reunites Remus with his friends at a cottage in the Scottish Highlands. **************

Be sure to check our page for Day 3’s reveals! Until then, Tortured Poets <3

🩶 Your mods,

@wolfpadx @multiimoments @heartsoncover @lemonlans @mercurial-witch @steveahoi damagecontrol & shewritesmaybe

[tardigrade-bitch]

my opinions on genshin’s new character varesa (I really hope none of this comes across as rude, if so you can assume it’s ignorance and let me know)

1. being described as a fat or chubby character but mainly having weight in her breasts and thighs is…not great to me. while this is obviously A Body Type That People Have (though perhaps less carefully aestheticized) i wouldn’t call her a fat character. they really should just stop being cowards and idiots and make. a fat character. perhaps with a less flat stomach

2. being cow themed is cool imo. Ik that to some degree it can be read as poking fun at being a ‘fat’ character (and honestly I believe that was their intent because fuck Genshin), as a concept, I don’t mind it. cows are cool 👍

3. using her weight in an attack (I actually don’t know exactly what this means I’ve just heard it mentioned??) idk that’s fine to me. cause that’s something you can do in fights. I do think that once again they’re just being weird abt her being ‘fat’ but as a concept that makes sense. just hope it’s done tastefully (I say, knowing damn well nothing abt this will be tasteful). I guess what I mean is that if it’s isolated it makes perfect sense but knowing their background of being Not Good it’s….probably not so great

4. eating the fuckin. sandwich or whatever it was (once again I’ve more heard it described rather than seen it) once again, in an isolated situation that’s whatever. food is good (and so is defying physics ig) but making it a point with a ‘fat’ character reads…not so good. however I’m willing to play devil’s advocate here (I think that they were once again being weird abt her weight and body, but let’s see both sides) they have other idle animations with characters eating (chevreuse for example) and this could just be another one. everyone has the need for food, and that obviously includes fat people. seeing a person who is fat eat should not be any different from seeing a person who is skinny eat. having an animation where she eats does not necessarily mean that it’s related to her build. however, like I said, I just don’t have faith in the Genshin team, so I think that the animation was made with the intent of spreading the idea that fat people are fat because they eat a lot or whatever.

5. all of these things combined reads Not Good to me. her character concept as an idea is honestly pretty cool to me (even if it’s not executed well) and I wish that the genshin team could make a fat character without portraying so many stereotypes and honestly (this is just how it reads to me) fetishizing her and her body.

6. her color palette? get out. I’m a hater

as a whole, they did badly.

[itsdappleagain]

It's time for the end of season 2- The Deep Dive Caper!

What an absolutely showstopping finale!! I'm so thrilled to liveblog it. This episode gets serious like no other episode really does before or since. Lets get started!

Late, as usual. Buy a lottery ticket the day I do one of these on time. Notes under the cut as always!

right off the bat this episode is pretty much unlike any other. they try to have a caper setup- the vile drive- but it's not long before we realize that EVERYTHING is gone. even in the last finale the sort of "caper" of the episode was rescuing devineaux. this episode is all about answers.

"all on my own. the only sure way i know." hrnnrgh carmen

their boat is being so nice and stationary in the middle of a raging storm and waves taller than they are

"MY FIST IS GOING TO MAKE YOUR GUTS EXPLODE" ivy never change

its ALLL GONE

rip vile island we hardly knew ye

the cs team is just showing off their background artists 😌

ah would you like some mashed shadowsan with your steak

maelstrom your plan sucked babygirl sorry. should have sic'd brunt on her on the train like a rottweiler

interesting plan though. if shadowsan really had killed dexter, what would carmen have done? beat him up? sent him to acme? just thrown him out? she promises to hunt him down if he runs but like what were you going to do after that? murder for a murder?

malestrom: maybe she'll show up in botswana ✨ carmen who's been out for the count for half a year and has no reason to have even shown up in botswana as early as she did:

the teddy bear <3

in love with cleo's boob straps. that safety harness does not even clip in the front its like if a backpack was securing you to a car

that explosion animation is so good though its so impactful

its a damn good thing devineaux showed up when he did he could have been blown to the gates of hell in one second flat and no one would have been any the wiser

chase drinks so much disrespect women juice the first two seasons that he blames julia for an impression of her that his own mind dreamed up i love him for that

angry carmen is so babygirl to me. go bestie show emotion. get so mad about that shit

mmm and theres the shot i used for our title card! and what a fantastic one it is. shadowsan's motif playing in the background as carmen pauses at the oni, but the show itself telling us that he is still on her side with that gigantic, massive symbol of him framing carmen in a circle of red. if you pay attention and learn the colors the team likes, you don't even have to worry about this ep its all cool

you know what the dominant color in this entire scene of carmen trying to find out the truth is, though? blue. even when she's in the server room or staring at shadowsan's oni, the water isnt tinted green like they easily could have made it. its. all. blue.

obsessed with how zack wakes up he's being exorcised and the demon was the peppers and onions

agree it would have been hilarious if devineaux finally gets rescued and it turns out to be a really, really pissed off carmen sandiego

roundabout has the air of a theater kid who always got the leads but had to act surprised about it

evil ihop

i love how confused roundy looks its so funny

devineaux stabbing himself and the scream makes me cry laughing every single time

devineaux really goes ↘️↗️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️

i would watch a series about devineaux being left to fend for himself on the island and slowly losing his mind

his supervisor was so excited about firing him

okay here we go it all gets real now

carmens realization going from my dad was a cop -> my dad was literally the exact opposite of a cop and neither of those things being things she is happy about

i love the realization hitting her face (even if it was animated. a touch blandly)

shadowsan's face s just animated fantastically here. his eyebrows are up- he realizes carmen is there, maybe confused about why she isnt saying anything. then his eyebrows drop, his face falls ever so slightly. he knows the jig is up

also. yes. "your silence is like thunder" is just. ough its such a good line

he isn't even surprised by the question he knew it was coming eventually

"if you run, I will find you." its not a threat its a damn promise. for older viewers its easy to draw the connection between the famous i will find you and i will kill you. it doesnt have to be said.

mm and carmen rejecting the offer to sit and be comfortable around him. she just can't

even in the flashbacks your can see so much of carmen in him its so great. its dishonorable, and everything carmen stands against, but she is undeniably her father's daughter

the plot for this flashback is so sophisticated its so so good. they treat the audience really well about it

also young faculty designs <3

the red on the inside of dexter's jacket to symbolize his secret with carmen im sobbing

also the decision to make carmen have his eyes is. hrngh.

already been pointed out but the way the music softens when shadowsan says "you" HURTS

THAT BABY IS A SNITCH. carmen. snitchdiego

the heartbreak when present carmen speaks again gfgrgh

i like the new mask he hangs behind him before carmen confronts him, by the way. its green and white- the shadow of vile and his past looming over his shoulder, maybe- but also the mask of vile he had to put on to lie about what really happened to wolfe

BABY CARMEN CRYING AS DEXTER TRIES TO HIDE HER :(((

the dolls rdhg im not crying you are

anyone have any thoughts on a dexter voice claim btw?

also also i sprang this on rueitae already but "dexter" while referring to dexterity and his skill as a thief can also mean "the one who dyes" which. jesus. it refers to dying cloth but the double meaning is ouchie

he locks her in gay baby jail!!!

i gotta stop making jokes about the most serious part of the entire series sorry

there's a little bit of a pink panther hint to his theme as he sneaks out the window which is interesting

rue's also already covered it but what WAS this man's plan for just leaving baby carm in there. like shadowsan says desperation i guess

god young chief shooting and killing an unarmed dexter wolfe and presumably orphaning her is the twist. of a fucking lifetime

the despair in the music cue when it reveals it was only his car keys

the matryoshka dolls getting burned in that fire ahrhgfrdshgsghds

love that shadowsan not only sets the house on fire while he and a baby are still in it but gives said baby an object that just got set on fire

also vile protocol dictating that he should have just burned a baby alive?? what the fuck!

bellum's apathy, mael's mild interest/concern, and cleo's disgust towards baby carm shdfjads

little tiny baby carmen shunting her butt at cleo is hilarious

faculty: omg she's a real natural thief she stole that thing without anyone noticing baby carmen in broad daylight five seconds earlier:

btw bb carm is so cute she's so round

carmen finally just sliding to the floor under the weight of all of that information. now that she has at least the idea that shadowsan was not the one who murdered her father, even if she still needs proof

"why would you make me find out on my own?" is one of the most heartbreaking lines in here. she had to go through this realization almost completely alone. her trust in the man she was coming to see as a father was shattered and he could have just told her. he could have just told her

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shadowsan crying theyre so family

you can just hear the regret and fear and sadness in his voice paul nakauchi is literally so good

REAL CHIEF!

COMMANDER!!!! oh shittt i missed the one and only canon commander caturday rip...

ivy violently hitting the cash register is a mood

the little reveal even in the music as it pans to ivy in the starbucks uniform

chief nailed the good natured but a little exasperated "hmm" when dealing with people who have no idea what they are doing

ivys little look as she sees carmen walk in. the smile drop off her face as she walks away

carmen's theme ahrugdhjdsg the music in this show is so good

what is her hand doing

oh chief no honey

the deadpan "i wouldnt drink it"

i love the little nod/head bow thing of acknowledgement of carmen's efforts

the sinister music as carmen ever so casually pulls off her little trick is GREAT

i didnt know chief could open doors 🤨

congrats on being gay agent argent you did it again

player hack chief so bad the logo goes off of the screen

"somethings wrong" yeah no shit julia

chiefs oh shit face is so funny shes like aohhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooo

little guy

im so mature

we love digging up graves

that dawning apprehension on carm's face as she realizes there's a chance she might be about to see the decayed corpse of her twenty-years-dead mom in there

carlotta being modelled after old carmen was a cool choice. lots of fan theories about old carm being her mom this day 🫡

"are you with me?" "to the end of the line." grgfhgjhsdhjsgds im shaking them violently in my teeth if i ever got a cs quote tattoo or something it would probably be that line

the only thing i dislike about this cliffhanger is that in s3 they kind of try to deliver on this big wide promise that this finale gave us and then give up until the last episode of the entire series. like. isk. i feel like they should have either gone harder on the carlotta mystery or left it alone although they did leave me the opportunity to write a 66 thousand word fic series on the concept so i guess i cant complain

half clean shaven half very unshaved chase is so funny its cursed. he shouldnt have no hair but he shouldnt have that much worst of both worlds

devineaux's theme mixing in with that iconic action/danger soundtrack as he grins devilishly is just fantastic shit

chief waiting for a response as chase just silently smirks into the mirror

anyway GOODNESS GRACIOUS i cannot believe we're already through season 2????? what???? tis the end of my favorite season :( but s3/4 are nothing to sneeze at, either!! im super excited to get into more. (plus tsonts? are we doing that?)

[penny-the-pissed-poltergeist]

So I was going to do Volume 4 episode 1 on the 20th, like I said I would. I forgot I had a thing with my non fandom friends that night...

So here's my first watch through thoughts on the volume 4 Character short as a consolation prize, I had a lot more to say on this then I thought I would've, and it's new for me!

.The intro is genuinely sick and slick as hell, definitely feels like they're trying to imitate the first 4 trailers and it does work pretty well. It also makes Ruby's new tattered cape look nice, I'll get to the rest of her design latter....

.Her jumping into the town off of a Nevermore be cleaving it's wing is both an awesome way to get into the city and good way to show her growth because the last time she tried this back in volume 1, she fell right off

.Yeah Ruby, fuck that statue UP

.Her being in a falling town really reminds me how little the main heroes save or help average people directly. We don't really get much of them being motivated to fight in a way that isn't at least a little personal . And the average people we do see are shuffled off screen most of the time or get treated like NPCs.

.I don't like Volume 4 Ruby's design TBH, I can appreciate the Penny references with the sleeves and barely seen backpack and I will reiterate that the torn cape is cool >

.But the ripped thigh highs and random new boob window make her look less protected when she's supposed to be on a dangerous quest. The cream color really should have been white or maybe black IMO, and I can't tell if I love or hate the excess of belts.

.On the other hand Grimm have never looked better, Beowolfs went from kinda dumb looking to bestial and swift. I know it is kinda just the alpha's design from volume 3 with a few tweaks... but it's still a straight upgrade, tell me that the volume 1-3 ones are intimidating, you can't!

.while I said this is trying to be like the color trailers, it's nowhere close to the near perfection of the Red trailer. The choreography isn't as tight, Ruby's high pitched grunts are a little distracting, and the music is a kinda giving generic D&D background music instead of the heavenly sounds of Red Like Roses at least in the first half.

.Is a Grimm using tools I see? Yes throwing bricks counts in my book.

.First time we've seen a Beringel and it looks damn nice, I really love the scars and missing eye. Makes it feel like an individual instead of just another Grimm. It also wreaks Ruby's shit.

.It's really striking me how much they went straight into high fantasy with some tech in volume 4-5, of course Weiss's parts are still very high tech but outside of the Screens, guns and Yang's bike and arm, everything that volume is something that would pop up in an average fantasy RPG. You'd expect this town to have some cars or even just bikes (Not talking about motor bikes, just regular bikes) but no. IMO I'd prefer if they'd kept more of the modern semi-futuristic vibes through out the whole show, it stands out from the crowd a lot more.

.Okay, THERE'S the RLR motifs to go with Ruby's comeback of BUSTING OUT OF A CLOCK OF A CLOCK TOWER. It's not a full new song, I wouldn't expect them to make one just this one short but it doesn't make me an less salty it took 8 volumes just to get RLR part 3.

.I wish Ruby leaned more into the super speed wind stuff, I like the twister move she does here as much as I liked wind tunnel she did in the food fight.

.WOW that is a shape for her cape to make, gives me Randy Cunningham vibes.

.I think not showing the final blow on the Beringel was a mistake, makes it a lot less satisfying then it should be.

.Ren pointing out smoke makes me wonder how everything started burning in the first place, did a Grimm figure out arson?

.The shots of the other team RWBY members make me wish they kept the hair shines for the actual show, because this short has them and only this short for some reason.

Overall, pretty good, I really liked this. I kinda already said everything else there is to be said so... go watch it if you've forgotten to or haven't already, it's only like 5 minutes.

[yellowaugustnights]

3 ep Nong Last

OK, Mork took the position of caretaker seriously, using the chance given to him to the maximum. Already in the opening scene, he examines Day's previously injured leg. 100% care. Day is sitting in Paradise utopian world T-shirt with images of records (I have already talked about the final scene with records earlier, also records mean sound, and there were many points about sound in this episode: headphones and speaker, audio books, do you like to listen to my voice, Mork's bag with the words I love to here your voice, to focus on the voice of Mork during a panic attack, to hear the voices of his friends at the university, etc., I can list for a long time). I will also note that the room has become more focused on yellow things (an armchair, a seat on a chair, inscriptions on Day's and Mork's T-shirts, yellow flowers in the background, yellow walls flash more often, a pale yellow small T-shirt on Day), so we are moving in an optimistic direction. Day's world, unlike the first episode, is really moving towards something more… paradise.

We also have goof mistake with sunglasses. And groping tits. But I won't dwell on it again.

The guessing game seems to enter into their daily routine. It equalizes their chances and, even if it's just a game, we can see how it makes Day happy when he guesses. Even though he is blind, his other senses are sharpened to the limit and he may have advantages over others. A simple guessing game brings Day a little self-confidence. Also, the way Mork treats Day like a child, using silly methods of influence with him - I just melt from it. At first, he dragged him out of the room under silly pretexts. Now he says with silly childish excuses that it was just practice. Gmm correctly wrote on the poster for episode 3 - Day is Mork's stubborn boy.

It probably makes no sense to say that on this stage I imagined their future together and I am sure that they will not be bored with each other at all, because these idiots are on the same wavelength.

What a revealing scene with the sauce. What a surprise Mom and Night are in, and what a calm Mork. Previously, none of them had thought that Day could do simple household things instead of complete isolation.

They kept the billiard scene. Even Porjai's blouse is the same (it's a pity they didn't leave the ring earrings). Porjai, my girl, why do you say "I" and not "Us"? Already at this point, questions arise, why is groom silent and does not correct her? Who does he work for and does he work at all? Apparently it was assumed that he would embezzle all her money and rush off into the sunset with his "sister". Mork may have been rude to leave you when he was in prison, but at least he was honest with you. He sincerely assumed that he was only capable of dragging people to the bottom and did not want to be such a person. Despite his reputation as a "bad guy", Mork is very kind, realistic and smart.

Apparently we can say with confidence that the color of MorkDay is shades from yellowish to brown, sandy, orange, like Songkhla with its hills and ledges, like the sunset they will see there. The number of yellowish-brownish shades in this episode is still off the scale.

It was at this moment that I remembered the photos that Day had taken and thought that the corneal transplant was unsuccessful and Day would no longer be able to see. Hope should always be in our life, it moves us forward, gives us an incentive, but sometimes it can no longer be and then comes humility. For some reason I thought it was waiting for Day. Damn it, why am I always getting into pessimism?

The way Mork is watching Day closely at this moment… And not just this one. Mork is always watching Day: his emotional state, his needs, he knows when to push Day to get him out of the room, he also knows when not to push, for example, if it concerns the university, or when he knows that Day is unlikely to go to the market for a book again another day. Consciously or not, Mork made Day's welfare a priority for himself. Even during a fight with groom, he remembers Day, runs to him, while a year ago he ignored the call of a loved one and allowed his weaknesses to take over. Development? Definitely. And this is only episode 3.

I want to know the circumstances of Day's accident as soon as possible. We know that he panics next to busy traffic. He also panics when he is afraid that friends and acquaintances will see him like this. In the next episode, will he panic again when Ji calls out to him? Will the panic with people continue to fade away? After all, he looks much calmer in the bar scene. Could it be that he got into an accident in the noisy company of his friends?

I will not dwell on the moment in the audio library. The fact that everything there is stuffed with references to Vice Versa made me yell yesterday in such a foul language that I thank God that I am unemployed now. It feels like P'Aof called P'X and said that he would make a bunch of references to Vice Versa and P'X should help him with a selection of the most epic moments. P'X asked which places would appear in the series and P'Aof said there would be a library and P'X interrupted him in mid-sentence saying THEY SHOULD LIP-READ. There are too many references to PuenTalay in this scene, and I haven't even gotten to pink yet. If MorkDay ever talk about parallel universes and Day says he wants to be a colorist, and Mork says he'd like to be an actor, I'll pull out all my hair. Of all the fucking colors choose pink. No, Jimmy warned us about pink, but he didn't say a damn thing about references to Vice Versa. What about my prudence? And thank you for taking this phrase from the pilot trailer.

The very case when I didn't even realize that it was an advertisement for oishi. Why couldn't do the same in Vice Versa? No mention of 0% sugar * crying*

For some reason, I thought that this habit of looking around appeared in Mork in prison. I've seen him look around several times over the course of three episodes.

Stay close to me, Day asked him. And it meant not only the subway. And when there was a fight scene, Mork rushed back to get back to Day.

I liked the scene in the fitting room. I won't say another word. Everything is fine in it: angles, sound, namely focusing on breathing, and acting with the voice, because the voices of Mork and Day were trembling. And yes, now Mork can take a good look at everything, because last time there were the wrong circumstances. Well done, man, take the opportunity while Day licks his lips, waiting for you to fasten his buttons (which you didn't actually fasten, but just pretended to fasten and just wanted to touch him). That's it, I'm silent, otherwise I'll start parsing into atoms and molecules.

It's funny that in the episode where bright colours are poked in our face, we see a book about the harmony of colors. As a result, Mork found the right book in the gardening department😂 Hia, you should sort out your counter a little.

The way Mork, step by step, through games, through his tea purchases or subway fare, through searching for things, helps Day replenish his self-confidence - this is such a precious moment. He allows him to do independent, simple, but very important things, make decisions, and asks Day about something, showing that Day's opinion is considered that he is a person, not an invisible.

Day needs this self-confidence, which he had with him all the time when he saw, played sports, won. It's important for him to be an ordinary guy now, it's important to know that he looks normal. It is also important that in addition to Mork, other people will gradually appear who will instill confidence in Day. Like Hia, who praised him for finding the book. Look how important it was for Day to hear this. I'll bet my head, the last time he was praised, when he received some kind of prize in badminton. But no one praised him for his simple home successes after blindness, that he was just able to find ketchup on his own. Small victories are also victories.

A book with an open ending, but with the inscription good night, meaning closed eyes and darkness? Well, that's it, bye.

It's yellowish-brown tones again, but despite the situation, wearing the same optimistic attitude, as Mork stops in time and runs to Day.

Also Sea, doing something unimaginable with his eyes, not forgetting that he does not see. How do you do it, boy?

Pink again (no comments). Yellow inscription everyDAY. Yellow color on the background. Pink outdoor umbrella on the background. PuenTalay's vibes. Hugs, apologies (we met in our universe, right?)

I have already written about this scene. I really love this scene. It is important for all its participants. For Mork, who was given a chance despite his prison past (someone doesn't see the tracker on his ankle). For Day, who admits that he needs only Mork as a caretaker. For Night, who is always protecting his little brother. For Ramon, who was opened her eyes to what Day feels. I will only add that Night supports Day again in his decision regarding Mork, as in the last two episodes (Night, everything will be fine, my boy, you will make up, and in the meantime I will hug you both)

And again, this is an amazing episode, sinking into the very heart. The plot does not sink, it only becomes more interesting. You can feel the gradual change in the relationships of the main characters to each other. There are a lot of questions that should soon be answered little by little. And again I wonder where are the views? That is, Nong Last is a really good show, very well done. It has a prime-time broadcast, which means that bets were suddenly placed on him, although before the trailer was released on Twitter, he was discounted. Nong Last has an ad block present only before the episode, and at the moment a light product placement has been introduced once. I do not know how things are with television in Thailand, but in my country in prime time advertising just kills you, because ad blocks last more than 10 minutes. If the bosses put Nong Last on the air in prime time, it means they felt something (for once). And here the question arises: where are all those on whom the bosses are counting? Also, I do not understand the number of views in each episode of part 1/4 exceed the number of views of other parts at times. How does it work? Do people leave after watching the first part, or is YouTube somehow magically counting the views? Oh, I don't understand. Not that I've ever been interested views anything. I generally have a specific taste for Asian cinema. But I worry that because of this, JimmySea may be pushed into the background, because, as I have repeatedly said, the guys have potential, they know how acting, and they can become even better, but only if they are not put in the basement. They still have a lot to grow, but the potential is huge. In general, I hope for word of mouth that will lead people to Nong Last.

[aomasade]

Tutorial Map 1/3

Finding your way around an alternative fantasy universe when reading a story can sometimes be a challenge. So many new terms, places, landscapes. A map is very helpful and self-explanatory.

That's why I designed a map for my story SPIDER. It always starts with research. How have other artists designed maps? What they like, what they don't like.

First, I drew up a rough outline with the main points of my story.

Then I took a marbled background that reflected well the ups and downs of a landscape and added lakes with shoreline shadows to create a more vivid effect. Since my story was not set in desert and steppe regions, I colored the ground green. Using cartography brushes, I began to draw mountains, hills, swamps, forests and meadows. Now I colored everything dark green, brown and blue. Then I painted the rivers. The next step was to add the places. To emphasize the contrasts, I used different colors to characterize the two capitals. Caracas, with its dark red bricks, looks gloomy and Spider City, with its light gray design, looks bright and inviting. The other unimportant places are kept simple in beige. Of course, a compass rose should not be missing.

Finally, I labeled everything - the two important places with white banners, the mighty spider kingdom with the largest font and spider symbol, followed by the free lands in slightly smaller letters and finally the conquered provinces in even smaller letters. And Ta da - my first digital map was finished.

I designed this map on my PC with the graphics program GIMP and a mouse. Of course, it would be much easier today with Procreate and Pencil.

Story, more pictures and informations in my storypost on AO3

SPIDER

Summary: Ever since he lost his family in the war, Jensen has hated spiders. Then he is mistakenly fed to the monster under the city with convicted criminals. They successfully fight back and manage to escape. Prince Jared is trapped in the cave in his giant spider form. Due to the fight with his "food", he comes in contact with the blood of his companion and can finally change his shape again and escape as well. He chases after the fugitives because one of them is his companion. Jensen is able to shake off his eight-legged pursuer several times, but the damn giant spider just won't give up. Finally, he moves to Spider City to his uncle's house to hide in the crowd. Then he receives an invitation to the royal ball in the spider's castle, which he can't refuse as a new resident of the city.

[flower-boi16]

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is AWESOME!!!!!!

OK so, have you ever went to watch a show, that you expected to just be a fun 7/10 series only for it to absolutely blow you away with how well-written fun, and GREAT it is? Well, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur was that show for me. This show only has 1 season released so far and it has already become my new favorite cartoon of ALL time. But why is that? Well, let's dive into why Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is an awesome series.

NOTE: I have not read the comics this show is based on, so this is judging it as a stand-alone show and not an adaptation. Oh, and this review contains spoilers for the series, you've been warned

1. The Art Style & Animation

I LOVE this show's art style. It looks like it comes straight out of a comic book with the character designs, the backgrounds, the thick outlines on the characters, the bright colors that pop in every scene, this show looks GREAT! The animation also gets cool and creative in the show's action-music video like sequences at the end of each episode where they change the colors of each character AND they use some cool ass and creative animation in each of these sequences too, whenever these pop up in an episode, they are always great to look at. And then there are the fights in this show outside of that and they look great too! Overall, this show has a fantastic art style that looks pleasing and fun to look at.

2. The Music

DAMN does this show have an amazing soundtrack. I LOVE every single song here. They are just super catchy and great to listen to, and remember those sequences at the end of each episode I mentioned in the previous section? Well, these sequences have some of the BEST songs in the whole show. My favorites are definitely the ones in the last two episodes, both of which are 70s remixes of the theme song, which is also a BANGER too! Other great songs include My Hair is a Mood, The Wave, The Beyonder's Song, Out of My Mind, Go Big, The Look in Your Eyes, and MANY other ones as well! This show has the best soundtrack out of ANY cartoon I've seen. Go listen to this show's soundtrack right now, it's actually amazing.

3. The Characters

Okay, enough of praising the superficial aspects about this show, now, it's time to praise the other parts of it; that being, the characters.

Lunella- The main protagonist of this show, and she's great. The show does the usual things that all good shows do and that is teaching its protagonist lessons, however, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur does this so incredibly well that it makes Lunella a great protagonist. You have Lunella learning pretty basic lessons like being patient and not feeding internet trolls when they say mean things about you online, they also have her grow as a character like learning to face her childhood fears in episode 14, and learning that, fear isn't something you should get over, it should be something you should get through.

There's also episode 7 where she learns to overcome her awkwardness whenever she's in a slumber party and becomes better at making friends. Even basic lessons she learns like in episode 4 where she learns that she shouldn't be overly competitive add so much nuance to that moral. LOS-307 (the robot Lunella competes against in that episode) wants to try and connect with Lunella because they don't really have any friends, yet Lunella ends up ignoring that and gets so focused on the game that LOS ends up being turned on while they are on charging for so long and overheats, because Lunella was too caught up in the game. She was too obsessed with winning and that cost her almost getting killed. Other episodes like the one where she learns that it's ok to say when you need a break from stuff, the one where she learns that what makes life special are all the fun moments in between are also all great too.

But the episode where her character is at her absolute best imo is in episode 11, AKA; the gentrification episode. In that episode, she learns that she, as Moong Girl, is a voice for the community of the LES, and a role model, and she meets these two guys Marty and Marcy, who want to revitalize the LES to be "better". She thinks that it would help the LES only to see that the changes Marty and Marcy make are affecting the LES for the worse, gentrifying it. She then gets scolded by her mom as Moon Girl saying "how could you support something like this?". She used her voice in a way that badly affected her community, and then there's that AMAZING scene with her mom as herself, and says that she tried to use her voice, but it turned out it didn't matter.

And then she learns that she needs to use her voice wisely as Moon Girl, and that her voice does matter, she just needs to make herself heard. And then goes to fix this and bring back her block from it's gentrified state. I'll talk about this episode more in the next section, but it did such an amazing job of making Lunella a FANTASTIC protagonist. She's flawed, she makes mistakes and those mistakes have big consequences, but she learns and grows from those mistakes. Oh ya, I could also mention many other episodes like episode 5 but I think you could get the idea; Lunella is a great protagonist. Grows throughout the whole series and each episode finds a new way to make her develop in a way that's compelling.

Casey- I have a lot less to say about Casey than I do about Lunella, but I still really like Casey. She's the social media-obsessed popular girl in this show and normally with these two types of characters Casey would be a bully to Lunella, but that's subverted here which is nice. I also love Casey and Lunella's friendship, it's really cute and they a lot of great chemistry with each other that makes their dynamic interesting and fun!

Episode 12 is the episode where Casey goes through a bit of character growth, as she throws bat mitzvah and has Moon Girl make an appearance so it could be the most epic one, only for Casey to become too obsessed with the bat mitzvah to the point it creates a rift in her friendship with Lunella. I think that episode did a good job of making Casey go through some character growth, and overall, she's a fun character and a great tritagonist.

Devil- Devil's cute. I like him. Devil is Lunella's suto pet/crime fighting partner, and I do like him. Like with Lunella and Casey, there are episodes that give him a little depth, like episode 8 or episode 13, these episodes focus on Devil and they are pretty good, not the best episodes of the series but they are still great. Devil's friendship with Lunella is cute too, they have such great chemistry with each other. Devil is a good deuteragonist for this series.

So Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has a pretty great main cast. The characters are likable, and get great growth throughout the series. Now let's talk about...

4. The Villains

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a superhero show, so it's going to have a lot of villains. Most of the time these guys usually appear for only one episode to serve the plot for each episode. The first villain, Aftershock, is the main antagonist of the pilot, and she does a decent job as the show's first major boss. She's funny, she's threatening, and her design looks pretty cool. Next is the Syphonater, AKA Angelo. Angelo wanted to help the community but never got noticed, and when Moon Girl got all the attention he never received, he became jealous of her which made him susceptible to being a host for the Syphonater. Again, he serves his job fine as being that episode's main antagonist.

Other villains include Gravitas, a villain with gravitation powers who went after Moon Girl and Devil because they accidentally destroyed his car, Mane who is all of Lunella's natural comprised into one giant hair monster thing, Abbyss who can shoot dark cloud things and who doesn't want to be evil, but since she's apart of a family of supervillains she has no choice, LOS-307 who's a supercomputer that turns evil after overheating (I actually got worried for them when it looks like they were about to die like, damn, this show got me to care about a robot...how) and many, many other villains. All of them serve their purpose for the episodes that they are in and they are entertaining to watch. However, there are two villains that I think are the most worth talking about. Those being The Beyonder and another antagonist I'll talk about later in section 6.

The Beyonder is my favorite villain in this show so far. He reminds me a lot like HIM from the OG powerpuff girls; an all-powerful being that likes to torment our heroes for the fun of it. He's just such a fun villain, he basically was sent to Earth so he could study about humans, and when Lunella says one thing about Eduardo being a useless partner, he takes that like her saying that humans are worthless and says that if Lunella doesn't complete her school project with Eduardo, he'll wipe out the human race. Nah, turns out he was just messing with Lunella there. The Beyonder is just such an fun entertaining villain, he's no doubt my favorite villain of the show.

The villains in this series are relatively decent, most of them serve their purpose for each episode that they are in, some are sympathetic and get redeemed at the end of each episode, most of them don't, so this show's villains are pretty solid, now let's talk about...

5. The Morals & Messages

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has the basic kinds of lessons you would see in most kids shows; however, it's the executions that matter here and they way Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur teaches it's lessons is great! Let me give you an example; Episode 3, this episode has Lunella learning to be patient and that she shouldn't rush things. Basic moral on paper. Then later in episode a villain named Gravitas shows up and begins recking things. How is he defeated? Lunella goes and waits for him to run out of juice so he can't use his gravity powers.

What I like here is that the episode gets its moral across in a creative and interesting way; Lunella defeats Gravitas by waiting or being patient for him to run out of juice so he can't attack her anymore. It gets a moral across in a way that's both creative and entertaining to the audience without it feeling hamfisted. Another example; Episode 4, I already mentioned this episode in the characters section but this is one of my favorite episodes of the show so far. Like episode 3, it takes a pretty basic moral; don't be overly competitive, and does something interesting with it.

In the episode, a new AI comes to Lunella's school named LOS-307, a robot who was just built eight months ago, and Lunella goes to play chess against it. The robot tries to connect with Lunella and become friends, but Lunella is too focused on winning against them to connect. It gets so bad to the point where neither of them beat each other and Lunella is still playing against them even after school is over. And then later in the episode, when Lunella sneaks back into the school to beat LOS once and for all, they end up overheating which causes them to go evil, LOS tells Lunella this before this happens but Lunella is still so focused on winning that she doesn't listen.

Lunella was so focused on winning that she didn't get to connect with someone and she ended up almost getting killed because she didn't listen to LOS's warnings. It takes a moral that has been done to death and does something interesting with it. Another example is episode 9 where Lunella creates a app so she can skip all of the boring parts of her life like doing chores, waiting in lines, and other stuff, only learn that life isn't meant to be a highlight reel, rather its about the small moments in between that give life meaning. Episode 14 is another example, where Lunella has to overcome some childhood trauma where she got lost in a theme park without her grandma Mimi, and encounters a scary clown.

Normally the message here is that you should get over your fear, but the show takes a different direction with this and says that fear isn't something you should get over, it's something that you should get through and that it's OK to be scared, as it's something that we always have to deal with.

This show is great at teaching morals in a way that's both entertaining and doing different and more interesting things with those morals. They never feel hamfisted or anything, and the show adds it's own spin on morals that have been done to death by doing them in interesting ways. But there are two episodes that I think are the best at this, both of which are the two best episodes of the show. Those episodes are episodes 5 and 11. These episodes tackle the topics of hair discrimination and gentrification respectively, which are both topics you wouldn't see being talked about in a kids show, especially in a Disney TVA show.

Now, I'm not the one to judge how well these episodes handle these topics, but by the looks of it from other people who have seen this show it looks like both episodes handled these topics very well. Episode 5 has Lunella try to make a hair relaxer for picture day that is coming up after a girl from school made fun of her hair. Unfortunately, she ends up becoming bald as all of her hair falls of and gains sentience in the form of a villain called Mane, who is all of Lunella's hair. And then later in the episode Mane goes and sabotages random stuff for Lunella and then after they both meet eye to eye Lunella goes to talk to her family and reveals to them what happened.

And then we get this wonderful scene with Lunella's Mom and Grandmother after Lunella tells then what happened. Lunella's Mom and Grandmother both comfort Lunella by telling her that they've been in similair situations like Lunella, where they both tried to "fix" their hair but they ended up getting bald as well. And then they tell Lunella that she shouldn't believe the lies people say about her hair, that it's messy and ugly, and that to love your hair is to love yourself.

It's a new spin on the "looks aren't everything" message, except it talks about hair issues, Lunella got caught up in what one person thought of her hair so she tried to fix it, and then later in the episode when Lunella goes to stop Mane, she realizes that she has been fighting herself and that she wasn't loving herself when she tried to "fix" her hair when she thought it was ugly because someone said it was. This episode imo did a great job with its moral and the fact that the show had the balls to cover a topic like this is impressive. And then there's episode 11, I have already talked about this one in the last section so I won't repeat myself here, but as I said in the characters section this episode talks about gentrification very well and it does absolute wonders for Lunella as a character.

Lunella learns that, as Moon Girl, she has a voice and that voice is one for the community, and she approves of the changes Marcy and Marty propose at first, until she sees it's changing the block for the worst. And then in the episode she learns to use her voice wisely. Episode 11 is just a phenomenal episode for how it tackles gentrification and what it does for Lunella's character, best episode of the show hands down.

This show is great at teaching lessons and the fact its able to cover these topics so well is amazing. But wait, there's one more thing I need to talk about in this show, and that's...

6. The Finale

Ok so, this section contains MAJOR spoilers for the final two episodes of the first season. If you don't want to be spoiled, skip this section. Now. You have been warned. Anyways, the finale comprises of last two episodes; episode 15 and episode 16 titled "OMG Issue 1" and "OMG Issue 2" respectively. Episode 15 has a lot of reveals thrown at you, such as the reveal that Mimi is the original Moon Girl, ya know, the scientist that Lunella got her superhero name from? And it also introduces a new antagonist in the series who will likely be the big bad of show; Maris Morlak, who used to be Mimi's partner/best friend before turning evil.

First, let's talk about Morlak as a villain; he's definitely intriguing. His backstory is that he and Mimi built a machine that could create portals into other dimensions, and their racist boss presented it without them and took the credit. After the portal gets opened and the boss gets grabbed in and his ring falls off, Morlak now wants to use the portal to open dimsions so his and Mimi's work will never be erased. He's a good villain, his threatening, he has some great charisma, and his motivation is solid. I'm very interested to see what the series does with him in season 2, he has a lot of promise and I can't wait how the show fleshes him out further in the future.

Now let's talk about what these episodes do for Mimi as a character. Mimi before these episodes was just a cool grandma who supported Lunella throughout the series, but these episodes reveal that she was the previous Moon Girl who built the portal with Morlak as I already stated. Episode 16 is a really beautiful flashback scene of Mimi's life after she went into hiding from Enclave (the evil organization that Morlak is taking control of) which shows her first meeting Lunella's grandfather, all the way to when Lunella was little. It's a really cute flashback and it got me in the feels for a bit. So I think these last two episodes did some great stuff with Mimi's character, and I can't wait to see what they do with it in season 2.

Alright, now let's talk about how these final two episodes end; to add in a little context here, Morlak captures both Lunella and Mimi to rebuild the portal after destroying pretty much everything in Lunella's lab, but Lunella escapes while Mimi stays probably to try and protect Lunella. And then Lunella and Casey along with Devil go and devise a plan to save Mimi and stop the portal. They go there and have a fight and then the episode ends with Lunella sacrificing herself by going into the portal so her and Mimi can push the buttons on the opposite sides so the portal can close.

Wow...those episodes where fantastic! They threw so much at you and I'm so intrigued to see how season 2 will play out considering how episode 16 ended. Like, damn, Lunella is in another DIMENSION now. I have so many questions, but not the kind where I'm confused, the kind where I'm wondering what's going to happen next. How will the rest of Lunella's family react to her being missing? Will they also get to now that she's Moon Girl? What kind of dimension did Lunella end up on? What are they going to do with Morlak? I am SO excited to see where this series goes after these episodes, I can't wait for season 2 to come out so I can see where the show takes all of these major new plotlines revealed in these last two episodes. Oh and did I mention that the songs in these episodes were FIRE??? That song in episode 16 is my favorite song of the whole show, it's just SO damn catchy and I love how it's a 70s remix of the show's theme song (which is already great btw). These episodes were overall fantastic.

I have one complaint though; and that's with one scene in episode 16. So basically while Lunella runs back to lab to save Devil the lab blows up with Devil inside, so it looks like he's dead...until it's revealed that he escaped the lab. Um, HOW did Devil escape the lab before it blew up? The timer was already up by the time he woke up from all of his wounds so...how did he escape??? That's the only thing that bothered me about these last two episodes though, aside from that, these episodes were great and a fantastic finale to the first season. I can't wait to see where season 2 takes this series.

7. Conclusion

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is an AMAZING series. It's so damn well written with loveable characters great messages and an awesome finale. The songs are great, the animation is great, the characters are great just...everything about this show is great. It's so damn fun, and after watching some garbage like High Guardian Spice or PPG 2016, this show felt like a breath of fresh air for me. I highly recommend you watch this show, its one of the best Disney TVA shows out there and my favorite TV series from the channel.

Score: 10/10

[nieithryn]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN.

respond to the prompts out of character!

what made you pick up the current muse(s) you have? These days, especially in this fandom, it's usually the relationships between either a friend's muse and the character, or another of my muses and a character. But looking at some of my main kiddos, or my OCs? I write characters that embody something that fascinates me. Frequently it's a new take on strength through adversity, or the reforging of the self after trauma. Sometimes it's something I identify with deeply, like Mace and Quinlan's struggle with the Dark from a young age. Or Yularen being willing to do bad things for the greater good as he sees it. Or Cody being a protective big brother who can't always protect his brothers. And sometimes, just because it seems fun, like with Zam!

is there anything you don’t like to write? There definitely are, though they're rare. Few and far between, aside from the obvious hard no's of various kinds. I'll write almost anything if a partner and I have enough chemistry. But some of the things I'm less comfortable with are crossovers (never been quite sure why, fandom AUs are fine, but crossovers I struggle with), true crack, and angst or smut without some kind of purpose or plot. I love me some angst, but I need the comfort after, unless I'm writing a symbolic unhappy ending for some reason. There's a few muses I have for whom that would be appropriate or canon compliant, but otherwise the angst needs a gentle comfort after or some reason.

is there anything you really enjoy writing? Basically anything else! I'm pretty flexible, if my partner is interested I'll do damn near anything tbh. I love hurt-comfort especially, but I love me some good canon divergent "what ifs" and alternate takes on how characters meet or even hook up. It's fun sometimes to see how a complicated relationship can go so many different ways, where along the forks they might have gone different directions. I love writing the inbetween moments canon never shows us, because there's never enough time to. The ways those inbetween scenes might affect entire relationships, or should have. Honestly, give me all those little bits inbetween.

how do you come up with headcanons? Usually headcanons develop from my analysis of whatever canon I accept for my muse, sometimes from small facial or body language tells during a panel/scene, sometimes by extrapolating from something they say or are described to do. But sometimes it's actually extrapolating from their relationships with other characters, both the muses of my partners and the people they interact with canonically. You can tell a lot about a character by how they interact with loved ones, for instance.

do you write in silence or do you play music? This depends on the ADHD mood of the day. Most days, I have 1-3 songs on repeat to become such a smooth background I can write without silence, but not get distracted by lyrics or the instrumentation. But some days, I need complete and absolute silence because any noise will distract me and the replies will never happen. Oh the joys lol.

do you plan your replies or wing them? Kinda both, and it usually depends on the muse the reply is for. Some I can plot out really well, or get so excited to write that I spend hours plotting the right reply. And some either flow so naturally I can wing it, or unexpectedly just decide the plotted reply isn't the vibe of the moment when I'm actually writing, and off we go to the races!

do you enjoy shipping? Oh hells yes, absolutely. Romantic, platonic, absolutely I love shipping. In the purely romantic sense, while many of my muses over my time RPing are demisexual, I am always down to give them partners, and in platonic senses, family and friends and found family are just. So wonderful.

what’s your alias/name? Liz or Argent

age?  25

birthday? April 2nd

favorite color?  Dark Blue, Silver, Gold

favorite song? 

last movie you watched? 

last show you watched?  Uhhh Family Feud I think lol.

last song you listened to? Will The Circle Be Unbroken by Peter Hollens & Malukah (Honorary shout out to Baba Yetu as well bc they've been on a two song repeat lol)

favorite food?  Oooh hard choice. Steamer clams or steamed artichokes.

favorite season?  Autumn

do you have a tumblr best friend? I used to have a really close friend group on Tumblr I would've tagged, but many have since disappeared. Now it's @strcngered and I against the world, lol. Though @valorums/@prodijedi and @mayxthexforce are very very swiftly making it into that same level of vibe, so I'm rebuilding slowly but surely.

TAGGED BY: @valorums

TAGGING: Ohhhh just steal it, Callie snagged most of you anyway lol.

[thekenikaridevblog]

uhh kenikari dev fun facts because why not

Under spoilers bc this thing is long with tons of images and text, but it doesn’t spoil any future game events dont worry

this was the first ever sprite I did for the game! I ended up discarding it bc it was more like a joke to see how the style would work and all. I hadn’t settled on a color for the tongue yet and I already had half of what would become the hair shading style

Originally I wanted to made the sprites more simplistic so to speak by adding next to no shading, because I wanted to draw them in far more different poses n stuff. In the end i realised that you would literally be looking at these for 90% of the game so they should probably be nicer and have actual shading

I made an alteration lol

Here’s the first ever shaded sprite, with Chuyo. The shaded hair had settled in, though I would end up giving him a different symbol thingie. I still followed the rule of somewhat minimal shading, but as my style developed I put it more details in the sahding and cloth folds. A fun fact about him is that I made him and the sprite and I put a name to the sprite and then i put it in my pc folders

And then I couldn’t find this sprite but it was okay bc his wheelchair design had changed and my style had too so I redid him completely. and gave him a nose lol. and then when it was time to present him in the game i DEADASS FORGOT I GAVE HIM A NAME. SO I MADE ANOTHER ONE.

his og name was Misuke and that’s the name of this file lol

A forgotten sprite for Lare’s presentation that i didnt end up using bc it kinda looked like an ahegao. if we push that aside you can compare it to the sprites that do appear in the game and see how I altered them later down the line to give her slightly more complex and accurate shading to the game’s current style. I’d say the biggest difference is the whole collar thingie. Originally the dress and shirt were meant to end like. the same way. but then i dont know how i came up with it but i started making the dress more square-y and it differentiated itself more from the shirt, so i changed the sprites to reflect that specifically

a lil drawing I made in 2019 with a laptop trackpad of Mako. I made another one before that and it was the first ever drawing of her, but I can’t find it so I can’t put it here

Originally Mako was meant to have more bruises and bandages but i ended up simplifying it so it could be easier to animate her and draw her from afar. She was the most complex design I’d made back then and I still kinda think she is, topped with other characters like Mero (he doesnt appear in the game its a sepparate mf)

the og Lare sprites that i made before i figured out how RPGmaker XP worked. she hasnt changed much, just removed the background and moved them around so that the walking cycle worked properly

in one of the incredibly early builds of the game that I only showed to my parents to test, I made some quick sprites of myself to announce that the demo had come to an end. These were rushed as hell and have a lot of imperfections and color spills, and I only made like 4. They have been removed from the files bc i wouldn’t use them again

the ending screen actually started as a quick doodle in my notebook. I liked it so much that I took a picture of it and digitalised it, and then I decided to use it in the actual game. I would show the original drawing, since i do actually have it, but it’s spoilers. idk maybe ill show it when the part it spoils comes out

This actually got me thinking that it wouldnt be fair if only alex were the one to say goodbye, since he’s not even the damn protag, so I’ve started to form ideas of end screens with the rest of the cast. Maybe the full chapter will have a different end screen, maybe it won’t. It depends if I do actually feel like doing it mid development bc i got bored with other stuff

That’s all, goodbye! :3

[liches-covered-in-lich]

A bit late but *glares at tumblr* it's better be late than never ey?

But here is my 2023 art roundup! :D

General retrospectives under the cut per month if anyone is curious 😘

Jan: This was a gift I made for a buddy of mine! It was of his oc that the friend group collectively simped for and cultivated together, as a family. He's a great lad and a starting point for me to use stock textures for the general look of my art

Feb: An older design of my Miraak, but I really still like this piece. It was the starting point of me trying to learn how to draw characters interacting together. While I do think I can improve in some aspects, I still think it holds up really well and looks super cute!

Mar: Ah, gore. This was the beginning of me doing a 'soft' art style. It's of a melting Emperor Belos for the Tales of a Tyrant Zine (I believe the link is still active for access to the pdf? If curious, I should still have it around somewhere. It's pretty sick ngl). I really like this piece, it helped me deal with my imposter's syndrome in the group of Amazing artists as they really liked this piece of mine! And generally I love drawing gore

Apr: This was a commission for someone on tumblr! I used my softer style for this piece and had fun figuring out how to make the light imposing but not loose the main colors and details! Also fun fact - I had a friend pose for me holding a sign so I can get GOOD hand references as google was no help

May: Ah the first full drawing on Krita. This was a test on the art program as Autodesk Sketchbook was no longer working for me on desktop (tho I still use it for my ipad art!). It's of my HOK who I don't talk much about as they're just a Dude. Sorry Jhyth, I should do more with you

Jun: This bitch. Elyden I adore you, you're my favorite oc and one of my longest lasting ones but. . . It took so damn long to get a good design with him that showed his personality and wasn't a pain to draw. I really like his design here, I think he looks wonderful

Jul: A commission done for my Skyrim fanfic's editor actually! She's pretty cool and greatly improved my writing skills! And she paid me to draw a mudcrab in Sovngarde! What more do you want? I love this piece too as I learnt how to do backgrounds in my style that won't kill me in my detailed art style

Aug: Another commission done for a friend of mine! It was based off a doodle I did of his oc as a gift but he paid me to finish it as a full rendered piece! :D I got to draw a tiddy window and an evil throne!!!

Sep: An art collab I did with a friend of mine! Where we split the image in half and drew each other's ocs interacting! It's actually the same dude as the Jan's piece. I both hate loved working on this. His hands gave me so much trouble

Oct: My second favorite oc's revamped design, Lorelei <3 I love her a lot and I really love her design. I think it fits her perfectly and you can tell what she's about immediately by just looking at her. I adore this lady (also fun fact, she's the older sister of Elyden!). This drawing means a lot to me as it was me figuring out that I like drawing character references only in more fun poses in a sense

Nov: Funny thing, I finished that drawing yesterday. But it's a reference of my Rahgot! I chose this as my Nov piece as I feel like it was when I was getting better at character designs. In terms of practicality, function, aesthetics, colors, and visual language

Dec: A commission for an old friend of mine that I knew since...fuck me, I think...6 years? He wanted me to draw an antagonist for his body horror gundom ttrpg campaign! Even though he doesn't draw, his designs fuck so hard and I'm so glad I got to draw one fully <3 I love this piece and I think it was a great send off to the end of this year

I feel like I exploded in improvement this year. My skills and my methods for art became more practical and made my life a bit easier in general in the process (especially in the coloring department). And I cannot wait to see what I'll make for next year :D

Thank you all for coming with me to this journey <3 and have a blessed new year

[demonfox38]

Completed - Star Fox Zero

Before we can get into a proper conversation about "Star Fox Zero", you have to understand three things about my particular brain and biases:

I don't like claiming that I am good at anything. (Mostly, because I am not definitively the best at anything. All I can guarantee is base competency.)

I am good at "Star Fox 64."

I am a proficient bassoon player.

1 and 2 relate in a comedic way, sure. What's up with 3, though?

Well, I bring up the whole bassoon background because the bassoon is one of the more mainstream weird-ass musical instruments. It's a double-reed bass instrument that requires proper breathing control, responsive embouchure, memorization of proper fingering techniques (ha ha, yes, I know), and the ability to read in bass clef (and tenor, if you're dealing with some real dickhead composers.) A music ed teacher does not just hand a child a bassoon and tell them, "Good luck!" It requires musical competency and practicing. Just absolute shittons of hours of practicing so you don't sound like a dying duck. But, if you get good at it, you'll always have a seat in a band or orchestra. It's weird, sure, but it adds warmth and speed to bass lines. There's value in its weirdness, which I hope is something we know and appreciate, being denizens of this so-called hellsite.

What's the point of me bringing up playing the bassoon in a "Star Fox Zero" review? Because I am used to practicing weird shit, and that's 100% going to color my perspective in this game.

Also, I might like this series.

Just a teeny bit. (Hell, I even forgot a few things...)

"Star Fox Zero" is a 2016 rail shooter / driving game for the Nintendo Wii U. It is best classified as a soft reboot of both SNES' "Star Fox" and the Nintendo 64's "Star Fox 64", although it is far more comfortable hanging in the pockets of the latter. The beats should be fairly familiar to most "Star Fox" fans. Doctor Andross is being a scientific asshole; he's got the Lylat System curb-stomped; General Pepper hits up mercenary team Star Fox for help; lasers get jammed up nasal cavities. Ya know. Standard "Star Wars" meets "Bambi" plot, if you have the mind for it. (Or, if we want to be hyper specific, Shinto iconography meeting "Thunderbirds". The former comparison may be a bit more parsable, though.)

There's a veil of pity and tragedy around this game, which caused me to stay my hand in playing it until 2023. First of all, it's one of the last projects associated with former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who effectively died in the saddle. Like, what can I say about that situation but "Damn" and "RIP." Secondly, a lot of people were bitching about the controls. A lot. Lastly, I didn't even own a Nintendo Wii U until April of this year. I wasn't going to buy a console for one goddamn game, alright? That's not what a reasonable person does. Besides, so many Wii U games were being ported to the Switch. I was willing to wait a little while just to see if "Star Fox Zero" got to jump ship as well.

It's 2023. The Switch ship has sailed. Nintendo's eShop has closed. Wii U consoles are succumbing to memory loss. It's not now or never, but…c'mon. I know how the Nintendo used game market works. This is about the lowest price point before nostalgia and console degradation jack prices back up. And hey—the Wii U I bought did come with "Super Mario Maker." So I didn't buy a console for just one Wii U game. Ha! Ha…

Whaddya say? Want to start with ripping a bandage off first? Has to hurt more with fur, I'd imagine…

About those dreaded controls, then. Honestly? I didn't find them that unintuitive. I do think there's a problem that happens when a "Star Fox 64" brain maps onto them, though. Considering how outrageously popular that game is in comparison with its sibling titles, that's a fairly big hurdle to leap.

For the sake of this conversation, I'm going to show you my controller grips between "Star Fox 64" and "Star Fox Zero."

Here's "Star Fox 64":

(Manual image sourced from: https://m1.nintendo.net/docvc/NUS/USA/NFXE/NFXE_E.pdf)

Here's "Star Fox Zero":

Obviously, we're working with wildly different control sets. The initial brain shock comes from moving primary functionality from face buttons to controller triggers. Like, when it's been memetically drilled into your head to tap the Z or R buttons twice to…well, you know the line. You're going to try that with the Wii U controller as well. Then, you're going to be very surprised to find bombs and lasers going off instead.

Basically, in "Star Fox 64", your left thumb is navigation, your pointer fingers are used for defensive actions/threading, and your right thumb is used for offense and specialty actions (evasive maneuvers, going into different perspectives, and hailing calls.) In "Star Fox Zero", your thumbs are handling navigation and evasive maneuvers while your pointers handle offense. For three out of your four play-responsible fingers, that's an inverse of operational duties. A bit tricky!

Having said that, I picked up on the thumb stick shortcuts within two practice sessions. Once I understood how to somersault with the sticks (left down, right up), I thought, "Well, can I U-Turn by left and right down?" And by God, that was correct! Didn't need anyone to tell my ass how to barrel roll. Figured that out, too!

Weapon targeting is a particularly contentious subject in this game. The game wants you to improve your accuracy by using both the cockpit (first person) view and the gyroscope controls in the Wii U gamepad to pick up your targets. While it can't be completely turned off, you can set the controls to only take gyroscopic input into account when you are charging lasers. And you know what? 100% do that. No need to have that always slipping around. There's exactly one boss I've encountered where having them on all the time helped, and that one was optional. And a dick. But, I suppose that's to be expected of a boss…

The last major controller issue has to do with the split of external ship and cockpit views being simultaneously displayed on your TV screen and your Wii U gamepad. Now, which view is where can be toggled by hitting the minus button, so you don't necessarily have to crane your neck down every time you need to consult something in one view or another. However, this dual screen setup is wholly a bad design choice. "Star Fox 64" was able to have the same functionality with a single screen and a dedicated button for flipping back and forth between views if you really had to do that. Which, honestly, was pretty rare to begin with. If something really needed to be put on the lower screen, that should have been a radar/map. Even, then. Lower-right corner of the TV screen. That's where "Star Fox 64" had it. Dead horse, beat.

It could've been fun to have a set of "Call Teammates" buttons down on the Wii U gamepad. Ya know. Just to harass Falco in the middle of a firefight. "Hey, girl. How's it going?" "NO TALKING WHILE THIS LIZARD IS TRYING TO EAT ME!" That kind of vibe.

And if for some reason you thought of something dirty involving Leon Powalski, that's between you and your morality-affiliated consultant of choice, my dude.

So, alright. You get your Arwing controls down. Congrats! You've got four more machines to learn! The main ship variants this time around are the Walker (think like "Star Wars"'s AT-ST, but made out of Arwing parts), the Landmaster (a tank with its own aerial form now because why not?), and the Gyrowing (a helicopter used for stealth and hacking missions.) The fourth, the Roadmaster, gets tossed in after you finish the game, so you don't have to sweat learning that one too much. It's like a hostile RV toy.

Of these, I took the most issue with the Gyrowing. It is easily outclassed and thrown away the first opportunity the game gets. Honestly, I know the Blue Marine gets shit-talked, but that submarine was at least solid at offense and chugging along. Gyrowings, oof. Not so much. Even the baby toy machine can outperform that thing. Absolutely ridiculous.

If I may speak positively, for just a moment—I actually liked the Landmaster design scheme better in this game than "Star Fox 64." Heresy, I know! I just didn't feel weighed down using it like I did in the past. And, granted, that may have been because the Titania level in "Star Fox 64" could really chunk up its framerate. But, here? It was smooth and responsive to what I needed it to do. Gotta award points where they are due.

Although, if you want to see some chunky framerates, go fight the Aquarosa boss. Or don't. (It's the pain-in-the-ass optional boss that I was ragging on earlier.) It's just one of those things where if you commit to fighting it, you've got to do it twice to get into two bonus stages. And, I mean, hell. Even Hercules did good enough fighting the Hydra once…

If I may give more credit, I also found the aesthetics of this game to be strong. I could have used better camera positioning for what I saw, sure. But, I genuinely liked what I saw. In particular, I really thought that the Titania level for this game was oddly beautiful, with pieces of debris from a nearby fight raining through the storm-swept desert atmosphere. The music for this game is on point, too. While some themes are recycled from "Star Fox 64", there is quite a bit of new music diversity. It's all composed gorgeously as well (if a bit excessively for Andross' theme.) If you want some samples, try out the following links:

Boss A

Inside the Colony

Planet Fortuna (and child track Dangerous Skies)

Return to Corneria (My favorite track!)

Stage Selection

Training (Part 2) (There's actually five parts to this!)

In additional audio perks, there's a lot of returning voice actors from "Star Fox 64." I mean, not everybody. (Rick May's a notable exception, but the guy was having awful health towards the end.) Whoever couldn't get picked up got pulled from the 3DS remake as well. Considering how much the English version of "Star Fox 64" thrived on its hammy performance and cheesy dialogue, this is definitely a point in "Zero"'s favor. Frankly, I think some of the voice actors have even gotten better over time. Lyssa Browne particularly has come leaps and bounds in her performance as Slippy Toad, if you'll forgive the pun.

Appreciation of late 90s English video game dubbing is wholly a subjective matter. But, I do find something charming about its raw authenticity and goofiness. We might still have meme culture without one or two titles. But, man. "Star Fox 64," "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night," Metal Gear Solid," all of those "Resident Evil" games…The Internet would be a duller place without the vocal work from those games.

Speaking of all these credits—what credits is "Star Fox Zero" going to give you? Outside of general plot advancement, you can get medals for excellent performance. These are usually granted for kill counts, sequence breaks, collecting certain items, finishing a fight under a certain time limit, or general competency. Granted, earning these doesn't seem to reward the player with much. You do get access to bonus missions, but the greatest rewards are model swaps of your Arwing, a model viewer, and a sound test. Completely pointless—especially if you have access to the OST on YouTube or a couple of Amiibos laying around the house.

Beating the game will also open up an arcade mode where you can shoot through the entire game again in one run. That's a bit more tempting, but honestly, quite overwhelming even to someone like me. I mean, I can handle "Star Fox 64" because it's a quick hour. Going through a "Star Fox Zero" run could take several hours. That's a pretty big gamble, man. It feels like going back a step as well. Like, you know how much more polished I could be at "Star Fox 64" if I could just re-run specific levels on demand? I mean, I guess there's always save state abuse, but I'm trying to discuss playing these games through legal means, here.

I don't think the plot here is enough for a casual player to cling onto, either. Especially, again, if they've played "Star Fox 64" before. It's mostly just rehashing that script, but with Andross dicking around more with space portals than bioweapons. The whole experience comes off as less thought-out and/or mature than "Star Fox 64," even if that's a weird detail to bang on about. Like, I shouldn't complain about seeing clowns in a circus, should I? Trust me, I love the goofy goober banter everyone has. I just wish a little extra polish went into it. Especially for the intro. Like, God. I'm pretty sure that some Cornerian Minister of Propaganda wrote that thing.

Although, General Pepper is a huge asshole this time around. Like, holy shit. It would have literally been more ethical if he put two rounds in the back of Andross' head. You can't toss a mad scientist into another dimension and not expect him to come back and kick your ass Krang style. Not to mention how quick he was to ditch Peppy when the latter was in distress. Like, geez, dude. Isn't he your friend?

I did end up liking the Star Wolf beats better here. Mostly, because they weren't just chumps for the easy pickings, this time around. Also, the implications of whatever James McCloud is in this universe is significantly more horrifying than it was in the past…

In some ways, the problems with "Star Fox Zero" are the problems that have been with the "Star Fox" series since Game One. These games are siblings to titles like "Devil May Cry" and "Parasite Eve" in that all three were accidentally successful betas. ("Star Fox 64" and "Devil May Cry 3" may be even closer related in the "Oops! We succeeded even harder!" department.) If you don't anticipate something being successful, how much thought are you going to put into its future? Perhaps the only reason fans and executives sweat over this detail is in relationship to Fox, Falco, and Wolf's "Super Smash Bros." related popularity. Although, I pity anyone who would fret over lore for Ice Climbers or Mr. Game & Watch like some do for "Star Fox" characters…

Harder still is trying to keep gameplay fresh and relevant to modern audiences. I mean, let's be real. "Star Fox" games are essentially souped-up "Space Harrier" titles. They're concentrated, arcade-difficult challenges meant to test your memory and reflexes. In a world that values a game's breadth of content over mastery of skill or difficulty (minus FromSoftware titles), that's always going to chop off the tails of these kinds of games.

And, hell. I've heard the "controls suck" complaint before, too. It was just for "Star Fox Assault" instead.

My personal problem with "Star Fox Zero" lies more with my thoughts about stagnation versus radicality. Plotwise, this game takes its events way too conservatively. Control-wise, well…we know about how that ruffles feathers, don't we? If there was an inversion with these two details—having a wild, engaging plot with a standard control scheme—this could have been the revival Nintendo wanted for the series. At least, that would have made for a sweet struggle.

Developers and players want "Star Fox 64" again. But, what does that look like in a modern era? Hell, what's even the silver title to that game's gold? I mean, I'd accept several different answers, depending on what a player got out of each title. The only wrong answer would be "Star Fox Command." That melodramatic, noncommittal garbage got us into this mess.

Personally? If I had to make another "Star Fox" game?

The "Star Fox" series appeals to me in not only its learnable difficulty, but its comradery. Fox McCloud would not be the sort of character that I would want to play if he begrudged his teammates. (Eyes on you, Slippy haters.) He's trying to do the right thing, not only for his father's honor, but for their sakes as well. I would want to construct a game that puts more emphasis on teamwork, even in a single player setting. Now, what that looks like could be tricky. "Star Fox 2" and "Command" fell into traps trying to do that. But, I'd have to try to do something, even if it's banal as stat boosts or motivational dialogue via radio communications. (Although, resource scouting/sharing might be an interesting twist. Does your partner trust you enough to attempt shield repairs in a firefight? Hell, would you for them?)

Even if a single confrontation is all it takes to knock Andross out of a timeline, it's harder for another villain to get out of his shadow. (It doesn't help that every other Nintendo character gets dedicated villains as well. It's all patterns fixing patterns.) Maybe, we don't need to. Hell, I could easily see scenarios where investigating some forgotten lab of his unleashes some horrific bio-techno monstrosity that lays waste to a handful of planets. It's not the most intelligent solution, but hell, neither were Aparoids. Didn't mean they weren't a legit threat.

I mean, if we really want to get messed up, the Lylat System is very poachable, if you get my drift. Particularly, if the wrong set of hunters were to come across it…

The simple answer would be just to make "Mass Effect" or "Halo," but for furries. But, personally? I'd want to toss "Star Fox 64," "Star Fox Assault," "Sin and Punishment: Star Successor," "Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin," and "Resident Evil 4"into a blender and chug what comes out. I know. Absolute madman shit, especially considering how I kept getting sick from "Resident Evil 4"-related adrenaline rushes. I know what I want out of a "Star Fox" game, and that's to go fast, kill some messed-up stuff, and vibe with my teammates. If I do it with my head in a bucket, then it'll at least be authentic to what it'd actually be like if I had to dogfight.

The flesh is weak, but the brain is sharp. And man, does it crave high-speed violence.

"Star Fox Zero" brought a lot of emotions out of me. Satisfaction, for having finally experienced it. Frustration, for letting the opinions of others cloud my interest with it. Sadness, for how the series has languished. But, it's all in perspective. Yes, this came out a decade after a predecessor that I found distasteful. Yes, it's been seven years without another game. (Well, hell, not even that, if you want to toss in "Starlink: Battle for Atlas" or "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.") The past is written. The future is unknown. I have what I have now, and I can find value in it. And, hell. As rough as that might feel, it's still not as raw as "F-Zero" fans have got it. Or even harder, "StarTropics" fans.

If you're looking for anything like a course of action from this evaluation, then I must recommend that you play "Star Fox 64" first. OBVIOUSLY. If that whets your appetite, fantastic! I can recommend you harder and/or weirder shit after that. Hell, maybe even this game, if you want to roll up your sleeves. As an introduction to the "Star Fox" series, it's about as appealing as a haunted house. But, if you are desirous of that kind of nail-biting shock, this is a solid game to play.

I wouldn't say that you have to be like me and pick up a Wii U for just this game. But, if you've got the console and ten bucks to spare, this game is cheap enough to pick up. And if you hate it like saner people do? Then, all you'll be out is a cheeseburger. Benefits of being a late adopter to a Nintendo game, for once! How often does that happen?

Do yourself a favor; dodge "Star Fox Command." Do an indie developer a favor; pick up "Ex-Zodiac." Do Rick May a favor; get your COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters. And, obviously…the last order writes itself, doesn't it?

[mareastrorum]

WIP Wednesday: TF&TS (Molly's Book)

Here is a scene from chapter 3 of a longfic I am working on.

Fanfic Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf survived the encounter with the Iron Shepherds, but a short time later, a spirit had begun hunting him, claiming that he stole his body. This Campaign 2 AU begins with Episode 26 and continues on from there.

This fanfic will be posted on AO3 starting in June or July.

Molly hung half off the bed to reach his coat because hells if he was getting up when it was that close. He snagged the end and then rummaged the pockets while dangling. He managed to find the book and pull it out of a pocket just before he lost his balance and crashed forward onto the floor.

No one saw that.

Caduceus huffed quietly and made a point of pulling his covers over his ears once Molly turned to look. Caduceus was already well aware he should not sleep facing Molly’s bed for a variety of reasons, but, well, he did have large ears.

So, fine, someone heard, but no one saw that.

Molly gracefully got up, climbed back under the covers, and got comfy before he pulled the book up to inspect. It was rather small compared to all the tomes Caleb usually lugged around—smaller than the size of Molly’s hand if it laid flat. The cloth binding was fairly worn. The colorful flower prints had faded along the corners. The title on the cover was in a fanciful lettering that was far too complex to read, though it had clean and well-practiced line work.

It reminded Molly of Desmond’s elegant handwriting. Desmond had said that the point of calligraphy was to make letters almost illegible and so damn pretty that everyone would forgive you for it. Molly had never been able to read them anyway, but he never held that against Desmond because he could barely read regardless. Desmond had made some especially fancy-looking flyers for some of the bigger towns the carnival had traveled to, so Molly had pulled those out for snootier looking commoners.

I hope he’s found a way to cheer up.

Desmond must have had a reason for going his own way after the carnival disbanded. Going out on his own might have been better for him anyway, since those years working as a musician had not cured his melancholy. Well, that was Desmond’s burden to carry, not Molly’s. He’d figure it out eventually, and Molly wasn’t going to sour his own mood over something out of his control.

Molly gave a brief shake of his head (jewelry not jingling since he had taken it out for the night), then opened to the first page with text, which had the title and a handwritten note:

The Forest Witch and Other Z-E-M-N-I-A-N Folk Tales:

tran-slat-ed from Die Wald… W-A-L-D-H-E-X-E(?) (the rest made no damn sense).

To Mollymauk

From Caleb

Molly grinned as his tail shifted back and forth under the sheets. He wasn’t sure if that was actually the right spelling for his name (he had seen a few in the carnival, but Gustav used this one, so it was his preference), but that was sweet nonetheless.

Below was a sketch of a witch approaching three children. It must have been from one of the stories. Hells if Molly was actually going to read though, that was for nerds. Instead, he flipped through the book, content to browse the paintings.

Caleb had been right: they resembled the art style on the oracle cards. The background scenes had similar amounts of detail, and they only used a handful of colors in each image. Simple at first glance, with lots of easily missed finesse and skill in the final touches. His cards were more colorful, though that was due in part because Molly was still improving at mixing paint. Color matching was far more difficult than it looked, so he found it easier to be creative with the colors he happened to mix than to waste all the paint trying to get it exactly right.

Molly stopped on one intriguing illustration. It featured a snake slithering out of a hole at the bottom of a wall and looking at a tiny gold crown sitting on a piece of cloth. A young girl watched from the top of the wall. She had something small in her hand, but Molly did not recognize what it was; it looked almost like a top with a handle the length of her arm, and a bunch of thread wound around it.

Well, the story on the opposite page likely explained. Molly narrowed his eyes at the book for a moment, tail twitching slightly, as though it was the book’s fault that the image didn’t make sense on its own.

At least it was short.

Molly sighed deeply and started reading, mouthing the words to himself:

An orphan…

Orp-han? Or-pahn? Or-p-han? Context!

An orphan child…

Oh, orfan.

An orp… orfan child was sitting on the town walls spinning, when she… (Spinning what? What did the kid spin? Herself? Is that a top? Sure, a top.)

An orfan child was sitting on the town walls spinning (a top), when she saw a snake coming out of a hole low down in the wall.

Swiftly, she spread out beside this one of the blue silk handke… han-d-ker… hand-kerch… ker-chi-efs… (Hankercheef? Why did they write it like that? That couldn’t be right.)

Swiftly, she spread out beside this one of the blue silk hand… hankercheefs which snakes have such a strong liking for (What? Really?), and which are the only things they will creep on. (Was creeping different from slithering? How else did it get around?)

Molly looked up a moment, trying to recall how snakes move, weaving his hand back and forth through the air. They just moved in smooth curves, right? Was there another way? Maybe like a caterpillar.

Whatever.

As soon as the snake saw it, it went back, then returned, bringing with it a small golden crown… (Why did she have a crown? Well, maybe she liked to dress up. Or maybe she’s royalty. Sure, she’s a queen.)

As soon as the snake (queen) saw it, she went back, then returned, bringing with her a small golden crown, laid it on the handk… hankercheef, and then went away again.

The girl took up the crown: it glit-tered and was of deli… de-li-ca-te… delakit golden fi-lig-ree work.

Molly stopped again. What’s fi-lig-ree? That’s familiar. Oh, filAgree. Artsy curves like on the back of the cards. Nice.

It was not long before the snake (queen) came back for the second time, but when she no longer saw the crown, she crept up to the wall, and in her grief smote her little head against it (Oh, shite) as long as she had strength to do so, until at last she lay there dead. (It’s just a crown!)

If the girl had but left the crown where it was, the snake (queen) would certa… cer-tain-ly… (sir-tan-lee?) have brought still more of her trea-sures out of the hole.

Molly stared at the page, confused, then around the room as though that might provide answers. Wasn’t this supposed to be a story for kids? With a snake committing suicide? Over a crown? Fairy tales had a lot of murder, but suicide was new. And the lesson was don’t steal from a mark that has some nice gear until you were sure you had gotten an idea of what else you could loot. That was not wrong, but still a strange lesson for children.

Sure, Molly had taught Nott to steal from grumpy people, but the fact she was so young was what made it amusing. He hadn’t expected old folktales aimed at children to teach something similar as a matter of course. Zemnian stories were weird. Caleb had said he read all of these, too—no wonder he was a bit odd.

Molly looked back at the book. After a moment’s pause, he opened to another random page.

Maybe one more.

[olderjodijournals]

Thursday, August 1, 2002

It ended up costing $30 to ship Paula’s package. Yeah, that’s all I’m doing for her for quite a while. I’ll do emails and monthly letters, but that’s about it. She should get the package in two weeks. I mean, it’s nice to know I’m doing this for someone who hasn’t got shit and probably never will, but what does she do for me in return? Not much. She bitches about the losers in her life, then lies about sending me mail. I’m not saying she should send packages herself, but a letter every now and then would be nice and more of a two-sided phone conversation would be nice, too.

Got 3 more letters from Mary, but since the envelopes weren’t numbered this time around, I don’t know if I’ll be typing the drafts that came in proper order. That’s okay, though, cuz I figure order’s not all that important right now. Right now we’re just gonna get the thing typed up. Then, once she feels she has enough, someone else can organize it. It’ll be a while, though, like I said, since we’re talking about 80-some-odd pages. As soon as I have enough to fill an envelope, I’ll get it off to her with another pic sheet. This time around, I just sent a letter, a pic sheet, and more parts of my book. She now has everything up to March.

I saw a documentary on prisons in India. Lately, they believe in “loving” their inmates, so to speak, as a way of rehabilitating them. Meaning, the guards hug them when they break down in tears. If only they had such a policy at Estrella when I was there! I’d have made damn sure I had something to weep about every time Palma and the bear worked! I told Mary about this, who no doubt got a kick out of it.

Mary says she’s really enjoying writing her book and is over a virus she had. She can’t wait to dye her hair fuchsia, which is now down to her waist. She’s growing her bangs out too, she says, which are now past her chin. Mine is still only just past my nose.

As I told her, I bitch about how much God’s cursed me, but trust me, he has blessed me as well. I’ll admit to that. He cursed me with the people I had for parents, yet he blessed me with the person who’s my husband. He cursed me with Nancy and blessed me with her! I don’t know which was worse, Nancy or Melinda. Meanwhile, she and Rosa were definitely the best, with Misha and Marilyn as their runners-up. I would’ve liked being cellies with Nancy I, too. Regardless of what she may or may not have done, she was quiet and a good listener.

Anyway, I really admire her attitude.

Hope was charged with 4 F2s and 4 F4s. She was found guilty of 8 counts of child abuse, but it was a hung jury as to the attempted murder charge.

Oh, so we have a near-baby killer here, huh? How can she cell with someone like that – ugh! And of course, no mention of it in the papers, she says. Yeah, I believe it. I couldn’t find anything online either. Like I said, those of us who are white and who have supposedly gone and picked on those poor, poor freeloaders for no apparent reason are much more entertaining to read about. If we all were the same color or an innocent child was involved – well – that’d be a different story, wouldn’t it?

I couldn’t find anything new regarding Idiot, either, whom she says had a fugitive hearing. She said she doesn’t know what that is, but my guess is it’s about his running from his AZ charges from the sound of it.

She says Chambers became a real cop.

So, she decided to take her badge to the streets, huh?

Vasquez left for Towers jail, but Jones, LaBorde (LaVoice), and Hudgens are still there.

Tom and I were talking about her doing things to hopefully please the judge. When he asked why I suggested you not put too much hope in the judge, I told him, “You should know why. Cuz judges just don’t give a shit, more often than not. Remember, most of them are high on power and control. They’re just gonna look at the said crime, whether it’s real or imagined, and judge them by that. They don’t give a shit about rough backgrounds or current efforts the person is making. After all, didn’t we watch a perfect stranger sit in judgment of me and decide my fate for the next 3 years before he even laid eyes on me?”

But we both agree, though, that she should do whatever works for her and whatever she feels is best. But I would do it for her. It’s like with losing weight. One has to lose weight cuz they themselves truly want to. Not for some lover, their parents, or friends. Who knows? In the end, she just may get one of those rare judges with a touch of compassion!

Friday, August 2, 2002

This morning was no fun. No, it was rather stressful. The original plan was to sleep from around 6 AM - 6 PM, then go see Scot, but come 7:00, I was still awake. Even after taking a Benadryl. That was when Tom got in with the groceries and we decided to get Scot out of the way before we both crashed and arrived at his place at 8:00.

I know it’s only words, but I am so sick and tired of hearing the same old shit from Scot. Every single time I see him he just has to comment on how much time I have left, and I’m thinking, dude, I don’t need any reminders!

Having a little over a year to go is better than 3 years, but the 15 months I have left is depressing enough to have to be reminded of and think about.

Then he goes and says, “I can’t even think of suggesting you petition for early release from probation because you have a victim in your case,” and I want to strangle him for referring to that sick black bitch as a victim! And why did he even have to bring this up in the first place when we already discussed and agreed a few months ago that I wasn’t going to bother to try to fight a losing battle by petitioning? Can’t I ever go in there and just get a “Hi, how you doing? Any changes? Ok, then, I’ll see you back here in two weeks.” After all, this is all I get when he comes to the house, so why not on his turf? I’m beginning to wonder if he gets off on the time reminders and by referring to “victims” who aren’t even victims. He’s got to know it bothers me. I mean, I’ve told him this, but no, he’s gotta go and have his say anyway.

And of course Tom just has to stick up for him, in a sense, by playing it down, saying he’s only trying to encourage me and I’m like, encourage me? How is this encouraging? It’s depressing to be reminded of how much longer I have to play this game and it’s infuriating to hear the black bitch called a victim.

I thought I was going to be tested today so I went with a full bladder. “I’ll speed up,” Tom said on the way back and I was like, “No! This is Arizona, you fool. I’d rather wet my pants than have you do 20 years for speeding. Wait till we hit the dirt roads.”

Oh, what those freeloaders do to me! The numerous ways they control me and my life from such a distance and the stress they put me through are un-fucking-believable. It really is.

On the way back, the neighbor waved to us. The grandmother. I only saw her for a second and wouldn’t have known who it was if Tom hadn’t said so. I wonder if she recognized Tom or if she just waved anyway like most people out here do.

I don’t know what’s worse – the home visits or going to him. The home visits are quicker, but I can’t plan my schedule around them like I can with the outside visits.

And another thing is that once again, there’s just one more thing we gotta do for the freeloaders. Always one more thing. Now he’s suggesting we go to the clerk’s office and get a receipt of what we’ve paid and what we still have to pay so they don’t try to say we owe more money than we do at the end. I agree that we should do whatever we can to protect ourselves, but I still worry about the end. If this bitch gets mugged and she doesn’t know who really did it, I’m afraid I’m gonna get blamed. I worry they’re going to try to either prolong the probation or charge me with something new. I still wouldn’t count on never hearing about the classes again, either. This system just cannot be trusted. It simply can’t be trusted. Tom can go and do this after work sometime by himself, then I wonder – what’s next? What else do we gotta do for these freeloaders?

Anyway, I told Tom to take all the freeloader receipts to the clerk. That way, if they try to pull a last-minute, half-assed attempt at trying to sucker more money out of us and say we owe a payment or two that we don’t, he can show them they’re full of shit. And I don’t think a lot of the “mistakes” are really mistakes like Scot says. I think that just like any other business in the world, they want to make an extra buck, and if they have to do some of it illegally or in a dishonest way – why not? I’m sure there are some people who could be easily suckered into believing they owe more money than they really do.

I’m so fucking sick of this world! And I’m even sicker of this ‘Minorities Rule’ trip we’re on. That is any minority that excludes Jews and gays, of course. So much so that if I could be a black at the snap of my fingers I would. Not only would it hide the zits and varicose veins better, but then I could just cry racism every time someone pissed me off and use the courts to fuck them over, but then again, I don’t know if I could be that vindictive and immature. I think I’d rather ignore them. I’m dead serious about this too, and I have to wonder, is there any place on earth where the laws aren’t so damn extreme? Here, the laws are so old-fashioned what with the way they give such outrageous sentences for the dumbest things, while at the same time, the laws favor and protect certain groups of people. Next thing we know, T-shirts saying things like, “If I’m black, kiss my ass” are going to be everywhere.

Tom was right when he said we have more than what’s been taken from us, but on mornings like today, it doesn’t always feel like that’s the case.

Well, the freeloaders may own some of our income, some of our time, some of our lives, but one thing’s for damn sure and that’s that they don’t have our weekends! Weekends belong to us! We don’t have to do shit for the freeloaders on weekends.

In this day and age, I don’t want to screw anyone over, don’t want to seek revenge, don’t want to control anyone – I just want others to stop controlling me! I expect others to treat me as I treat them, so if I’m going to leave them alone and ignore them, I want the same treatment in return.

Tom suggested I basically have an attitude saying, “I’m looking forward to moving on and putting this behind me,” when it comes to Scot.

I already tried that before with him and others, yet look where I am today. Still unable to get on with my life and put these freeloaders in the past where they belong. Every time I think we’ve shaken ourselves free of them, they’re there again.

See, I know probation’s more about money and control than anything else, though it’s supposed to be to see if you’re going to re-offend. For example, say I was truly guilty of “stalking” this bitch; do they really need a whole 2½ years to see if I’m gonna do it again? And why put Mary on probation when she’s released? Do they really need to see if she’ll once again neglect an already-dead baby?

Despite how fucked up people are and how mistrusting of others I am, I’m glad I didn’t walk away from Mary. I don’t know if we’ll be in each other’s lives forever, but for now, she’s a good friend and pen pal. She doesn’t just ramble on and on about her problems with guys or whatever. She also wants to know what’s going on with me. Our friendship is two-sided. I sometimes wish we were closer in age, but that’s ok. I was once 24 and someday Mary’s going to be 36.

In other news, it rained this evening harder than it has in a year, sending a 2” wide puddle by the bottom of the front door that’s not even 3 years old. It didn’t last long, though.

I wish I still had my Charlie’s Angels dolls, but not to add to my collection. I don’t think they even looked like them. However, they’d be worth a fortune by now.

Tom and I were talking about moving every 5 years to different places for variety’s sake. 5 years really is a long time to stay put when you think about it. We were at the Phoenix house for 6 years and it really did feel like quite a while, despite the shitty living conditions. Especially after I’ve had 4 apartments in Massachusetts, 1 in Connecticut, and 4 out here.

He suggested the possibility of Seattle or someplace where it’s cooler and it rains all the time. Well, rain, cold and snow would keep people in their houses more often, but with a leak curse on us, I don’t know if it’d be wise to go where it rains a lot. For every pro I can think of when it comes to moving to a particular place, I can come up with a con, too. Moving’s a bitch and I don’t know if Tom could necessarily find work just anywhere, but it is a fun idea. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Maybe we’ll have less trouble if we’re not in one place longer than 5 years, though it didn’t take 5 years of living in the Phoenix house for the shit to hit the fan.

But just where would we go? Certainly not to a city. In order to go where there are fewer off-brands, we’d have to head more toward the Midwest where it’s colder. In order to go to a more comfortable climate that’s stable year-round, we’d have to go where there were too many people (of all kinds.) Warmer climates have bigger bugs, yet colder places tend to have mostly old houses. We wouldn’t need bottled water in New England, but the weather there sucks. So whether or not we go to a cold climate, a rainy one, or a warm one, they’ll all have their pros and cons. One thing’s for sure, though, and that’s that if we ever did move to New England or a similar climate, I’ll never have to be alone and I’ll never have to play bus!

Let’s see, we’re overrun with Mexicans here, Cubans in Florida, and Puerto Ricans in the northeast. There are fewer blacks in Arizona than in Massachusetts, but still too many for comfort.

In New England, the laws are more reasonable, they don’t bash Jews and gays as much, and everyone doesn’t want to be on stage like they do here. They’re not as sensitive to criticism. On the other hand, with the exception of Steve, most of the finest people I’ve met have been out here, even if some of them were only in my life for a brief time.

So, no matter where we go there’s always gonna be problems as well as good things about the place. Now it’s just a question of, well, do we want to move just to be moving for the fun of it till and if we ever do settle on a boat?

Sunday, August 4, 2002

Weekends go too fast when you don’t have freeloaders just a few feet away from you. I wanted to sleep later than 9 PM so I could be up from 10 AM - 2:30 PM, prime freeloader time, but maybe I will be anyway. That’s what makes the house calls rather stressful. I just don’t know when to expect them. If someone told me he’d be stopping by Wednesday or Thursday, then I could relax and breathe a bit easier, knowing for sure I’d be up during those hours those days. See? God knows neighbors aren’t a potential sleep disruption anymore, so what does he do now that I’ve moved away from them? He brings the potential sleep disruption out here to me. If it isn’t in one form, it’s another. And if I’m ever off probation, the sonic booms will start up again. Or maybe someone will set up house in front and play the drums or an electric guitar with the doors and windows open all the time. There’s always got to be something threatening my sleep.

I’m not bothering with the hassles of encrypting journals anymore. Know why? Cuz I just don’t give a fuck anymore. If you don’t like something I may have to say about something or someone, then don’t read my journals. And don’t complain about it if you do. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter.

Paula finally told me that it wasn’t that her license was suspended, but that she never even had a license to begin with. When I asked her why she said she just never got around to getting it.

Whenever she mentions coming out here I discourage her. She simply has no idea just how controlling a state Arizona is. The things they’re slapping her on the wrist for there would land her in prison out here. Prison, that is, not jail. Sicko Nancy K got a few years in prison for pig-slugging. Her Section 8 wouldn’t save her out here. They wouldn’t give a shit. Especially with her being white.

I figured out the shower leak. It’s not coming from inside the wall and he doesn’t have to bother tearing up the wall. It’s definitely coming from the base somewhere. When the water’s beating straight down into the shower stall, it doesn’t leak at all. But as soon as I aim it towards the doors, a leak appears at the front right corner. So the water’s seeping under the tracks and down out through that corner somehow.

Getting receipts to protect ourselves is a good thing, but as I asked Tom, what about Scot? Shouldn’t we be getting statements from him saying I haven’t missed any reports and that all my drug tests have been clean? If he woke up one day and decided to hate me, he could rip up the form I fill out upon reporting and say I skipped. And there’d be nothing I could do to prove him a liar, either.

Tom suggested we don’t do that cuz that’s saying we don’t trust him which could cause problems when I report.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that. Arizonans and their fragile little feelings. Why is everyone so damn caught up in what others may think of them? You wouldn’t think he’d give a rat’s ass what I thought about him or if I trusted him. How could it affect his life one way or another? I mean, why should Scot B give a damn whether or not Jodi S trusts him?

But Scot B does care. He cares deeply. Maybe he wouldn’t if he were in New England, but this isn’t New England. This is the southwest and my opinion of him matters greatly. It might not matter to him if I thought the world of him, but it sure as shit would matter if I thought anything negative concerning him. Sensitives are usually paranoid, too. He’s the type that would take most anything personally, so that means he’d also be the type to get the wrong idea about people easily. Let’s hope not in my case, cuz the only one that would end up suffering from any misunderstandings he may have is me, of course.

I still say I just might surprise myself someday and fight back against anyone that ever fucks me over the way I’ve been fucked over, and I just might get away with it, too. Especially since they’d deserve whatever I gave him. God can’t protect my perpetrators forever, can he? Would he?

Sure he could and sure he would and I should come back to earth, I know. I’m not fighting back next time. Why? Cuz every time I’ve ever tried to fight back against someone wronging me, it’s only made things worse. I’m not going to jail again, so no, I won’t fight back. I’ll just hope that whatever it is that’s being done to me isn’t too bad and that it ends soon enough. No, it’s not okay for Jodi S to fight back. It’s only ok for her to get screwed over and for her perpetrators to get away with it. Even so, I do not intend to be this bitch’s victim all my life! Someday my life will not revolve around her like it does most of the time now and has been since one very ill-fated day in March of ’96.

On the brighter side, I’m stunned to have learned that I can eat all I want, yet remain at the 124 pounds my body’s been obsessed with weighing since I quit smoking. All this time I thought that going over 1600 calories a day would cause me to continually gain weight till I maxed out at – 150 pounds, 200 pounds – who knows how much? Yet 124, the weight my body’s been most comfortable at for the last 5 years, is my max. I’ve been having 2000-2500 calories day after day after day and my weight never changes. I know a part of it is the exercise. Like I said before, you can’t usually lose weight through exercise, but you can maintain your weight with it. However, if I were suddenly having this many calories at 115 pounds, I would gain weight till I settled back in at the 124 pounds my body’s used to weighing. I could probably lose weight on as low as 1400 calories a day, but I’m not going to bother cuz I know how hard it’d be to keep the weight down. Just a few days of eating would put me back up to where I am. I’d have to keep my calories cut all the time, and yes, just one day a week off would hurt me. It’d undo all, if not most, of my hard work. So, rather than let myself go hungry, I think I can live with being 24 pounds overweight, or at least 14, in most people’s opinions. Especially when you consider the fact that most adults are 40-50 pounds overweight.

I know the working out has caused me to be smaller than I’d normally be at this weight.

Tuesday, August 6, 2002

It was exactly 6 weeks ago as of yesterday that Scot was last here. This is the first time since January that he’s gone over 6 weeks, even if it’s just a day over it so far, in between visits.

Yesterday I told Tom not to put my mail on the island if he comes home when I’m to be getting up between prime freeloader time. That way, jail mail wouldn’t be sitting right there if I happen to be just waking up when he knocks, and am coming out of the bedroom for the first time that day.

Then I thought about it and said to myself, fuck that shit! The freeloaders have controlled where I lived, what I wore, what I ate, and what some of our money was spent on, so now I’m supposed to let them control where my mail is placed? I don’t think so!

In other news, I finally got to take pictures of a rattlesnake! Yeah, I was in my office yesterday when I spotted it coming toward the house. Tom got to see it, too. Unlike the others who would run at the sight of me or the sound of doors closing, this one was pretty brave. I snapped a picture of it moving towards me alongside the house, and then, due to how dangerous these snakes can be, we ran into the house as it settled underneath the front stairs. Tom then opened one of the living room windows and popped the screen out so I could shoot pictures from there, but the only good one I got from there was of its head sticking out. I sent the two good shots I got in all to both Marys, one being by email, the other by regular mail, of course.

It was really weird how the prairie dogs came within a few feet of where it sat and neither one acted like they knew the other was even there. Perhaps that’s because the snake had just eaten. It sure was a fat one.

Mary sent me two more envelopes with quick letters and drafts. I can’t believe how much this girl is writing! She told me to tell her if she’s overwhelming me, but right now I’ve got the time. The only thing being neglected is the fine-tuning of my journals, but that’s okay. There’s no hurry or deadline on that one. I’m sure she’ll have her dry spurts again as soon as she’s got something going on. Right now there’s nothing going on, as she says. I take it she’s getting along with Hope cuz she hasn’t said anything.

Oh, Teddy Bear, how I wish you’d return to Estrella! If I stand the slightest chance, even if it’s one in a million, in getting an answer to why she ditched me, Mary’s my only hope. If she could just get back there before Mary leaves! I know this will never happen, though.

I still think of her every day and at this rate, I think I always will. I imagine scenes with her, like how it might’ve been both in and out of bed if we had been meant to be. I wonder things about her, like what is her name, etc.?

It isn’t doing it right now, but my hard drive (at least I think it’s the hard drive, though it could be a fan) has been making this God-awful screech that Tom says he can’t hear. When I asked how the hell he couldn’t hear it, he said it was cuz of the loud machines he worked around for so many years. It’s a wonder I’m not deaf myself after all the years of blaring music, but if it hasn’t hurt my hearing yet, it probably never will. Not as long as God wants me to hear things I don’t want to hear, though it’s been the quietest it’s ever been since we moved here. Since I’ve had the privilege of living here, I should say. Anyway, he’s going to take care of it later when he gets up. I swear, there’s always something. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.

In order to keep my bangs, now to the tip of my nose, out of my face, I twist them, making dreadlocks, and clip them back with butterfly clips while my hair’s wet. Then it dries up and stays that way even without clips.

Wednesday, August 7, 2002

This is the driest, sunniest and hottest day we’ve had in a while. There’s been very little prairie dog activity cuz of the intense heat. They won’t come out till late afternoon.

I stuck a little fanlike thing in the ground. Last Christmas we got this gold aluminum candleholder with a fan with angels attached to it that strike these little bells when the heat of the flames rotates the candles. I took the angels and bells off and stuck the fan part out to watch it move in the wind. It looks pretty with the light reflecting off of it.

Got a 9-page draft from Mary with a quick note. Nothing’s going on. I’m now all caught up on her stuff and she’s now all caught up on my jailhouse story. Well, she will be as soon as she gets the mail I’ve got ready to go out to her.

Miss Didn’t You Get My Mail? should be getting my package in about a week if all goes well.

I had a memory from one of the summers we spent at the beach. I couldn’t have been more than 10. Tammy and I were at a nearby rental sitting out in the living room while this woman was in one of the bedrooms screaming at this little boy who I swear she was beating the shit out of. Her name was Gail and his name was Benjamin, I think. Anyway, this was back in a time and at a place where no one dared get involved. You simply kept your mouth shut and hoped for the best.

Thursday, August 8, 2002

I keep forgetting to mention that the PR cock Paula’s dealing with is so damn jealous and paranoid that he asked Paula if she was getting it on with Tom. I was like, yeah, right! All the way across the country she’s getting it on with my asexual husband! Hasn’t she told him that Tom’s white, not her cup of tea anyway?

She and I were talking about whether or not God favors man over a woman. Well, it’s rather obvious that he does. Look what we women go through with periods and what some go through carrying/delivering kids, not to mention the abuse most of us take from men. They say this has to do with Eve disobeying him. But what’s that got to do with us women now centuries later? See, if this story’s true, it goes to prove that God really would make a person pay for another’s sins, like Tom and I.

Tom fixed the squeak in my computer by tightening up screws, so now there’ll be a new problem any sec.

I love this Webshots site. I still have their software so I can download and export pictures, but I use a different wallpaper program. They have two new pictures a day. I wish it were more like 20 or 30, but at least they’re getting new ones regularly. All the other wallpaper sites hardly ever update their pictures.

I decided that so I could keep things in better order, I’d divide Mary’s stuff into 3 files. One for her clips from her preteen years, one for her teen years, and one for her adult years.

It’s amazing how we lived together in a tiny room for 9 days, barely knowing a thing about each other. Now, though, we haven’t seen each other in over a year yet we know each other rather well.

Here’s what I’ve learned about her through her book and letters: She’s a very sweet, compassionate person, yet she’s naïve and too trusting. Not so shocking, though, seeing that she’s only 24. I don’t think she’s attracted to abusive men in the way Paula and Tammy are, but she’s definitely cursed. Her parents were even worse than mine were, in a sense, and as you know, mine were quite terrible. Her father became your typical deadbeat dad and her mother abused her and her only sibling, Adam, 4 years older, verbally, physically and emotionally. The two were eventually sent away to boarding schools that I’m sure weren’t much better than Valleyhead. Then Mary’s had one abusive relationship after another with her mental and intellectual growth stunted by motherhood at just 15 years of age.

I can see where Mary’s being too nice, so to speak, as well as too trusting has gotten her in trouble. An example of that is that she handed her baby to an old lady to hold while she folded up the stroller to put in a waiting taxicab. Well, anyone with sense knows and would agree that even if it’s a frail, seemingly harmless old lady, you do not give your baby to a stranger.

Mary seems to be a very honest, non-contradicting person who keeps her word, yet she obviously has a poor sense of judgment at times. How she could have left her daughter home while she was at work to be killed by a man who had proven time and time again to be abusive towards her and her daughter, is totally beyond me. Even more beyond me is how she could’ve run off with him from Florida to Seattle after he killed her. She had already run with him from Arizona to Florida after he abused her son James, who was adopted, along with another son of hers named Andrew.

Other than leaving her daughter in the hands of a monster, Mary seems to have been very in tune with her daughter’s needs and a very loving mother. She also seems rather intelligent for her age, despite her hardships and becoming a mom so young.

Mary and Adam bonded in their 20s after all they’d been through. Except for their aunt Carolyn, it seems the whole family was crazy. Her firstborn, Murphy, lives with her aunt in Arizona. Mary has a boyfriend, Todd, whom she has told me is the opposite of her past boyfriends and her ex-husband Justin. He is said to be a very caring, supportive young man.

To my knowledge, Mary has never been sexually abused. At least not in the form of rape or molestation.

I will say that Mary has up and removed herself and her daughter Gretchen from abusive men a few times, but sadly, she’d always go back till one day it was too late.

She’s both a good and a not-so-good writer. She’s certainly better than I was at her age with her vocabulary and her descriptions, but she’s a little too descriptive. She spends an awful lot of time telling one quick event with lots of detail.

I restructure or reword sentences if I think they’ll sound better. I also correct any grammatical mistakes. Her punctuation is the worst. She never uses it. Occasionally she uses question marks, but all she uses for periods are commas. She never uses caps or paragraphs and she never uses quotes when people are speaking, either.

She also uses names too often and breaks people’s conversations up too much with descriptive stuff. Other than that, she’s doing alright and will improve with time.

She’s writing the story first-person, saying that she felt it was too impersonal to use an anonymous narrator. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think first-person is especially better when it’s a true story cuz it’s more like a journal, only you’re telling the story after the fact rather than as it unfolds.

Unless she’s making it up to make the book sound better, I’m amazed at how detailed her memory is pertaining to events from her preteen years.

Later…

Tom brought home a manila envelope with a letter sheet, plus 49 pages of drafts. Guess I’ll go get working on that now.

Another few hours and my life belongs to me for a good 72 hours. It’s all mine! Mine and Tom’s.

Later…

Scot came at 1:10, and as usual, he was in and out like a flash like I wish I could be when I see him on his turf. I spotted his SUV, which fortunately, comes from a direction I can see from my office window without having to be right up to it as I would if he came the way he leaves. I ran out front before he could knock and wake up Tom, who’d gone to bed an hour before.

I feel a lot more relaxed after he leaves from a home visit, cuz then I know I can count on him not bugging me here at least for a while. So we went 6 weeks and 3 days between visits time around. Maybe next time it’ll be 6 weeks and 6 days! He skipped June, but I doubt he’ll skip September cuz he came so early in the month. It’s only the 8th, but when he came in May it was the 24th. He’d have to not come by for at least 7½ weeks in order to skip September. If his visits really ever do start slowing down to where there are usually 8 or more weeks between visits, it probably won’t be till after I get down to one year left of this shit. I don’t know, though. Arizona is such a serious state. He may play this up right on to the end. He’s gonna play up the seeing him twice a month part of it, but I know that for the most part, he’s just a PO. He doesn’t have much control, power or authority when it comes to the laws. He’s just doing what he’s told to do whether he wants to or not and regardless of whether or not he thinks it’s necessary. As Tom says, it’s a matter of his having a quota he has to meet, as well as if there’s someone new in the area on probation, making it convenient to stop here. I don’t see how there can be that many people in the area, though, whether or not they’re on probation. Remember, this isn’t the city!

He’s a bit rude, though, and not very bright when I think about it. I know Tom’s a heavy sleeper who can easily fall back asleep and that he isn’t leaving tonight till midnight, but he knew I was standing out there to keep him from waking up. Yet as soon as we stepped inside his walkie-talkie squawked really loud before he turned it down. Couldn’t he have turned it down before he got inside?

When I went out front to pick up a couple of aluminum cans the slobs of Maricopa let blow in, I noticed a car parked in front of the shack that I couldn’t see from the house. I’ve seen them move stuff in and out of the shacks a couple of times, but this was just sitting there. To my knowledge, all they use the shacks for is storage, so maybe they’re storing this old car there, too. I mean, why not? They have an old ugly trailer on the other corner. The front of their property is definitely neater and nicer looking than the back. I want to landscape the side they’re on, but not as much as I want to in back and in front. Especially when there’s a house in front.

Friday, August 9, 2002

In a week or two we’ll be closing out our Tempe PO box and opening one in Maricopa. Should I bother giving it to Paula in case she decides to ever write for real? Well, it’ll be on the return so she’ll have it anyway.

Both the prairie dogs and the rabbits lay down nestled up against the water bowl at times. It’s so cute. I got some more pictures, including a couple with the prairie dogs climbing the little tree out front, and I updated my wildlife album. I also sent Mary the link to that album so she can see the new additions. I printed a picture sheet out for the other Mary, too.

Tom said that the car by the shacks is an old junker that nobody drives and that it’s been there for a week.

I don’t know why, but today I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had a whole page full of new wallpaper thumbnails. I got a few new ones. I usually get some every day between Webshots and the community Webshots sites.

With my piggy bank money on 9/1, I had planned to get Jewel, the last of 3 dolls in one of the fairy series I don’t yet have (unless Tom wanted it for something for him like socks, shorts, etc.), but I only have a little over $12. If these discount coupons are any good, then I need at least $17. So, if Tom doesn’t want the money, I’ll get her as soon as I save up $6 more. I’m definitely going to wait till we take classes to decide where and when to get the two vinyls I want. I’m also going to wait till we have a truck before I go getting the palm tree for the corner in the dining area.

With my birthday and Christmas money, the things I want most, unless I see something better, will easily fit into the amount I’ll be getting, and that’s the tree, the two vinyls and Amelia. Amelia’s really grown on me. She’s not usually what I go for, either, cuz she’s a blond, blue-eyed Victorian. I hate most Victorian dresses cuz they’re so frilly, but this one’s not too bad. It’s light pink with lace and rosebuds. She wears a nice pendant and has an awesome face. Her eyes are pretty realistic looking. A lot like Bailey’s. She also has yellow-blond hair, which is something I don’t really have. Most of my blondes are dark blondes. Wheat blondes, you could say. She’s 22” and is normally $40 and is by Donna Rubert. She comes with a working parasol, too.

Maybe I’ll be able to squeeze a rat mug and a mouse pad in there, too. Of course, I also wouldn’t mind an electric razor, and I really wouldn’t mind a coffee grinder.

We’re now pretty sure that the leak in my shower is in the wall. When we first got the house, the sink in the second bath leaked as well as an area underneath the house that the lazy Mexicans just couldn’t take the time to tighten all the way. Well, we’re thinking this is the same case that slowly loosened up over time. Fortunately, though, these wallboards are easy to remove. Tom offered to call Palm Harbor since the house is under warranty, but we agreed that if we deal with it, it’ll get done right. I don’t want some illiterate Mexican out here that doesn’t even know its own language let alone English, making things worse and wasting our time.

Again, I am so sick of this leak curse and I am so sick of us always having to deal with other people’s incompetence!!! Why are so many people so damn stupid???

Saturday, August 10, 2002

So many of today’s singers sound the same. Whatever happened to individuality and originality? You know, singers like Stevie Nicks and Cyndi Lauper? Ok, so Stevie couldn’t sing all that well and Cyndi could be obnoxious, but at least they were unique. I like different, but most of the world doesn’t. You know how it is with most people; we all gotta dress the same, act the same, do the same things, etc.

I wish they’d make ACs that really are temperature sensitive instead of just claiming that they are, but the damn thing doesn’t come on more often the hotter it gets or come on less often the cooler it gets.

Well, I still don’t feel the need to have sex with anyone. Meaning, I don’t feel anything either way. I’m rather indifferent to the idea, but if an opportunity presents itself that interests me, I might go for it. I’m not gonna necessarily stay celibate all my life simply cuz he doesn’t have any desires. That wouldn’t be fair to me any more than it’d be fair of me to insist he never watch another basketball game again because basketball doesn’t interest me, too. I don’t see it ever happening, but if I ever met a woman I was attracted and it was mutual – well – if I could just get her to come to the house, then who knows? I’ll leave it to fate as far as who, if anyone, I ever have sex with again. If he suddenly grew interested and hit me for sex, then I’d feel obligated to give it to him whether or not I wanted to because that’d be my duty, so to speak, as his wife, wouldn’t it? If not, then I guess we’re both free to do whatever we want. Whether or not we ever got it on again with each other, though it seems we’ve settled into being more like loving friends, I would prefer not to meet anyone new cuz meeting new people usually means it was done under some pretty uncool circumstances. Something bad would have to happen for me to meet someone I was attracted to, regardless of whether or not Tom and I are platonic, and it hardly seems worth the 20-second orgasm.

It’s still so weird, though, even to this day, just how screwy our past sex lives were for the most part. What’s even weirder is how he’d react to my being turned off. You’d think that that’d make a man a bit more self-conscious and eager to change to both please the woman and to prove themselves a man like they love to do, but not Tom. Instead, he seemed rather amused by it all. It’s like he got a kick out of seeing me feel like a fool, or when I’d be embarrassed for him, or just totally turned off. This is partly why I think some of it was intentional. It was like my displeasure was his pleasure.

In case I didn’t mention it before, I went out by where the trailer was and beat the sticks into the ground that were used as grave markers. I decided to just throw the not-so-special animals into the brush when they die. The wildlife will gobble them up in no time. As for the special ones, they get buried closer to the house, though there’s no saying that the wildlife won’t dig through to them.

Though it’s been quiet today, we’re pretty sure the cause of the computer squeaking came from the power supply box, so Tom’s going to replace it sometime.

I may put off dying my hair for a year or two when I go to trim it cuz it’s really fried my hair. Dye and perms are the worst things you can do to your hair.

Got my weekly photo album statistics and now one of the rat albums is in the lead.

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Since today’s the first day in a while that I don’t have anything of Mary’s to type, I think I’ll spend most of the day fine-tuning the ’94 file which is the one I’m currently working on.

Tom put a quieter power supply box in my computer and refilled my ink cartridges.

Damn those mother-fucking freeloaders! Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!! I want to take a nap now, but they won’t let me. They own me, after all, even on the weekends. Because of them, I need to keep my schedule on days so we can report early when it’s cooler. If I crashed at 2 PM, I’d be up between 6-8 PM, then wouldn’t go to bed again till tomorrow morning, the time I want to be getting up.

Well, maybe someday my life will belong to me and every damn thing I do won’t revolve around the black bitch in some way. Then again, God will just appoint me a new tormentor.

Monday, August 12, 2002

Oh, I am so incredibly sick of Paula’s rudeness and not doing what she says she’ll do! I ask her a simple little thing like to call and leave a message if no one answers as soon as she gets the package to let me know what she thinks and if everything got to her in one piece, and instead, I learn from Justin that it came. But that’s all he said. Not one thank you, not one comment about it – nothing. How could asking her to call when she got it be such a hard thing to do and why is she so ungrateful? I didn’t have to spend the time and money on her that I did. I just thought the stuff would do better with her than sitting in the closet here. But do I get even the slightest bit of appreciation for it? No, of course not. I can’t even get a lousy little phone call! I’m so done with this self-centered girl who’s got nothing better to do than bitch about her man problems and lie about mail she’s sent. As soon as I can get ahold of her to settle my own curiosity as to whether or not anything broke along the way, we’re done. We’re so done. No more calls, no more letters. I’ll respond to emails and I’ll answer the phone if she happens to call when I’m up and not busy, but that’s about it. I’m not writing her and I’m not calling her other than to find out about the package. Enough of this one-way friendship!

Later…

Just got a hold of Paula. I woke her up since it was only 6:15 there, but I figured I probably wouldn’t get a hold of her so easily once she was awake. By then she’ll be fighting with her men. Although I know better, she says she’ll call later. Meanwhile, she got the package and nothing broke, so that’s good, even if I didn’t get a “thanks” from her either.

Now she’s free to go to jail.

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Justin and Paula left me another message shortly after I last wrote. All she wrote was that she liked the stuff and that she’d call me, but sure enough, she never did. Tom suggested that maybe she was too broke to afford a long-distance call and was too embarrassed to admit it, but I think she simply didn’t feel like calling. She’s just one of those who says she’s going to do things she doesn’t do.

Meanwhile, I told her I wasn’t going to keep spending money on paper, envelopes, ink and stamps when I can simply email her my journals on a monthly basis. Whether or not she remembers to check for them and whether or not the kid lets her know they’re there if she doesn’t, is a whole different story.

Speaking of mail, Mary’s still bombarding me with drafts. Damn! I didn’t think she’d ever write this much. What sucks is that she got a rejection slip for 3 letters due to excessive pictures. But I didn’t go over the 5 picture limit, so they’re either sending them back cuz I sent too many envelopes’ worth at once, or maybe they’re counting the picture I use for address labels as an extra picture. I don’t know. I’ve mailed multiple picture envelopes before with picture labels, so as Mary said, maybe there’s someone new in the mailroom. I’ll just make sure from now on not to send her pictures till she’s had enough time to get previous ones.

While I don’t care the least bit for her exes, her parents, or her father-in-law, I admire her mother-in-law for having the balls to admit her son is the monster that he is. Most parents wouldn’t admit that about their kids even if it were true.

I agree with her suggesting she get an abortion only because being broke and on the run from a madman seems like no time to be having a baby. Also, there is scientific proof suggesting that if a child is born to someone with more aggressive genetics, then there’s a higher chance that it too, will grow up to be aggressive. She tried to point this out to her but had it been me in her shoes, though, I’d have gone with the fact that I was homeless and not financially set. That would’ve been plenty enough reason for me to get an abortion, even if I wanted a kid. Sometimes one must follow their head and not their heart and do what’s best, even if it’s not what they want.

However, I disagree with her not sending her to Mexico like she asked her to. Actually, I think she should’ve sent her to a country with no extradition treaty. Especially if she had the means to do so which she apparently did. That’s what Tom and I plan to do if I’m ever framed again. We’re just gonna skip the courtroom altogether next time around and book it to a non-extradition country, even if that means leaving our possessions behind and the people we know. Most of the major countries do extradition, so it’d more than likely be a small country.

I got some excellent prairie dog pics the other day. I managed to get just a couple of feet away from one of them that was munching on the popcorn I gave it. The pictures were so close and so clear you could see its whiskers. They’re getting so brave, too. Now they come running up to me when I go out there. They’re braver than the Rat Runner and Little Ratsy. Even the rabbits are braving up to me.

Yesterday was Mary’s birthday so I emailed her the prairie dog pictures and wished her a happy birthday. I think she’s 47 now.

I didn’t weigh myself today, but I was down from 126 to 123 pounds as of yesterday. Maybe this diet of having just under 1400 calories, which is a million times easier than trying to stick to 1000 calories, will make me lose a little weight after all. Not much, but maybe 5-10 pounds. I think that in order to get under 110-115, I would have to have around 1000 calories, but I’m not going to put myself out like that, like I said before, just to lose weight that’ll only come right back.

All week it’s been miserably hot. Sunny and clear, too. Tom said that since the end of the monsoon season brings cooler weather; that’s a sign saying there are more monsoons to come.

But when? It’s already mid-August.

I’m a bit nervous right now as I always am before seeing Scot. I just never know what to expect. I could go in there and be told I’m under arrest for killing someone in Japan for all I know, or he could mention the classes again. I asked Tom if he thought they just hadn’t gotten around to checking into the class bullshit and getting back to Scot, or if they deleted it, and he said he thinks they just don’t care and that they were just doing their job. Well, someone obviously cared enough to order it, but hopefully he’s right and the worst I’ll be in for tomorrow is the usual – him telling me how much time I have left or telling me that he wouldn’t even think of considering suggesting I try to get off probation early because I have a “victim” in my case. If he doesn’t test me tomorrow, then who knows when he will? That’s the least of my worries, though.

It figures that two days this week Tom was out during the first two hours of the day which he normally shows up right after he just did. Am I ever going to get my chance to say “no” to anything connected to these damn freeloaders? Of course not. I’m sure he’ll never again come by when Tom’s out, and I know he won’t come by when we’re both out. I just can’t believe he hasn’t woken me up since February!

Anything’s better than sitting in a jail cell with Melinda B, but I just think it’s sad that I have to see him so often. It’s so, so unnecessary, and of course, another reminder of the freeloaders and what they’ve put me through, not that I could forget if I wanted to. So rarely do I get the privilege of seeing him just twice a month. I saw him on the 2nd, then the 8th, and then tomorrow which will be the 16th. That’s once a week for 3 weeks! And all for what?

Last night I noticed a big truck with flashing red lights by the rental that I thought was an ambulance, but it sat still for several minutes, then it pulled into the street for a few more minutes, then backed up to the house, then a second later it pulled up a few feet, cut its lights, and just sat there. It’s still there, too. It looks like a fire truck, but I can’t say for sure. Tom said that emergency vehicles flash red and blue lights and not just red, so maybe it’s a tow truck of some kind. I don’t know, but it’s so ugly. I can’t wait till we don’t have to see them anymore, though that’s going to be such a long time from now.

So now they’ve got a red truck to add to the navy SUV and white van. It seems most of Maricopa owns at least 3 vehicles of some kind. I’d be willing to bet we’re the only ones with just one around here.

A few days ago my computer was completely unbootable. I had Tom give me a quieter power supply box that was fucked up and corrupted some programs I have. One of the fans was fucked up, too. See what I get when I try to fight noise? Anyway, he fixed it for me.

I’ve been making some posters. I decided my office was due for a change, but that’s not the only room I’m decorating. I’m also putting some in the bedroom. On the closet door, the retreat door and the bedroom door. I’m going to do a big one to put in the den and maybe even one for the utility area. I’m using my wallpaper pics for them. Things like waterfalls, dogs, cats and other scenic pics.

I decided I might not bother learning to paint a black slip by making a black doll in class. Regardless of whether or not I think they’re assholes, black is just not my favorite. I don’t like overly pale skin or overly dark skin. I like it somewhere in between. So, maybe I’ll see if I can do some of the dolls I’ve been wanting for a while now like Donna Rubert’s Chyna or Linda Mason’s Alexa. Or maybe I’ll do either sweet 16 Bailey or a small, green-eyed version of Jade. I saw a picture of Bailey at 16, and yup, it sure did look like an older version of my toddler Bailey.

The original plan was to order Jewel on the 1st, but I’ve changed my mind. See, I only wanted her cuz I thought her foot accents looked really cool, but instead, I made my own on the Fairy of Cork. I painted gold chrome bands around the tops of her feet, with lines extending downwards in front. Then I glued 3 small mint green heart-shaped jewels on the tops of her feet, close to where her leg starts. It looks way cool.

Now I can save up enough change to get that Amelia doll that’s really grown on me. I won’t be ordering her in September, though. Hopefully October, but whenever I can is when I will.

I don’t know if they’ll be open after Scot gets done running its mouth about the same old shit, but we’re going to stop at the PO here in town and see if we can open a box there. We’re curious to see how the mail service is there. Especially when it comes to receiving dolls! And I highly doubt Amelia will be out of stock.

Friday, August 16, 2002

Yesterday I was surprised to receive an email from the dentist thanking me for sharing my albums which the staff liked. I didn’t expect any email. Especially since it’s been a while since they checked out the albums.

It definitely is an old fire truck they have back there that’s a collectible. It’s so fucking ugly to have to see, too. It really stands out. Again, though, better seen than heard. An eyesore’s always better than having my ear assaulted with thumping bass.

It’s so damn hot out there right now that there’s not much animal activity. Around 6:00, though, it’s quite a farm out there with the prairie dogs, rabbits and birds.

Last night I was so damn nervous about reporting. I kept telling myself, you’ve been out over a year and nothing’s happened yet. This should be easy for you.

But it’s not. When it comes to dealing with the law, you just never know what to expect. Well, I know I certainly don’t. For all I know, I could walk in there one day and Scot could say to me, “The “victim” got mugged. I think you did it. You’re under arrest.”

Anyway, speaking of the sorry black bitch herself, he never mentioned her. Not even a word about how much time I have left! And to further shock us, he was even friendly today. Usually, he’s just polite, but he was actually quite perky today. I’ve never seen him so talkative and relaxed. It was the least serious I’ve ever seen him be. He started off by saying he’d never seen us “kids” out so early, but we were just two weeks ago. Then the talk turned mostly to cars. We told him that the main reason we were out early was to beat the heat since we agreed to forget about fixing the AC and just get an old truck to fix up.

“Know anybody with a piece of shit?” I asked him.

Then he said his mother was in an accident that totaled her car, though fortunately she wasn’t hurt, and is looking for a new car.

As I figured, he said he was from Arizona when I asked.

“Never lived anywhere else,” he said.

When I mentioned the 3 states I’ve lived in, he said the west coast must really differ from the east coast.

“Oh, yeah,” I told him, “but they both have their pros and cons as with any place.”

Arizona’s pros are its beautiful landscape, the more modern buildings, the prairie dogs, and the lack of severe cold, snow and humidity.

Its cons are the harsh, unfair laws, the big, year-round bugs, the bleachy-tasting tap water, and the way most houses are so close and apartment walls are too thin.

New England’s pros are its tap water and the fact that the laws are much more reasonable, including more rights/protection when it comes to Jews and gays. The laws tend to be fairer as far as not favoring certain groups of people. Also, the people aren’t as sensitive and vindictive. In Arizona, they’re quicker to take more things personally. Being liked and accepted is more important to most people out here.

Its cons are its cold, humid, snowy weather, the mosquitoes, the old ugly buildings and the high cost of living.

I just saw a couple of prairie dogs playing. I can tell the difference when they’re playing like rats versus fighting like mice.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I don’t have to report for 3 whole weeks since there are 5 weeks in August. I didn’t think there’d be 3 weeks between reports till November. Since he recently came to the house, I can relax, enjoy life and have it all to myself for 3 whole weeks!!! What a wonderful treat that is! I sure do feel a lot more relaxed than I did last night and this morning! Now I don’t have to worry about schedules or anything. Not for a while, anyway.

After going to the bathroom at Circle K (now I have no clue as to when he’ll test me) and getting some snacks, we went to the post office. They have boxes available, but first they want proof of our physical address, so Tom will take care of that soon enough.

All the crashing I was doing cuz of the faulty fan and processor did corrupt a few pages in the 1994 journal I’m currently working on, but I was able to replace it with a backup, so that’s good.

I went to brush dust balls out of Maria’s hair and it wasn’t very easy. Talk about a shitty wig! I couldn’t get a comb through it to save my life. So, I decided to braid it so it’d be easier to dust, but because it’s so curly, it was hard to braid. Finally, I decided to cut it. I didn’t mean to cut it all the way up to her shoulders, but it adds variety since I don’t have any dolls with shoulder-length hair, and it actually looks kind of cute. It frames her face nicely. Also, her hairstyle doesn’t matter that much cuz she’s got a sheer black and gold veil over it.

Other than that, I changed both the rats’ and mice’s cages, and that’s pretty much it. Unless I counted wrong, I’m two days late for my period, which is rather unusual for me. At least I can’t be pregnant!

Just like I couldn’t wait to get MP3s, I can’t wait to make dolls and get more of the dolls I’ve been wanting for a long time now. I also think it’d be neat to add a blue-eyed blond Joy, a green-eyed redheaded Joy, and a black Joy to my Indian Joy. My Indian Joy has a short dress on, so I think I’d do one of the others in a long dress, one in shorts, and one in long pants.

I printed out a large pearl-colored dewy rose and put it on the side of the bar in the kitchen and it goes so well with the whitewash.

Saturday, August 17, 2002

Well, someone’s playing music out there tonight. I could hear a few faint beats when I was in the bedroom, but I couldn’t say where it was coming from. That’s nothing compared to the sounds of A Tower – ugh! I do not miss it! But I know it’s only a matter of time before I’m once again held prisoner someplace I don’t want to be. There were the camps, Brattleboro, Valleyhead, a few days at the Springfield crisis center, a handful of noisy apartments, a noisy house, jail – what’ll it be next? And when? How long will I get to live in peace in a place I’m happy in before I end up in some shitty, chaotic place I can’t even hear myself think in?

You know, it may sound funny, but I was crying a bit last night when I thought of Houdini. I mean, I knew he was going to die sooner or later, and with Little Buddy and the time that’s gone by, it’s not that I miss him, but it’s the circumstances connected to him. You know, those freeloaders that relate to just about every single event in my life that’s gone on for the last 6 years. He’s just one of the millions of things they’ve had a hand in. The day I was sentenced, that was it for me and Houdini. Tom got to have him for 6 more months, but for me, it was over.

I still miss and think of Teddy Bear too, of course, going back and forth in my mind between wondering why she ditched me, to intimate thoughts of her. I couldn’t get it on with just any woman simply because they’re women, though. I have to be attracted to them. Hopefully, though, I won’t know anyone ever again long enough to become attracted to them in the first place. I’d rather a life of celibacy if Tom and I are gonna remain platonic.

It’s like each curse the freeloaders put on me led to another. First they had me thrown in jail for absolutely no reason at all other than that I was a complaining Jew, and as if that’s not bad enough, I had to go and fall in love and in lust with someone who led me on and broke my heart. She knew I liked her and I knew she liked me, so what happened? I still think it was the combination of the distance, the being married, and her meeting someone in between.

Still, I have to wonder – did she actually end up doing me a favor? Would things have been worse if we had gotten together? Would we have been just friends or would we have become part-time lovers and would I have felt guilty if we had? Well, perhaps it really is a good thing I’ll never know! The only thing I know that couldn’t have happened is that I wouldn’t have traded in Tom for her for a million bucks and then some.

I’m now up to a total of 305 photo album viewings. The rats are in the lead with 57 viewings of the first one and 27 of the second one. The two Mice albums have 46 and 10 viewings. Assorted Pets has 8, Our Wildlife has 37, Our Land has 54, and the 3 doll albums have 18, 23, and 24.

At 9:00 Tom and I ran up to Circle K for some snacks. It was still quite hot out. As we were returning he pointed out how invisible our house is when there are no lights on and it’s true. Unless the moonlight is really bright, you could drive by it and not even know it was there.

Sunday, August 18, 2002

There was a big electrical storm a couple of evenings ago, but as usual, it missed us.

As dull as our land is compared to by the mountains, it’s so beautiful. Yes, Arizona’s best quality is its landscape as its worst are its laws. New England’s best is its bigger, more spread out houses and its worst is its weather.

Sometimes I get the feeling Tom’s not truly happy with me. When Paula asked if he got clingy in fear of losing me to Teddy Bear, I told her no and that he didn’t show any signs of being insecure or worried about losing me to her, and I always assumed it was because he didn’t mind if she and I got it on if that’s what I wanted. But could it be that deep down he was hoping I’d ditch him for her, figuring it’d be easier that way than to dump me? Could it really be that he’s simply putting up with my existence? If I asked him if he were happy with me, I don’t know if I’d get the truth only because he’s quicker to admit something he does want than he is to admit something he doesn’t. If Tom S says he’s against something, he is. If he says it’s something he likes or wants, then maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. That’s why I have to go by his actions rather than his words, but one has to do that with just about anybody. Actions really do speak louder than words.

My only complaint lately is his snapping at me. Maybe he doesn’t mean to come off as a grouch or realize he’s doing it, but this has been going on for a while now and it really bugs me. He comes off as defensive, annoyed and impatient when answering my questions or responding to statements. I’ve made it clear to him how I feel about this, but it hasn’t changed anything, though I’ll admit he’s been pretty mellow today, talking in casual tones. Well, I’d rather be with him and have him snap at me than leave, even if I had the means to do so and to fend for myself. It’s only a tone of voice after all and I know things could be worse. It’s not like he’s taking swings at me or smashing our stuff. Then I don’t know what I’d do. All I know is that I’m not Paula or Tammy who thrive on and get off on abuse. They love abuse and to be called names and swung at. It’s mostly cuz they’re sympathy junkies who also love to wallow in self-pity.

Monday, August 19, 2002

It’s nice to have a break from Mary’s stuff so I can catch up on my own shit. I fine-tuned more of ’94 and printed out what I’ve done so far. I decided to quit the fine-tuning of when I go to jail, so this means I printed out all of ’01 and what I’ve done so far of ’02. So I’ll work my way up from mid-’94, which is where I’m at now, to October 30th of ’00.

Little did I know when on October 29th of 2000 I said that tomorrow was my “final round” with those freeloaders! Boy, was I wrong! I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried! In a sense, that was just the beginning. Far from the end. I’m still far enough from the end and like I said, it feels like I’ll never shake free of them. Like I’ll always be counting freeloader time down.

Yesterday evening was windier than it had been in a week, and today while I slept, it drizzled for a minute, according to Tom, who did a lot of straightening up in his office (finally), but still no serious rain.

Mary L replied back saying she liked the foot accents I did on the Irish fairy. She’s also glad she lives where she lives so she doesn’t have to worry about wild creatures. Speaking of which, I got a cute shot of a prairie dog peeking out from under a trench it dug under the water bowl.

I was doing okay for a while there, then Teddy Bear started eating at me again for the millionth time. Oh, how I miss her, and oh how I long to be in her arms getting to know her, getting it on, etc! Being attracted to her was one thing like I was with Palma, but did I really have to go and fall so in love with her too, to make matters worse?! Who knows? Maybe when I’m 40 I’ll be over her. God must not want me to have any answers as to why she blew me off or else she probably wouldn’t have left Estrella. Mary’s my only hope of getting the chance to find out anything if she’d just get her ass back in there before she leaves! Maybe I’ll see if she can find out what the usual deal is as far as where DOs work, for how long, and what the odds are of them ever returning to a place they once worked at.

I think back to the time she told me she didn’t want me to feel slighted when she told me to wait a year before writing to her. Well, how does she think I felt when I got no response to my letter? Doesn’t she know that if I didn’t care about her contacting me I wouldn’t have bothered writing her in the first place?

Well, since I’m sure I’ll be back working again for Mary tomorrow, I’m going to go work for myself now.

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Mary sent one envelope with a quick note and some drafts, and I got the 3 envelopes back. From now on I’ll send one picture sheet at a time. God, this world is so hell-bent on rules and control! I mean, who fucking cares how many pictures they get? Why do people make such big deals out of nothing? It’s only pictures!

Tom and I were just talking about how nice it is to be on the same wavelength as far as what we want to do in life goes. I mean, I know I’m going to be the main dollmaker, but he’s so into it with me and that’s cool. I can tell this by the way he’s been bringing up the subject on his own, doing research, etc. He doesn’t try to steer clear of the subject or make excuses. He’s been putting his actions where his mouth is on this one and that’s cool. Not that we can’t do things that the other isn’t into at times. He doesn’t have to like the same music I like and I don’t have to like the same shows he likes, but when it comes to more serious goals and dreams, mutuality is nice. Not that being married to him isn’t worth it, but it’s tough when we disagree on big things, cuz then we have to try to figure out who should get their way. This is just my personal opinion, but I’d always try my best to encourage him if he wanted to get into something I didn’t. If it wasn’t anything that could harm either one of us in any way, I would feel obligated to support the one I love.

I didn’t want to be a singer for very long after we met, so it didn’t really matter that that wasn’t mutual and although things worked out for the better and I’m glad we never had a kid, his not supporting me when I did want one was wrong. Again, this is just me, but I think he should’ve been blunt up front and stayed that way if he was sure he didn’t want a kid, or if he did, he should’ve gone to a therapist and tried to fix his problem (not 3 years later). Instead, he made vague references about not wanting one in the beginning, then changed his story to sound good to me while his actions would totally go against his words, as he’d make one excuse after another. Never should you lead a loved one on and say you’re going to do something you don’t that you know is important to them.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll both have learned from the past, and hopefully, if I decided I wanted to open a restaurant, though I can’t imagine why I ever would, he’d be there to support me even if he disagreed with it, just as I’d be there to support him if he decided he wanted to get a bunch of smelly horses that’d eat up a great deal of our time and money. Sure I’d bitch about it along the way, but who the hell would I be to stop him? And who the hell would I be to string him along, make excuses, and not do what I said I was going to do? Hopefully, we won’t ever again be faced with non-mutual goals/dreams, but if we are, we are, and we’ll have to support each other. One doesn’t have the right to play God with the other’s dreams. And one’s only choices shouldn’t have to be to either give up what they want or leave the person.

I was watching an old Law & Order show. The DA was saying that a certain sentence was too harsh and to go to someplace like Arizona if they thought they wanted to impose such a sentence. Not New York, one of the most tolerable places. Yeah, I’m not surprised Arizona was mentioned. Arizona, the state that tolerates absolutely nothing but hatred towards Jews and gays.

You know, I gotta wonder about that black bitch and her sick cock. I mean, I have a feeling I’m not the first one they’ve used their black pig pal to drag into court out of spite, revenge and hate. And surely I couldn’t be the last. Just like there’s no such thing as a one-time rapist, these aren’t the kinds of people that would use and abuse the law against someone they’re pissed off at just once. If any decent lawyer or judge could set aside the “poor, poor minority” attitude this state’s so hooked on, and do a little digging, they may be surprised to see a frightening pattern when it comes to any of these freeloaders. The question is, would they want to see it? That’s the real question, cuz I have a very strong feeling that even if you waved the truth in their faces, they wouldn’t want to know it.

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

PG’s now having a sale where you get $10 off any orders over $100 and $5 off any orders over $60, and I’m like, oh wow, what a sale! A lousy $5 or $10. If it were $20 or $30, that’d be more of a sale.

Got a couple of letters and book clips from Mary. I asked her if she’d be interested in any of my journaling now that she’s got the whole jailhouse journal, and if so, what would she be interested in? The 80s, 90s, current? Or should I just pull excerpts out at random? She should recognize people’s names from my autobiography. That way, if I pull a 1987 clip pertaining to Nervous, she won’t be like – who the hell is he?

She said she thought the prairie dog pics were so cute and that she has them on the wall. That is, I’m sure, till Misery tells her to take them down.

She said it was up to me what name I wanted to use in her book. At first I thought, well, I like the name Dawn better than Jodi, but then I decided I’ll just be Jodi. That way, if the book ever does get published, I can tell people, like my in-laws, to look for my name in the book.

It may be a bit premature, but has she thought of a name for the book? I asked her. I know that if I had written a book on my experience with the freeloaders/law/jail, I’d have called it, It Happened to Me, It Could Happen to You.

I suggested book titles for her book like For the Love of Gretchen or For All the Gretchens Out There.

Maybe something more dramatic like Run, Before It’s Too Late!

She’s always saying she doesn’t remember where she left off, so I suggested she keep a separate piece of paper to keep track of subjects so she’ll know where she left off. She could even write them on the walls or ceilings like I used to!

I asked her if she thought Hope knowingly tried to kill her kid, or if she thinks she almost did in the heat of the moment. She said she doesn’t know and tries not to think about it cuz it’s better that way. Yeah, I hear her as far as how it’s sometimes best not to know the truth about others. Especially if the truth could be something you don’t want to know/hear. Makes it easier that way. I still just cannot believe they’ve been together this long! I’ll bet if I were in that jail for 10 years I wouldn’t get the blessing of residing with the same person for more than 4 weeks.

She’s very lucky to have a compassionate PO which she describes the guy to be. He didn’t even violate her for running! Scot’s the type that’d violate someone just for thinking about running. Anyway, I think that what helps Mary get more compassion than I have is a combination of the fact that there’s a dead kid involved, her overall appearance (she’s young and pretty), and her friendly demeanor. She doesn’t look like a criminal, you don’t talk like a criminal, you don’t act like a criminal, not that I do. Also, there were no “minorities” involved. No one with legal connections to use against her, either.

I had asked her how she could’ve run to Seattle with Justin after he killed her kid and she said she was so brainwashed by him that she didn’t know what she was doing. I could never imagine anyone ever being able to brainwash me in the way he did with her cuz I’m such a stubborn, defiant bitch. Especially after getting screwed over the way I did when I was a younger, too-nice and too-trusting person. It’s taught me not to put much stock in what others say/do. I can understand, though, that with her being such a sweet, loving, mellow person how a sick twist like him would take advantage of her. And I can see that with her being as young as she was and with not having much of a family to turn to it’d be easier to succumb to abuse like that. I figured he had to have either brainwashed or threatened her into running to Seattle. I knew she wouldn’t just up and willingly go along with it, but damn! I had no idea of the hit he put on her! He said he had a hit out on her and that she was grateful when the FBI rescued her. I don’t know why he had to have a hit on her when he could’ve killed her himself. He’d already killed the kid himself. What? Would having two murders on his hands be too much to handle?

If Teddy Bear won’t return, then I wish Palma would at least get back there so she can tell her I kind of miss her.

Anyway, she tells me yet again how grateful she is to have me as a friend she is and how I’ve taught her it’s ok to trust again, but no, it’s not ok. Certainly not with just anyone! I live like a hermit for a reason. I have Tom, my pets, and her as my pen pal/friend, and that’s enough. It would’ve been nice to have Teddy Bear as a side dish, but side dishes weren’t meant to be, obviously, so I make do with what I have. It’s not that what I have isn’t good enough, it’s just that Teddy Bear got me all psyched up for nothing. To me, she’d have been an extra bonus to add to what I already have, but instead, my extra bonus will be dollmaking.

I’m slightly tired today. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I wake up a little earlier than I’d have liked and I can’t go back to sleep. I totally do not miss all those wake-up calls in jail! I do not envy Mary with the are-you-okay shit from the nurses, the clothes exchanges, people screaming on their hour out, etc.

Wonder if she’s still a night person? Sometimes when I’m up at 2 AM, I wonder, is Mary up now, too? Maybe listening to her radio?

Friday, August 23, 2002

Got a letter from Mary today. She told me Chavez told her Teddy Bear’s still at Madison, but is now on 1st shift. Also, she could return anytime since DOs are transferred regularly.

I was surprised it was Chavez to tell her this since she had told me she was moving to Vegas at the end of ’01. Or is that just something you tell a stalker? Nah, I’m sure she wasn’t worried about me and that she meant it. She probably just changed her mind and decided to stay in Arizona.

Anyway, I know she won’t return while Mary’s there. If God wanted me to have some answers or at least a shot at some answers, then he’d have made sure Teddy Bear was there after the letter was sent. Yet it’s obvious he doesn’t want me getting any answers. To him, she was just another tool he could use to hurt me, and I should’ve known better than to even think of praying for help in getting over her. I should’ve known my prayers would fall upon deaf ears. He’s probably up there laughing at me right now! Just when I think I’m going to get over her and that perhaps something up there really is helping me to get through, tears sting my eyes when I remember and think of her. I tell myself I won’t let her make me cry, but then again, maybe I should let it all out, maybe it’d help and maybe I’d feel better. So, like Helen would suggest I do, I allowed myself to cry for a few minutes earlier.

I gotta wonder, though – if I could tell her how hurt I’ve been over her ignoring me, would she feel bad, or would she just look at me and laugh? And how would she react if another female inmate started flirting with her that she was attracted to? Would she tell them too, that she’d respond to them if they waited a year before contacting her?

I know, though, that regardless of why she blew me off, what we had going back in jail was real. I’d be willing to bet Bailey, Joy and Jade that it would’ve escalated to kisses and a bit of touchy-feely too, had we both been there longer.

Oh, Teddy Bear! You’ll never know just how much I love you, never know just how much you hurt me.

I’m not too alarmed over this, but I discovered something a bit disturbing as the sun was setting. Tom had just left for work and I heard a pop. The kind the house makes when it’s settling. That’s probably just what it was, but this one was pretty loud. It almost sounded like something hit the back or front door. I was in my office when I heard it. So, I got up and looked out the kitchen window. That’s when I noticed a beverage can of some kind, though I can’t be sure that’s what it was, nestled up against the long-dead garden fence. I know the wind’s capable of blowing cans around and I’m not saying anyone’s been lurking around, but I just think it’s a weird place for one to end up on this property. I can see one ending up in front with it being almost a straight shot from the road to the house. But in back of the house and especially so close to it, wouldn’t a can have to get hung up on the brush no matter which direction it came from? Cans aren’t as light as paper or plastic shopping bags that can fly up over trees and brush easily.

Again, I’m not saying it means anything, but you know, I really wish at times those freeloaders would have the balls to face me here on our property. That is, unarmed and one at a time, of course. I couldn’t fight them with the law, but I could at least try damn hard with my fists and rage. Tom and Mary are probably right, though. They’re not going to fuck with me out here without connections. They wouldn’t have the guts. That’s why they cowered behind the law in the first place.

I jokingly said to Tom that I ought to get a shirt that says “In God I Do Not Trust” and he said, “Now why would you want to do that and set yourself up for harassment?”

Well, I don’t, but you know, there comes a time when I have to be me. Period. Regardless of what others may think. I can’t worry about other people’s poor, poor feelings all my life. If they’ve got a problem with me, then that’s their problem. As long as I don’t push my views on others, I’d be doing nothing wrong by getting a shirt that said that, and dammit, I’m not going to kiss this society’s ass! I don’t owe them shit and they don’t owe me shit. All we owe each other is respect and the right to be ourselves.

Anyway, he explained to me what all the fuss is all about. To me, it sounds like nothing more than wishful thinking, but again, we all have a right to our beliefs. According to him, most people believe life’s one big test and that it’s the devil and not God that causes bad things to happen. The test is to determine who goes to hell and who lives eternally with God, but I’m sorry, he should be stepping in more often. This is just my opinion, but sometimes a little divine intervention, as they call it, is necessary. Just like Art should’ve defended us against Doe, so should he when the going gets really rough. It was one thing to “test” me by sitting back and letting the freeloaders shit on us like they did when we were still living together, but shouldn’t he and couldn’t he have put his foot down once it came down to going to jail? I think that’s when he should’ve stepped in and said, “Hey, enough’s enough already! Leave this poor girl alone. She never did a damn thing to provoke you, yet you’ve been picking on her for no reason at all other than that she asked that your music be lowered” (and that I was Jewish, but I didn’t know that at the time).

But no, to add insult to injury after all the shit they put us through on N. 21 Ave., I had to go to jail, live in a shoebox with a few psychos and noise that makes the NHA seem like it was as quiet as where I am now, take cold showers, eat inedible spicy food, get shit for sleep, then get my head played with and my heartbroken, not to mention all the shit and stress I’ve gone through since being out. So, when is enough ever enough? Although barely, I survived my family, I survived Brattleboro and Vermont, I survived shitty “friends” and neighbors, I survived not seeing many dreams come true, and I’ve survived jail. What more do I need to survive and what for?

I don’t believe in heaven and hell. Not the way some people do. Meaning, I don’t think God hates gays or anything like that. Hell, he even has a heart for perverts and murderers! I believe this simply because I find it hard to believe they’d exist if he really had anything against them. If I was going to create a world, why would I create horrible people along with it? I believe he can hate certain individuals and families, but not whole groups of people.

I asked Tom what he thinks is the case after we die and he said he doesn’t know. Neither do I. I don’t know if we’re reincarnated or if we just blink out and that’s it or what.

On the lighter side and to speak of one of my passions in life, PG has a couple of cute new $25 fairies that Tom said we can get, along with $40 Amelia, by the end of the year. I know we’ll get free shipping, and if the discount coupons are good we should save $15 on the whole order. One of them is the same mold, except for the arms and legs, as my Valentine Fairy. They did her and Emerald over with the same color hair, but this time around Emerald’s is short and Valentine’s is curly. I don’t like Emerald’s makeover, but Valentine, called Rainbow in this version, wears a cute, colorful dress. So does Rainbow’s Jewels which also comes with a resin mouse. I can’t show pictures to Mary cuz of the copy guard that site has, so I’ll just wait till I get them and shoot my own.

They were having “Hawaiian” Day at work and they were giving out these shell necklaces to the employees, so Tom brought home his. It’s kind of nice with cream-colored shells. Maybe a doll can wear it someday, but for now it’s on the doorknob of the back door.

What the fuck? Did Dan move back into the area? I’ve been hearing loud motors on and off since nightfall, yet it doesn’t sound anywhere close, fortunately.

Well, it’s just after 11 PM now. Been up since 1 PM. I’m going to hang loose, listen to some music and watch TV till I crash. Maybe read, too. I watch a lot of the legal and forensics stuff, old Charlie’s Angels reruns, and I just taped a new movie of Stephen King’s with psychics, ghosts, and all that fun stuff I love.

Saturday, August 24, 2002

I decided, believe it or not, to write another jailhouse story. Only difference is that this time around it’ll be hyped up with pieces of bullshit thrown in here and there. Tom even suggested I write about a real-life experience and expand on it. Oh, I’m going to expand on it alright! It’ll be written in story format and not laid out like a journal. Also, Teddy Bear and I will get to do the things we never got to do in reality! Hee, hee! Just like The Dead Zone series is based on characters and events from the movie, my book will be based on real-life experiences and real-life people. I think I might even be psychic too, and make Pancake Face Smith do things I could only dream about making her do when she pulled Mary. Things like uncontrollable and highly embarrassing farting. Yes, in my story I shall have what just about everyone else has had over me that I didn’t – control. What I say will go. Tom probably won’t care, but I’m sure Mary will get a kick out of it. It’ll basically be a romantic comedy with the DO’s names changed, yet still close to their real names, leaving just the inmates’ true names. I’ll probably only include DOs and inmates that were main players in real life. Probably only the ones who stood out in either good or bad ways and no in-between DOs or inmates like Brea and Carolyn P.

At first I asked myself, do I really want to write this story and chance jinxing myself into having all this come true? But I could never end up as psychic as I plan to be in this book. Besides, I’ve written plenty of things that never rang true in the end, and remember, in the story Andy and I talked about me writing, the inmate and guard got it on. Teddy Bear and I obviously didn’t get that far, of course. So, my story ideas almost came true, but they didn’t quite make it.

I think I’ll even change my charges. Maybe I’ll have spray-painted a building or something. No chance of that getting jinxed into reality since I have no desire to spray-paint anything.

This time around I’m going to proofread it a few times once it’s done and not give it to anyone as I complete each chapter like I did with my bio. I want to make sure I get any typos I may have missed the first time around taken care of.

I don’t know how long it’ll be. I’ll just write whatever I feel like writing for however long I feel like writing it. I’ll do this in between my usual household tasks, my regular journaling, my fine-tuning of old journals, Mary’s story, and hopefully soon, my dollmaking.

Later…

What the hell is going on? I was doing better, but now I just can’t get that woman off my mind! Damn those mother-fucking freeloaders Joely N and Debra V for doing this to me, damn Tammy B, damn the pig Jerry O, damn Paul K, damn Judge H, damn the DA Jackie I and damn God for sitting back and allowing all these people to shit on me time and time again for no reason at all.

Why must I always be hurt over something? If it’s not impossible dreams depressing me, then it’s over a woman I can never have. Hurting over her is better than wanting a kid like I did for what? 4 or 5 years? Anyway, I try to tell myself that I could’ve ended up a lot more hurt if we had gotten together, but it doesn’t really console me. The new millennium has brought an all-time low in depression (though plenty of anger), but trust me, today and yesterday have been quite sad.

I start to think, oh, how nice it’d be if she had to return to M Dorm and be flooded with a ton of memories of me, making her be the one to be depressed for a change, as well as maybe feel a little guilty. But then I tell myself to come back down to earth. She wouldn’t remember and think of me, but maybe for a second. As for guilt – well – she’s obviously okay with what she’s done or else she’d have at least called or written to tell me she hasn’t forgotten about me, but we can’t get together. God wouldn’t allow her to return while Mary was still there. That way I can go on hurting without any answers and wondering what happened and how and why she could blow me off like she did.

When I first got out of jail, Tom said that since there was no fighting any of the corrupt, prejudiced assholes that put me in the predicament I’m in today and have been in and will be in for quite a while to come, anything he did would be strictly revenge. He insisted, though, that he’d never tell me what he was going to do, saying that the less I knew the better. At first I was all for it, though I always figured he was just saying this to try to make me feel better since he’s never been the vengeful type. Then as time went on I was like, hey, this is Arizona. The strictest state in the country along with Texas. And we’re Tom and Jodi S. We can’t do shit even if we could cuz we’d just end up in prison for sure. Maybe God would let someone else get away with fucking someone over, but we could never get away with fucking someone over, and certainly not these precious freeloaders he’s been hell-bent on protecting and worshiping ever since the get-go. If we were so much to as dare to even give them dirty looks, we’d be going down big time. So I told Tom, even though I know he’s not going to do anything simply because he couldn’t do anything severe enough to them without exposing himself anyway, that just like with everyone else who’s fucked us over, there’s nothing we can do. We just have to let it go and hope that God really truly does have good reasons for protecting these people, though I can’t imagine what they could be. Nonetheless, if he’s gone this far with covering their asses, he’s not going to stop. Remember, I told him, people can do whatever they want to with us. It’s us that are forbidden from doing anything, be it fighting back against those fucking us over, or fucking over someone for no reason ourselves. If it’s us, we can’t get away with it, so drop any plans you may have. Meanwhile, I’ll just cry over Teddy Bear for 4 or 5 years till it’s on to something else to get me down or perhaps piss me off and frustrate the hell out of me.

Monday, August 26, 2002

The sun’s coming up later these days.

They got rid of the fire truck in back. Now they have a bright green truck. Where do people get the money for so many vehicles?

I don’t want to see Scot till the first Friday of next month, so awake or not, I’m not answering the door before September 6th. I need this rare 3 whole weeks off from seeing his face.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having a field day getting karaoke MP3s. They don’t display lyrics while they’re playing, so I went to this site that has tons of lyrics and printed them out to make singing to them easier if I do any recording. Tom says he misses hearing me sing, though I still do nearly every day with the music blasting. We discussed recording me singing to the music which only contains background vocals. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even give a copy to Mom, Mary and Dave if it comes out halfway decent. I mean, it doesn’t have to be perfect. At least I won’t have to stop and clear my throat every other line like I did when I smoked. I’ll just have to remember not to use my inhaler before I sing cuz that makes me congested at times, too.

Still haven’t heard from Paula. Yeah, she’s really grateful, ain’t she? That’s ok, though, she isn’t hearing from me, either. Not till I email my monthly journaling, but I don’t know if she’ll get it. That kid of hers just doesn’t get it when he’s told to let her know when she’s got an email. Sometimes he does, but he obviously doesn’t for the most part, but hey, she either gets it or she doesn’t. I’m not playing one-sided pen pal with her anymore. I’d rather put the ink, paper, stamps and envelopes towards Mary, my mutual, sane friend.

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Another picture was downloaded from Mystery’s Dolls3. I’d be willing to bet it was Joy. That particular album only has a few pictures of her and a few Barbie pictures. I would think that with a doll looking like Joy, it must’ve been her they took. In a dress that I made. And all under 20 minutes, too.

Anyway, I expect that when Tom gets home within the next few hours he’ll have more story clips from Mary about her hiding out in New York from Justin, proof that God does make mistakes.

Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing singing to karaoke a lot, but not working much on my story. I have done some fine-tuning, though.

Anyway, I went to a lyrics site and printed out the lyrics to the songs I may record. If we can get some decent enough songs sung by me, or at least what I consider to be decent enough, we’ll merge the files (me and the karaoke) and burn them onto CDs.

Wish I knew why I was so damn fartsy all the time! I smell like a baby, or like a druggie named Bentley from Tent City. It seems no matter what I eat, my tummy’s a constant gas chamber.

Tom said he probably dropped the can that’s in back when he was bringing stuff out. Let’s hope so. That’s awfully close to the house, though as I said before, a part of me wishes I would catch a pig or a freeloader on the prowl.

We’re still having a very non-existent monsoon season. Of course, we had to have a fierce monsoon season when we had our leaky roof in Phoenix. That’s just our shit luck. If the roof suddenly blew off of this house, it’d rain like hell.

Anyway, as fun as the storms can be to watch, it really is a good thing we’re having all this dry weather. Then there’s no risk of leaks, like through the front door which Tom’s going to get new weather stripping. Rain also brings in the spiders and thunder wakes me up and can mess up my schedule. We’re getting close to the classes. I can’t afford to have any potential threats to my schedule at that point. I’ve got the freeloaders to deal with as it is.

Tom said he heard a report saying that if it doesn’t rain before August is out, it’ll be the first time in 27 years it didn’t rain in August.

I just wish those cheeks would come here when I was either at class or home alone so I could have the honor and the pleasure of ignoring him! But that will never happen. I mean, I’m home 99.9% of the time, so the odds of him stopping by while I was out are very slim. He’d have to be a gorgeous woman for that to happen.

I was telling Tom that with the omission of the freeloaders and the hurt caused by Teddy Bear, the turn of the century’s been the happiest years for me yet and life’s been getting better with time. He said he gets happier too, so this laid to rest any remaining questions I may’ve had about us being platonic. At first I was like, is he normal? Am I normal? Are we normal? But since he’s happy and I’m happy, does it really matter whether or not we’re normal? No, most people wouldn’t be happy with a platonic marriage, and no, most people wouldn’t be happy knowing they’ll probably be celibate for the rest of their lives, but we’re not most people. We’re Tom and Jodi and if Tom and Jodi are happy, then Tom and Jodi can stay the way they are.

It seems up until my early 20s I was obsessed with being “normal.” Then I became eager to rebel against the so-called norm, wanting to stick out like the sorest thumb in the city. Now, I just want to be me. It seems we’re either born to be leaders or followers, but I don’t want to be either one of those. I just want to be me.

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Boy, I really felt like a “working singer” tonight. I worked on my songs for a couple of hours straight. It’s cool that I could do it in the comfort and privacy of my own home, though privacy is not as big of a deal to me or else I wouldn’t be making a CD. Once I get a handful of fairly decent recordings, I’ll burn a few CDs. That way I can have copies available for whoever I might want to give one to.

Sometimes the songs I don’t think I’ll sound as good doing are the ones that come out better. However, there’s this Gloria song that no matter how hard I try to sing well, I just can’t seem to cut it singing that particular song. I guess it’s just not quite suitable for my voice, but I want to try to make as good of a recording as I can of it cuz it’s one I can do in Spanish. There are a couple of songs in Spanish I’ll be doing, plus a few lines of Spanish in a Selena song.

With some of the songs, I have a hard time with my timing, but I’m doing alright with them for the most part. Maybe this weekend Tom can set me up to record so that I can do it on my own time when he’s at work. That way I won’t have to be distracted by his presence. This way I can do as many takes as I need to till I get a suitable enough recording, just like they do in studios.

Funny how I dreamed of making a professional recording (and what I’ll be doing will be as close as you can get) for 20 years, then I forget about it, then end up doing it anyway. Also, it had dawned on me the other day that Mom, Mary and Dave haven’t heard me sing yet. Soon, though, they will. Not without a few laughs in between, though, I’m sure, since I’m not perfect. But that’s ok. I don’t mind being their source of entertainment in a funny way as well as in a good way. It’s like every other note sounds nice and vibrant where you can tell I’m a trained singer, and every other note sounds dull and nasally, but hey, I am better than most so I won’t complain too much.

I just can’t seem to find a suitable song of Linda’s to do in karaoke form. I’m surprised they don’t have songs like It Doesn’t Matter Anymore. I could do that one. But the others I’ve found either have notes too high or the music’s not complete. I was all set to do Silver Threads & Golden Needles, but the end of the song is missing.

Soon, I’m going to check out the daily pictures online, then do some more fine-tuning. Reading back on some of the shit my family put me through and knowing I’ll never again have to deal with their shit is such a wonderful feeling! Just that one incident alone where Doe made me continue eating after I complained of being full, one day when we went to a restaurant, causing me to end up throwing it all up in the parking lot, is enough to make me wonder how in the world I could ever associate with anyone who could do such a thing to someone. What a sick, twisted individual she was! The older I’ve become, the more I realize just how cruel most of my family really was.

Thursday, August 29, 2002

My waist is up to 30½. That’s a big waist for a five-footer. Maybe someday I’ll lose weight, but I don’t know. I’d only gain it right back, so what’s the point? I’m middle-aged. I’m supposed to be overweight.

Anyway, I see tons of thick gray clouds in the east with a few individual storm cells and bolts of lightning, but I know it won’t make it here. It’s like storms are afraid to come over this particular area.

I’m about to finish up with the 1994 file.

Later…

Soon I’ll be coming up to the last few hours of my day which are my least favorite. That’s when I’m too tired to really do anything, but not tired enough to sleep, so I end up just laying around bored till I finally do knock off.

Sure enough, the clouds cleared and it’s as bright and sunny as most days are in Arizona. Getting hot too, and it’s not even 10:00 yet.

I still feel like something’s teasing me with my singing, even though I only wish to do it for fun and no longer smoke. Every time I sing I have some sort of problem hindering me, be it inhaler congestion, burping, a tickle in my throat, etc.

Just like I spent several years being mad at God for not allowing me a kid, it seems I spend most time being mad at him for his dual standards these days. It was okay for Nancy K to threaten me, the very thing I was supposed to be there for, but it’s not ok for me. No, I can’t threaten anyone. God help me should I lash out, mildly or not so mildly, at those who harass and torment me that I would’ve otherwise ignored had I been left alone by them.

Why must I always be made to pay for someone else’s hatred, stupidity or incompetence?!

Damn my own stupidity too, for not beating the snot out of that black bitch when she came screaming at the door, and damn my own stupidity for “cooperating” with the pigs and for opening the door to them. With my shit luck, though, they’d have just kicked the door down had I not, and Arizona would do something so extreme over a letter, too. Not even small towns like South Deerfield back east would react in such a way to something like this! And all for what? Cuz the fucking “victim” was black? As harsh as Arizona’s laws are, this never would’ve happened if she’d been white as well. I know it wouldn’t have. The question is, though, if the black bitch hadn’t had her piggy friend to use against me, would it still have gone as far as it has? Would things have been so trumped up and blown out of perspective then?

Just as suddenly as the days came when it was hard for me to deal with Teddy Bear’s leading me on and dumping me to the point that I was crying, it’s gotten easier again. Proof that no, God didn’t have anything to do with when it got easier the last time, cuz I didn’t pray for help this time around. I know better and I’ll never pray for a damn thing again. Not even for my life if I were held at gunpoint by some monster!

I did have a funny dream pertaining to Teddy Bear, though, that might make for a good book part. I was back in M Dorm, alone in 203. I squealed with delight when I saw her come through the door at the start of second shift. I noticed she didn’t have her clipboard in hand.

She opened the cell door and stepped inside, letting the door lock shut behind her. “Hey, babe,” she said. “I got it all taken care of.”

“Got what taken care of?” I asked her.

“Another DO’s covering for me so I can spend the night with you.” She kicked her shoes off, took off her work belt and placed it on the metal desk. Then she glanced at my bunk, walked over to it and sat down on it before stretching out on her back. “So this is what these things are like, huh?”

Still stunned and unsure of what to say, I finally said, “Teddy Bear, the DO can see us every time she does a walk.”

“She won’t bother us. She knows what’s going on and she can be trusted.”

Friday, August 30, 2002

Tom went to work really late last night and won’t be in till close to noon today. He’s opening the Maricopa PO box today.

Meanwhile, I share excerpts with him from my journal via email at times. In one message I included some of my sexual opinions. In his reply, he wrote: I don’t really agree with your opinions but I know there is no point in expecting them to change. I don’t want to be platonic but I don’t want to have a relationship that isn’t mutual. As long as you don’t care, I don’t want a physical relationship. I want it, but it wouldn’t be satisfying unless you wanted it, too.

Although I told him that it wasn’t that I didn’t care and that it was a case of my going along with his actions, which always speak louder than words, I don’t really want sex with him, and I can’t seem to bring myself to tell him so (this makes me see how it could’ve been hard for him to admit to not wanting a kid back when I wanted one). Instead, I told him I’d go along with whatever he chose. After all, I suppose I’d be obligated to as long as it wasn’t every second of the day. If he wants platonic, okay, and if he wants sex, okay. Because I am indifferent, or better yet, okay with whatever he wants, I decided to leave it up to him. Because he’s someone I love, I would be happy to go along with and follow him on whatever choice he makes, but I’d be lying if I said I could ever feel the amount of desire and lust as with Teddy Bear. I mean, sure he could go down on me and make me cum, but it’s just not the same as with a woman who turns me on the way that she did. I just don’t feel that spark, that longing, as much as I love him, and of course, now my attitude about his cumming would be the direct opposite of what it used to be. Meaning, I wouldn’t want him cumming without rubbers. I know I’m sterile and I know I have destiny working in my favor, but even so, would you take the chance and be dumb enough to walk in front of oncoming traffic just because you don’t think you’ll get hit? No, you wouldn’t. You’d still be a responsible person, I’d hope. Nonetheless, as I told him, it was never that I didn’t care or felt that it had to be one way or another. If he came out and told me he wanted me to stand on my pinky finger all day, then we’d obviously have a conflict of interest. Or if he told me to strangle Little Buddy. Things like that would certainly be much harder to do and they wouldn’t be mutual. But it all comes down to my trying to please the one I love, even if it’s more one-sided like I’ve said many times before. I loved him when we met, I loved him along the way, I love him now, and I always will. This is regardless of how many attractive women I could possibly meet in person or see on TV, etc.

I still think it’s all bullshit, though. I think that if he really wanted sex that bad he’d have made a move on me or at least expressed these desires somehow, someway, but he never did and I think he’s just making excuses, implying that it’s because of me, just like with the kid. I understand, though, how hard it is to come out and admit to the one you love that you’re just not on the same wavelength. It may be wrong not to be totally honest, but I can understand it, nonetheless. Meanwhile, we’ve been platonic for two years now and I’m sure it’ll stay that way. He’s not about to make a move on me, and if he did, it’d be once a year, and I sure as hell ain’t going to be getting it on with Teddy Bear or any other woman like her that turns me on in any serious kind of way. If God had wanted me with the Teddy Bears, the Glorias, the Lindas, the Kates, the Norahs, the Melanies, etc., then that’s who I’d have been with a long time ago. I was meant to be a man’s woman with not much lust involved if any at all. Meanwhile, in this day and age, I’m content to keep the lust alive and active in my fantasies.

Speaking of Teddy Bear, now that I know she’s on first shift maybe I can see her online, but that would only be if she were working the intake area. Who knows how often, if ever, that is? I realize that I may’ve been a bit hard on myself as far as pushing myself to get over her goes. Technically, it’s like I last saw her 4 months ago due to the fact that a whole year of our relationship, regardless of whether or not she followed through with it, was put on hold. So, in a sense, I spent a whole year waiting to get blown off. Mary says she probably has no idea she’s hurt me like this. Yeah, I believe it. No one that’s ever hurt me, be it intentionally or not, has ever known just how much they hurt me. They were always completely clueless as far as that was concerned, and if they ever weren’t completely in the dark about how hurt I was, they certainly didn’t seem to mind. After all, it was only my feelings, wasn’t it? No skin off their backs.

In the letter I got from Mary, she said she’d have been terrified of the snake. As I told her, though, snakes are easy enough to avoid and they can’t get in the house, so I’m okay with them.

I’ve been enjoying this time off from the freeloaders and having to do for them and having my life be forced to revolve around them. It’s been a no-win situation either way. I can’t fight them, I can’t ignore them. Fighting them has gotten me in trouble and so has trying to ignore them. It’s literally like being pinned down by a dozen people where I’m totally restricted from ignoring them and there’s no way in hell to fight back, either. Labor Day’s coming up, so I’ll get an extra day off from them and the possibility that a certain fat face may show up at the house, distract me from whatever I’m doing, and remind me yet again of what these people have done to me and all they’re going to get away with. Makes me wish I was one of those ill characters who get off on being abused! It really helps, though, not to have to see him once a week.

Saturday, August 31, 2002

I’m typing this as I soak my feet in warm water laced with baby oil. My feet get so rough with calluses, so I took a scrub brush and scrubbed at the rough spots before soaking them in oil.

Anyway, I’m up to a total of 381 viewings.

Got some more rattlesnake pictures! At 2 AM, Tom got the munchies so he started to go out to the car to get the chips he forgot to bring in. As soon as he went out he heard a loud hissing that sounded like air escaping a tire. For a fraction of a second, he thought something was wrong with the AC, then he realized it was a snake and went back inside. He said it was a good thing he didn’t go down another couple of steps or else it would’ve nailed him for sure. A few hours later we returned just after sunrise with groceries, and we saw the same rattlesnake that I had taken pictures of before, curled up asleep between the AC and the shed, about 8’ from the door. We quietly whisked the groceries through, then went out to wake it up so I could hear the rattle, but it was a sound sleeper! It did awaken somewhat but was either too cold or just not scared enough to move or rattle, but it did coil up and keep an eye on us while we got pictures. While Tom kept an eye on it, I got as close as it’d let me and took pictures. I was about 6-8’ away. The snake was 4-5’ and could only strike 2-3’. Then, later on, when the sunlight was a little brighter, I went out and took some more shots. This time it rattled at me. I’d creep forward, it would rattle, and I’d step back, keeping a safe distance. Again, I got as close as it’d let me. Despite what it stands for, it really is a cool-looking snake.

This is the first summer we’ve seen rattlers on the land, so I assume it’s due to my feeding the prairie dogs. We don’t mind the snake, though, as we’re just extra cautious when we come and go. It’s been keeping stray dogs away, so there’s some good in having it around.

Later…

Speaking of dogs – two large dogs just walked down Ralston and up Meadow Green, as if we already had the fences up, or as if they sensed that there was danger here. Tom said he saw another stray limping badly with an injured leg and we wonder if a snake didn’t bite it. I last saw them at the renter’s, so maybe they live there. Don’t know for sure, though.

Anyway, Tom explained to me that even my just being indifferent and not turned off of the idea of sex entirely, isn’t enough for him. Meaning, he says he only wants sex if I want it, but as I came out and told him, I simply have no desire. It isn’t anything he did, it isn’t that he’s ugly, it isn’t that I don’t love him, I just don’t desire it. I don’t know why, but I don’t. I don’t know what to do about it, either. Just ignore it and keep on going as we have? Get it on and see if I can get into it? See a doctor about it? He says not to worry about it, but I feel like I’m depriving him (if he’s telling the truth about wanting it) yet I can’t make myself feel something I don’t.

I got a couple of letters with drafts from Mary. She’s been depressed, unfortunately. I guess everything’s at a standstill with her case right now. She doesn’t seem to have any idea of when she’s going to court next or what’s going on. I quit bothering to check online cuz they never tell me anything new. They’re all the same color, so, why should they?

She likes the new Celine Dion song too, and says that yes, she’s up listening to her radio at 2 AM, or working out or working on her story. I figured as much, too.

My journal notes still live on 205’s ceiling too, not that I can remember what the hell they said. I’ll have to ask her to tell me. She’s getting along with the baby-beater, so that’s good. She said something about getting an easy-going roommate named Virginia after Hope leaves, which is going to be soon. Guilty or not, I can only imagine just what that girl must be feeling! Ugh! Imagine knowing you were about to go to prison for over a decade! I’d kill myself for damn sure! I wouldn’t care how many good-looking DOs there might be waiting for me there, either.

Later…

I forgot to say that a big lizard ran over the snake at one point, but it didn’t faze it. I’m amazed at how much braver the ratters are as opposed to the king snakes. King snakes run when they see people, but rattlers will stand and fight. That is if need be.

Ok, now it’s off to type Mary’s drafts.