#sometimes I have the sense of humor of a twelve year old

[married-to-a-redhead]

If she has red hair, do not ask if the carpet matches the drapes.

[fernacular]

Could you tell us more about your version of batman? Maybe the batfam too? Boop!

I can try! To be honest I don't have a ton to say, im not the most knowledgeable when it comes to the Lore(tm) and I'm mostly making stuff up with each drawing I do, whatever makes the initial concept or joke work.

So what I have is this:

He's not physically powerful but he has a lot of speed, flexibility and endurance and mostly focuses on avoiding fights and being a good detective, and when a fight is unavoidable he leans a lot on technology and being a pragmatic fighter so he can take people down quick with minimal risk. I don't know much about martial arts but his fighting style is probably similar to Akido?

The Joker is less of a huge villain, I have nothing against the character I just feel like he gets leaned on too much in batman stories, like an overexposure thing. He was a gangster with a gimmick who become a problem every once in a while but he was never Batman's arch nemesis. (That would be two-face, they got the most personal history). After the Jason Todd of it all Bruce stuck him down a stinky hole and no one liked him enough to help him get out.

There's not actually a huge age gap between Bruce and Dick, only about ten years, and the father/son relationship is getting slightly more awkward as time goes on. Like it's one thing for a 22 year old telling a twelve year old what to do, pretty different when it's a 35 year old trying to lecture a 25 year old. Dick respects Bruce immensely but he's getting frustrated with Bruce not seeing them as peers yet, and it's part of why Dick has physically distanced himself. (Some familial relationships improve so much when you live in different cities)

He's in an on-and-off again relationship with Selina, who has her own apartment but splits her time between it and the Wayne manor when they're on, and sometimes even off (Alfred usually let's her in regardless, when she feels like using the front door). They're just two very independent people who do love each other but every so often need their space and don't know how to communicate that constructively.

What else what else... Babs is Oracle but her spine was injured in a different way, probably while kicking ass and saving lives.

Bruce is better friends with Diana than he is Clark because Clark has a little bit of a country chip on his shoulder when it comes to wealthy property owners and Bruce isn't jazzed about the press. Its getting better with time though!

Bruce is very good at masking (I mean, clearly, he has to fool everyone with Brucie after all) but his relaxed affect is very blunt and not outwardly emotional. This does not mean he's always brooding or overly serious, he just has resting bitch face and his sense of humor is very dry. His family can read him pretty well but most other people just assume he's perpetually pissed.

Uuuuh thats all I can think of off the top of my head, hope you like it!

Also boop

[illarian-rambling]

Hopping on this open tag from @kaylinalexanderbooks because I'm boooored at work!

OC Interaction Tag

Kaylin's OC: Rose is a twelve-year-old girl with dimensiokinesis, or dimension manipulation, though she mainly can just sense dimensions as she's working on the rest. Her mother has made her insecure about her weight and other parts of her appearance, but the one thing that makes her feel good is her art, outfits, and fashion designs, which she is very, very proud of. Though her personality has been repressed, Rose is actually very compassionate, friendly, and spontaneous. She doesn't let her emotions show, but she feels very deeply and strongly. Rose does like fun and excitement, she just hasn't had much of a chance to follow her impulses. Despite being more of an introvert, if her friend (and unrequited crush) Lexi is not there, she'll be the one at the lead making all the introductions and talking to others. She believes she can handle a lot more stress than she can, so she doesn't see the problem in, well, her problems stacking up. She likes doing things her way and defying anything that holds her back, though she is more patient despite going on impulse sometimes. It's not uncommon for others to see her as lazy or tell her she needs to do better at certain things. She's reluctant to accept the affection she craves, but when she opens up she's incredibly well-loved and charming. She doesn't stay angry and doesn't like arguing, even if she explodes when she does.

My OC: Astra DuClaire is a 25 year old human witch with vitiligo and a trademark ribbon coat she wears everywhere. She grew up on a debtor's farm and has worked her ass off to learn magic to support her family, even if she wasn't allowed to get a true university education on account of her low birth. This has given her a bit of a chip on her shoulder. From the outside, Astra is supremely confident, bordering on arrogant. She sings the praises of her infallible magic at any opportunity. This is a cover for a deep well of insecurity. Astra loves magic, but she's been told so many times that a debtor's daughter like her will never be a true mage that she's internalized that attitude, believing at her core that all her prized skills are flawed. Other than that, she's mouthy, with a crude sense of humor, and a deep desire to help people even if they're total strangers. Like all mages, her curiosity brings her to places most would never go. She also tends to act before thinking things through, probably on account of the adhd. This can result in her saying things she doesn't mean or even causing violence she didn't intend. Her hobbies include magic (duh), mechanics, and embroidery. Astra loves to sew and often incorporates runes into her designs. She is demisexual, but who needs a relationship when there's adventure to be had and massive amounts of emotional obliviousness to cloud your perception!

How they'd interact: Surprisingly, or maybe not, Astra has a soft spot for kids. I'm not saying she's good with kids (she will teach them to make fireworks and swear like a mechanic), but she does like them. That said, she would immediately want to protect Rose. Maybe fight her mom, idk. Given how good her relationship with her parents is, Astra despises people who treat their kids poorly. I'd like to think that seeing a woman with some extra curves be so confident in everything would help Rose with her body image a bit. Also, they can bond over fashion! They both design clothes and though I imagine their style is quite different, I think they'd have fun sewing together. Astra would be super curious about the 'dimension magic wackiness' and would want to run lots of tests. Probably, she'd be a little disappointed when this twelve-year-old doesn't hold the same rigorous adherence to the scientific method and also just can't answer half her questions. I think both of them might recognize the same emotional repression and explosive temper in each other. Astra would definitely try to help Rose admit her crush on Lexi, probably through some convoluted grand plan involving gifts and flowers. I think Rose would laugh to see just how deep in Astra is with her own crush, all while remaining painfully oblivious. They could wingman for each other, is what I'm getting at. All in all, I think these two would be great and Astra is still 100% trying to throw down with Rose's mom.

I'll tag @thecomfywriter @the-golden-comet @ominous-feychild @willtheweaver @mysticstarlightduck and anyone else who wants to play!

[twinkleomorashi]

Do you have any headcanons about your fic’s characters?

I actually have a whole document of these that has never seen the light of day. Until now. Some of these are canon bc that’s just how writing head canons about ur own characters works ig. Sorry this massively long!!!

I have both normal and omo/ nsfw ones of course!

June

Loves a fruity little drink. Any fruity little drink offered is a win in her books. Also loves diet coke. Hates drinking water.

Hates any sort of bug or animal you would call an exterminator for.

Takes obnoxiously long showers

Really terrible at not getting her way. Will have a tantrum

Youngest sibling if it wasn’t obvious.

Actually a really good cook, but nobody believes her

Possessive. It contributes to the biting / marking kink she has, but she hasn’t made that connection yet (everyone else has)

Favorite flavor of ice cream is cotton candy because Bethany Mota said it was hers in like 2014 so June forced herself to like it and is still convinced she does.

Loves gossip. Has never minded her business ever.

Kind of a klepto if we’re being honest but this is canon

TERRIBLE driver. Assigned passenger princess by others out of fear

August

extremely obvious blusher

sense of humor of a twelve year old boy despite trying to act more mature than she is

subconsciously collects rocks. Her pockets always have some in them that she found throughout the day. She sometimes forgets to take them and they fuck up the dryer.

Cries watching teen soap operas but nobody is allowed to know that

Terrible eyesight without her glasses

Fiddles with her glasses when she’s lying.

Scared of storms

Mommy issues so bad

Doesn’t like the taste of beer, but drinks it anyway because she thinks it makes her look more masc

honestly has terrible internanalized toxic masculinity

favorite band is The Killers

has kept a diary since she was 14

Taj

car smells like car air freshener desperately trying and failing to conceal the smell of weed

art major, makes a living drawing furry porn. Says it’s for the bit. It might not be.

Blood is probably at least 25% energy drink at this point

“Anything for the bit!” (Actively gets herself into Situations)

Terrible at budgeting

loves hot chip and charge her phone

favorite flavor of anything is green apple. Likes the light green monster because she thinks it’s green apple. It’s not.

Loves heights and climbing, is really good at it even though she’s short

sleeps in weird positions, very heavy sleeper

Exclusively wears really stupid graphic t shirts

Her one exception to her lesbianism is shadow the hedgehog and she’s dead serious about it

Massive praise kink.

Isla

Prefers coffee to tea. Has not had tea in two months because she thinks people expect her to drink tea and thus she refuses to.

Self proclaimed frigid bitch (is actually so sweet). Total defense mechanism.

Twirls her hair when she’s nervous.

Loves fruit and veg.

Avid reader, prefers non fiction. Likes to research psychology and human behavior.

High alcohol tolerance, but no where near as high as she thinks it is. “I’m completely sober right now” (is actively stumbling around and giggling)

Squeamish as hell. Can’t handle horror movies or even watch like… wrestling or something.

Psych major who has never once communicated her own feelings honestly ever so uh

Laughs really loud, is embarrassed by it

Struggles to make friends because she’s too self conscious to talk to people.

Was a horse girl as a child. Still is lowkey a horse girl but she’s embarrassed about it and refuses to discuss it.

Terrified of heights

porn specific lol both actual and piss

June

average sized bladder, though it’s on the weaker side

too stubborn to admit to others that she needs to pee until it becomes an emergency

Like won’t admit it until the VERY last second where she’s starting to panic about wetting herself

Squirmyyy, moves her hips a lot

Loves to give hickies. Huge marking kink. Goes along with her possessiveness.

Dominant for self-satisfying reasons. August immediately becomes more dominant if she sees June trying to be, but that’s what June wants from her anyway

August

Not super in-tune with her needs. Forgets to pee and ends up desperate later on as a consequence

Usually can stay pretty composed when desperate, but has her limits. Will admit it with little hesitation.

Instinctively grabs herself when desperate, though often catches and stops herself if people are around

Way more willing to pee in containers or outside than most people are

Has tried to pee standing up many times. It has never once worked. She has never told anyone this.

Loud..

Loveeees to top. Puts others pleasure before her own in every situation. Has to be explicitly guided into putting her own first.

Taj

Veryy vocal most of the time, mostly unashamed

Diuretics effect her pretty bad, despite how many energy drinks she drinks

Bladder’s actually pretty big and strong under normal circumstances. She can hold it for a while if she puts her mind to it and doesn’t give into the temptation to “let some out”.

That being said, she’s not particularly strong-willed most of the time… Easily tempted by the thought of relief and that can override her logic about the consequences of giving in.

Weirdo perv. Massive praise kink. Very obedient and eager to please

Tops from the bottom.

Dangerously close to crossing too many wires in her brain about a certain something..

Isla

Embarrassed at the mere idea of someone knowing she has to pee

Will not say a goddamn word if she’s desperate

Will literally be pleading for help but doing in roundabout ways that very rarely directly mentions the problem at hand

Huge bladder, but it tends to be weak and sore for a few days if she loses control of it

Secretly a huge pervert, but will barely even admit that to herself

Once she gets the chance to be one though??? Lord..

Soft but firm domme

Bottoms from the top

[chiisana-sukima]

Hello, I really love your perspective on SPN.How much of the incestuous undertones do you think were intentional (obviously the writers are aware of some of it with the erotically codependent line)? And also how much do you think the general viewerbase (not fandom) picked up on back when the show was coming out?

I think the vast majority of the incestuous undertones were intentional and that spn is the 7 Minutes of Incest Show, if not from day one, then certainly at least from season one. Kripke and Gamble both called it "the epic love story of Sam and Dean" and Jensen has called it a love story about two brothers. The number one major theme of the show over its whole run is the way love, abuse, and horror in families run together and interact, and an act of vertical, nonconsensual incest (Mary and Azazel's kiss) is the first domino through which the entire rest of the plot occurs. Kripke was asked by Standards and Practices if he'd be willing to remove it and he declined. That suffocating feeling of someone loving you enough to do anything for you, but also anything to you, and how that's an unacknowledged aspect of familial love--all of that is all over the text and has to be intentional. It's too blatant, omnipresent, and barely even given plausible deniability, to not be.

That said, I also think there was no intent at all that Sam and Dean be interpreted as actually banging each other or even interested in banging each other. The risque jokes are just risque jokes. They practically write themselves even had both the writers' room and the set not apparently been inhabited mostly by people with the sense of humor of twelve year old boys (which I'm not complaining about--I too have the sense of humor of a twelve year old boy and find most of the jokes hilarious). The weird interest in each others' sex lives is just the same over-investment they have about every other aspect of each other's lives. And the more serious romantic/sexual overtones imo are there to reinforce the platonic/emotional love story, not tell a separate one.

R.e. how much did the general audience (GA) notice it, I have no idea tbh. My guess is probably not much, because the GA is there to be entertained, not think too hard about every little detail like we do in fandom. Spn is a very vibes-based show and one can easily absorb the vibes for entertainment purposes without thinking too hard about what they mean.

And to be blunt, people in general have a metric fuckton of practice not noticing irl incest while pretending to be vigilant about and horrified by it, so why would they notice it in a fictional setting where the love between the (emotionally) incestuous family members is ultimately redemptive and always saves the day? That's a pretty hard disjuncture to face squarely imo. Not looking away is a learned skill that most of us have no specific reason that we know of to learn, and it's in many ways an awful experience learning it, so why would most of us bother? I've never specifically asked a GA member about the incest piece in particular, but my spouse, who is a GA member, didn't notice that spn is particularly rapey and didn't notice that Lucifer had canonically raped Sam, even though Spouse has a long and sometimes complicated marital history with a rape survivor.

Anyway, thanks so much for the ask! I'm always very interested to hear the opinions of others, so Nonny, you and anyone else who feels like it are welcome to add on in reblog.

[jessicas-pi]

I Am A Little Addicted To The Incorrect Quote Maker.

Anyway. Twin Blades And Beskar (Lifeswap) AU?

Inquisitor: Well, aren’t you all a rag-tag group of adventurers with unclear goals and good hearts! Oh, let me guess: you’re out to save the galaxy! Kanan: Well, actually, that sounds like a pretty fair assessment. Sabine: More or less, I guess... Ahsoka: That sounds awesome! Let’s do that! Ezra: I’m new here, but I am open to the concept. Hera: I thought that’s what we were doing, guys, come on!

---

Sabine: My aesthetic is "would be suspected of witchcraft by small town citizens."

---

Ahsoka: Throw lamps at people who need to lighten up, and throw handles at someone who needs to get a grip. Kanan: Throw a refrigerator at someone who needs to chill. Sabine: Throw scissors at someone who needs to cut it out! Hera: Throw a clock at someone who needs to get with the times! Okadiah: Throw matches at someone who needs to get fired up! Ezra: Throw a brick at someone to kill them!

---

Ahsoka, making coffee: This is going to fix everything.

---

Sabine: Rules were made to be broken. Kanan: They were made to be followed. Nothing is made to be broken. Ahsoka: Uh, piñatas. Chopper: Glow sticks. Ezra: Karate boards. Hera: Spaghetti when you have a small pot. Sabine: Rules. Kanan:

---

Ezra: I hope no one lowkey hates me. Ezra: Highkey hate me. Hate me with every fiber of your being. Ezra: Go big or go home.

---

Chopper: Drink your school, stay in sleep, don't do milk, and get 8 hours of drugs.

---

Hera: Just be yourself. Sabine: Really? Hera, I have one day to win over Ezra’s clan! Sabine: How long did it take for you guys to like me? Okadiah: Couple of weeks. Kanan: Six months. Chopper: Jury’s still out. Sabine: See Hera? ‘Just be yourself,’ what kind of garbage advice is that?!

---

Okadiah: Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the things you lost throughout your life. Ahsoka: It would be nice to have my sense of purpose back… Hera: Oh wow, my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this. Ezra: My will to live! I haven't seen this in years. Kanan: I knew I lost that potential somewhere. Sabine: Mental stability, my old friend! Okadiah: Force, could you lighten up a little?

---

Ezra: Of course I have a lot of pent-up rage, you fool! I've been the same height since I was twelve!

---

Okadiah: If you got arrested what would be the charges? Ahsoka: Theft. Hera: Disturbing the peace. Kanan: Aggravated assault. Sabine: Arson. Ezra: All of the above. In that order, probably.

---

Ezra: So, what’s Sabine's type? Kanan: Awkward, overprotective, oblivious, terrible sense of humor, Mandalorian. Ezra: Sounds kind of like me. Too bad she loathes me. Kanan: Did I mention oblivious? Ezra: Yeah, why? Kanan: Just making sure.

---

Sabine: If I die, you can have what little I own. Ezra: Wait. What do you mean "if" you die? Sabine: My unending existence is fueled by pure spite, that of which the painful experiences of life have rendered me full. Ezra: Ezra: *Sighs* You need a therapist.

---

Chopper: All of your existences are confusing. The Spectres: How so? Chopper: Your presence is annoying, but the thought of anything bad happening to any of you upsets me.

---

Kanan: If you put 'violently' in front of anything to describe your action, it becomes funnier. Kanan: Violently pilots. Hera: Violently lightsaber trains. Ahsoka: Violently sleeps. Ezra: Violently murders people. Okadiah: Violently worries about the previous statement.

---

Sabine: Sometimes I wonder if I’m hearing voices. Sabine: Then I remember that’s the last bit of sanity I have trying to get me to fall asleep at a reasonable time.

---

*The squad's reaction to being told they're the chosen one* Hera: I will not let you down. Ahsoka: Sounds fun. Kanan: K. Sabine: Like kriff I am. Okadiah: Do I have to be? Ezra: Please manda I am so tired

---

*after a perilous life-or-death escape/rescue* Sabine: Oh, gods, I could just kiss you right now. Ezra: ... Ezra: Neat. *later* Ezra, lying face down on his bunk: I said "Neat," Kanan. Who says neat? It's not neat to say neat but I said it anyways because I'm kriffing stupid. Kanan, reading a book: Don't beat yourself up too much, kid. Everyone gets nervous sometimes. Did Oke ever tell you what I did when Hera confessed her love for me? Ezra: Didn't you thank her? Kanan: *closes the book and looks at the ceiling* I thanked her.

---

Kanan: I have met some of the most insufferable people. But they also met me.

---

Ezra: Capitalizing every word in a sentence is vomit inducing. Sabine: Enjoy Your Trip To Puke Land, Boy!

---

Hera: I think my guardian angel drinks.

---

Ezra: The only thing I'm guilty of is being adorable... ...and also assault with a deadly weapon.

---

Sabine, at the slightest provocation: I came into this galaxy screaming and covered in someone else's blood and I'm not afraid to leave the same way.

[practically-an-x-man]

I have a funny prompt. Prometheus as dreamofthemaidenless posts. Basically how you think that Dream rp blog would talk about Prometheus (I think almost everyone in the Sandman fandom is familiar with that blog at this point)

You should know that I laughed SO hard when I got this prompt, I love this so much. I'm not sure I got the delivery exactly right on all of these, but I had a lot of fun making them XD

Obviously credit to @dreamofthemaidenless for this very particular style of humor lmao

____

dreamofthemaidenless: there's a reason i called them nyx you know. easy to spell. mervyn helps manage the records sometimes and i keep getting notes addressed to promeethiyus

dreamofthemaidenless: lucienne just called me transphobic for rewriting prometheus again so now i'm wearing a rainbow shirt under my robes. you can't see it but i'm told the vibes are there

dreamofthemaidenless: explaining to prometheus that their name was nyx because we could only afford 3 letters due to budget cuts and now their new name should be Lit. like fire.

dreamofthemaidenless: yeah i'm keeping prometheus around this time. every time i rewrite them the corinthian gets all bitey again

dreamofthemaidenless: rewrote prometheus again and now the whole dreaming smells like toasted marshmallows. i think i did something wrong. please standby.

dreamofthemaidenless: intentionally sending the wrong nightmare to a dreamer just bc i'm bored and i want to see how the fight goes down

dreamofthemaidenless: prometheus in the dreaming is like that pack of wolves they introduced to yellowstone. population control.

dreamofthemaidenless: small children have been dreaming of something called "nimona" recently. lots of "go back to the shadows from whence you came" and all that. has anyone seen prometheus.

dreamofthemaidenless: so proud of all my nightmares that became dreams. gault and that other one really showed some agency. good work team.

dreamofthemaidenless: lost prometheus again. how does this keep happening. where do they go.

dreamofthemaidenless: called prometheus nyx again and matthew started lecturing me on what a deadname is. however i have access to the entire collective unconscious and already knew what a deadname is. and i rewrote prometheus again last week.

dreamofthemaidenless: in honor of pride month i would like to remind everyone that prometheus was 14,591 years old when they started their transition journey. and look at them now. it's not too late for you.

dreamofthemaidenless: prometheus keeps bringing light to all the dark corners of the dreaming and it's ruining my carefully cultivated emo aesthetic.

dreamofthemaidenless: what sort of psychological warfare must you wage in order to become romantically entangled with the corinthian. tried to call prometheus down to my castle to explain but they're still afraid of me.

dreamofthemaidenless: lost prometheus again. tried to put a leash on them this time but the corinthian immediately turned it into a kink thing and that brought such visceral and implacable discomfort that i blacked out and woke up covered in millipedes. chat do we have any suggestions

dreamofthemaidenless: tried to lure prometheus back to my castle with a tantalizing little piece of flame but they already have fire. what do they like? the dreamers? they'll always follow the dreamers. but lucienne tells me that kidnapping a child is a bad idea. her exact words were what the fuck is wrong with you. we'll be here for a while.

dreamofthemaidenless: blocking prometheus into their house on halloween night because i can sense over twelve thousand frankenstein's monsters walking around and well. fire bad.

[mysterious-cuchulainn-x]

Trick or treat!

I'm not sure which this counts as, but I hope you'll enjoy it either way — a short Festival of the Lost piece with two of my three Destiny OCs:

A Step Outside the Halls Between

(Read on AO3)

—Acolyte, three-twenty-four by minus-twelve.

Felix hummed a wordless affirmation as he dropped the Servant Leader’s barrel. In another heartbeat, a single trigger pull expelled a projectile that turned the chitinous skull in his sights into a burst of soulfire and confectionaries. 

—Any more?

North whirred from within him for a moment, then materialized in his palm with a negative.

“I have to ask, though—”

Felix sighed, already knowing where this conversation was going. Still, he had the same question, and the fact that it was one strange phenomenon that still worked to their advantage wasn’t going to stop him from wondering, too, so he allowed his Ghost to finish the question unhindered:

“—Why the candy?”

——————

Of course, no one knew why the Hive had begun dropping candy—actual, edible things with real sugar—around the Festival of the Lost, and as much as Felix was a Warlock, he was also twelve years old and mostly involved in field operations, and whatever the Cryptarchs or the Hidden might have uncovered they were keeping close to their chests.

If they had uncovered anything: certainly Eido was no closer than she had been the year before.

“You’re not actually going to eat that, are you?”

North’s concerned question startled Felix out of his reverie, the sudden change in his posture knocking the holo-table out of existence just before it could properly catch fire, and he held up the mundane chocolate for his Ghost’s inspection.

“It’s from the Cryptarchs’ get-together,” he corrected, “not our patrols. C’mon, little light, you know me better than that, don’t you?”

North counter-rotated with unmistakable irritation, and Felix winced apologetically. But an unearthly howl interrupted his reply, and Guardian and Ghost turned together to see Artemis Brac materializing from a seasonal particle shimmer. The Awoken Hunter had changed just as much as Felix over the twelve years since they had first been raised and joined forces, but that same long-lasting partnership made the sight of her feel as familiar as North’s ancient “junkyard” shell.

“No Maedhros?” Brac lifted a comet-tail eyebrow, and shrugged at Felix’s silent response. “Figures—said he was going by Mars on the way back, poke around in the Weapon Shaper. Not sure if that thing or the Hive dropping candy again gives me worse shivers. You haven’t eaten any, have you?”

Felix laughed, tossing her the chocolate he’d been holding. Psyche materialized next to Brac’s hand as she caught the candy and floated next to North, the two old Ghosts engaging in subaudio conversation as their Guardians convened against the nearest railing, looking out over the twilit City.

“I was on the comms with Immaru earlier,” Felix began, twirling another chocolate between his fingers. “Can’t remember what he was saying—I try not to listen, mostly—but I just thought, if only Cayde were here, he’d have us all in stitches over this dumb little guy.”

Brac laughed, a short, involuntary sound, and sighed. 

“We could use Cayde these days, for certain,” she agreed, “and not just because the Hunters have been at loose ends for the last… fuck, five years? But no one else could…”

She trailed off, shook her head, and looked in Felix’s direction with an unfinished grin.

“Neptune,” she added, pausing with a frown, “or Nexus—Nimbus, that’s it. Ugh, what a showoff. Overconfident, the absolute worst sense of humor… but I don’t know what they’re going to do out there without him. Rohan’s only got a couple years left, and that kid… sometimes you miss the strangest people.”

Felix nodded, and silence fell between them as the sun climbed slowly lower across the space where the Traveler had once hung like an immutable truth in the sky. Maedhros would join them before dark, Felix knew, and share his own memory, and they would raid the Cryptarchs’ lounge for hot cocoa. 

And then, of course, they would head up to the Moon to kill pumpkins.

[jodilinbio]

Written by me, perfected by Grammarly and ChatGPT.

In 2002, I finally decided to write my autobiography, drawing on the memories and journals I’ve been keeping since 1987. I worked on it on and off throughout the year.

I was, and still am, the black sheep of my family, but that’s okay—I don’t mind. I used to mind as a child, but as an adult, it doesn’t bother me. I was a lonely child, surrounded by self-absorbed, controlling adults. I found their predictability rather boring, while they never knew what to expect from me, even though they liked to think they did.

I grew up in western Massachusetts. My family consisted of my mother, father, brother, and sister. They weren’t exactly what I’d call stupid, but they had a limited range of skills. They were very pessimistic about themselves, others, and life in general. They rarely approached the unknown with an open mind and were easily unsettled or even spooked by anything foreign to them.

Although my parents, Arthur (Art) and Dureen (Doe), were considered as different as night and day by most people’s standards—my father being much calmer—they were still very much alike. They liked the same music, movies, foods, and activities, and they shared the same beliefs and opinions.

My domineering mother made much of my childhood difficult. It was often said that she treated her dogs better than anyone else, and this was true. Her dogs came first, then her friends, then her husband, and lastly, her children.

She was her own person; no one told Dureen what to do.

My parents weren’t the worst in the world. They weren’t drunks or perverts, and they were reliable enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. So no, I couldn’t exactly award them the title of worst parents of the century.

But things were bad enough. Our material and physical needs were met, but not our emotional ones. My mother was often negative, impatient, insensitive, hypocritical, and very controlling. My sister Tammy was much like her, except she had one character trait my mother lacked: she was a hypochondriac.

My mother was unusually persuasive, as if she could demand respect just by thinking about it. I sometimes believe she could have convinced anyone to jump off a bridge if she wanted to, no matter how strong-willed they were. Despite this, she was also very emotionally weak and couldn’t handle dealing with other people’s problems, especially personal ones.

She seemed to enjoy controlling people in any way she could, even over the most trivial matters.

My father and brother Larry were much easier to get along with. They were more passive and had a sense of humor that my mom and sister lacked. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have my problems with them—because I did—and by the time I was thirty-two, I had completely cut them all out of my life, later regretting reconnecting with some of them.

My maternal grandparents, Jack and Shirley, lived next door until we moved across town when I was twelve. They were similar to my parents: he was mellow, while she was difficult. One of my meanest memories of Nana was when she told me I’d one day be so big that I wouldn’t be able to fit through doorways. Meanwhile, she was over 200 pounds herself, while I was barely over 100 pounds. I had my pudgy spells as a kid and even as an adult, but for the most part, I was pretty scrawny.

I never knew my paternal grandfather; he died in his fifties of a heart attack. I was named after him.

My paternal grandmother, Bella, wasn’t in my life much until I was around eleven or twelve, and then she died when I was seventeen.

My father was born in 1931, and my mother in 1932. They married in 1951 when they were just nineteen and twenty years old—still just kids, and way too young for even the most mature people to marry, in my opinion. They started in an apartment in Springfield while my father was in the Navy. A year later, they had another apartment, then built a house in 1953.

My brother was born in 1954, and my sister in 1957.

[whitepolaris]

Missionaries Remain in Salem's Mission Mill Museum

The Mission Mill Museum is located on Mill Street in Salem, focusing on the closed Thomas Kay Woolen Mills, but the museum grounds have become a refuge for many of Salem's historic homes-and perhaps some of the early pioneers are still around.

The woolen mill was built in 1889 and processed much of the wool harvested in eastern Oregon. It operated for several more decades, before synthetic fabrics replaced wool in American clothing. The Kay family continued to run the mill until 1958, finally shutting its doors in 1962. The museum opened in 1964 to show the public the interesting history of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mills.

Over time, several historic homes and a church were moved to the museum grounds to protect them from demolition. They include the Methodist Parsonage, originally built in 1841; the Jason Lee House, built to 1841; the John D. Boon House, built in 1847; and the Pleasant Grove Presbyterian Church, which was consecrated in 1858.

On certain days, the museum provides tour guides who lead visitors from building to building. If there are no tour guides, paying visitors are loaded a passkey that will let them into the various historic buildings.

Other Ghosts at the Mission Mill Museum

On weekends, volunteers sometimes demonstrate how to make woolen goods on the still-operational equipment. A museum employee told Weird Oregon that if you are on the third floor of the museum and stand in the right place, you can feel the vibrations of the water turbine-even if the water wheel is not turning. Is this some kind of ghostly replay of past activities? The mill used to run twelve hours a day, six days a week.

Several buildings run across the stream that supplies water to the mill. Some people claim that they have heard the ghostly echo of a murder committed by a past employee who drowned his wife in the millstream near the Mentzer Machine Shop.

More than one staff member told Weird Oregon that they had heard a service being given in the old church. Once one of these staff members entered, he saw a ghostly light suspended in midair.

The most interesting ghost is not very old. One of the old mill workers became a museum volunteer and security guard in his later years. He frequently put on displays of mill work in addition to keeping the parking lot secure. Apparently he stopped people who were littering or doing other naughty things in the parking lot, only to disappear after delivering his warning.

Jason Lee's Children?

It was raining hard when my wife, Janine and I visited the Jason Lee House. I thought I'd heard a child or children's voices coming from inside the house, and someone walking up the stairs inside. Janine had heard children's voices, too.

Inside the house, we thought we heard a thump from upstairs but found no one there. Later a museum staff member told us that a psychic had detected the spirit of a young girl inhabiting the house, mainly on the second floor, where she had lived. She had a mischievous sense of humor, and would sometimes play with visitors or laugh when the tour guides got the historic facts wrong about the house.

They also told us of the security guard who'd paused outside the house when he saw a light shining from the second-floor windows-even though he had turned the lights off earlier. After turning off the lights again and resetting the alarm, he paused outside to look up at the second-floor windows again. One of the curtains was pull aside then fell back over the window a few seconds later.

So who still inhabits the Jason Lee House? Is it one of the many children who lived there over the years? What about Lucy Thompson Lee, who died shortly after giving birth there? -Jeff Davis

[jodilin65]

My Bio

It was the year 2002 that I finally decided to write my autobiography based on memories and the journals I’ve been keeping since 1987.

I was, and still am, the black sheep of my family. That’s ok, I don’t mind. I used to mind as a child, but I don’t mind as an adult. I was a lonely child surrounded by self-absorbed, controlling adults. I found their predictability to be rather boring whereas with me, they never knew what to expect, even if they liked to think they did.

I grew up in western Massachusetts. My family consisted of a mother, father, brother and sister. They weren’t exactly what I’d call stupid, but they had a narrow range of skills at the same time. They were very pessimistic about themselves, others, and life in general. They rarely approached the unknown with an open mind. They were easily made uncomfortable or even spooked by people or events foreign to them in any way.

Although my parents, Arthur and Dureen, were considered to be as different as night and day by most peoples’ standards because my father was much calmer, they were mostly carbon copies of one another at the same time they were opposites. They liked the same music, movies, foods and activities. They shared the same beliefs and opinions.

My very domineering mother made most of my childhood rather tough. It was often said that my mother treated her dogs better than anyone, and this was so true. Her dogs came first, then her friends, then her husband, and her children last.

She was her own person. No one told Dureen what to do.

My folks weren’t the worst parents in the world. They weren't drunks, they weren't perverts, and they were reliable enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my tummy, so no, I couldn't exactly present them with the worst-parents-of-the-century award.

But things were bad enough. Our material and physical needs were met, but not our emotional needs. My mother was often a very negative, impatient, insensitive, hypocritical and very controlling person, and my sister Tammy was very much like her, though she had one character trait my mother lacked. She was a hypochondriac.

My mother was an unusually persuasive person. It was like she could demand one’s respect just by thinking about it. I sometimes believe she could convince a person to jump off a bridge if she wanted to, no matter how strong-willed they were. Despite this, she was also very weak emotionally. She couldn’t handle dealing with other people’s problems well at all. Especially if they were personal.

She seemed to enjoy controlling people any way she could and over the dumbest of things, too.

My father and brother Larry were by far easier to get along with. They were more passive with a sense of humor that my mom and sister didn’t have. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have my problems with them either, for I did, and by the time I was thirty-two, I had completely cut them all out of my life.

My maternal grandparents (Jack and Shirley) lived next door to us till we moved across town when I was twelve. They were similar to my parents in that he was mellow while she was a witch. One of the meanest memories I have of Nana was her telling me I’d one day be so big that I wouldn’t be able to fit through doorways. Meanwhile, the hypocrite was over 200 pounds herself while I was barely over 100 pounds. I had my pudgy spells as a kid, and even as an adult, but for the most part, I was pretty scrawny.

I never knew my paternal grandfather. He died in his fifties of a heart attack. I was named after him.

My paternal grandmother was Bella. She wasn’t in my life much till I was around eleven or twelve, then she died when I was seventeen.

My father was born in 1931. My mother was born in 1932. They married in 1951 when they were nineteen and twenty years old. Still just kids themselves and way too young for even the most mature of people to marry in my opinion. They went right into an apartment in Springfield. My father was in the Navy at this time. A year later they had another apartment, then built a house in 1953.

My brother was born in 1954 and my sister was born in 1957.

Bio 2

I don’t remember my mother working till I was older, though I vaguely remember my folks owning a record store when I was really little. Also when I was little, my father did some extermination work for my mom’s dad, who owned an extermination business.

During my teens, both parents traveled the state selling eyeglass frames to optometrists. They even traveled a bit in New Hampshire and Vermont.

In my early twenties, before they moved down to Florida, they owned a jewelry store in a mall. It was actually one of those carts set up in the center of the walkway between the rows of stores.

The pets we had growing up consisted of poodles, birds and some rodents. I had gerbils and guinea pigs when I was older. We had a rabbit for a while too, in my later childhood, as well as some hermit crabs.

The only thing I really remember my mother telling me about sex and boys was basically not to do anything more than kiss on the first date, and to make sure the man I married was Jewish.

“But what if I fall in love with a guy who happens not to be Jewish?” I once asked her.

“You don’t let it happen,” she said.

What a silly thing to tell your kid, I realized as I grew older. Like we can help who we’re attracted to and who we fall in love with any more than we can help what colors or flavors we like? Like it should even matter who we fall in love with as long as we’re happy?

But I always preferred women to men at least for the most part. So later on in life, when I was twenty-four, openly bi, and visiting my parents in Florida, my father told me not to tell anyone I was this way.

“Why?” I asked him. “Should I be ashamed of it? Because if the person I told was put out by it, then I certainly wouldn’t want them to be a part of my life anyway.”

During my preteen years, I was often left in the care of my aunt and uncle’s house, with their two daughters which wasn’t usually much fun. Aunt June was a bundle of nerves, and Ronnie, my mother’s brother, was a mean bully. Cousins Lori and Lisa could sometimes be fun to hang with and sometimes they could be little terrors of their own. Lori, who was a year older than me, liked to bully me around at times. I was closer to Lisa, who was a year younger than me.

For reasons still unknown to me, my uncle always seemed to harbor animosity towards me. I haven’t seen any of them since I was around twenty years old, and I can’t say I miss them.

Ronnie was definitely the worst, shoving me around when I didn’t move fast enough for his liking when we’d all go out somewhere, and just being a less-than-kind bully in general. My sister Tammy did her own bullying and bloodied my lip one time right in front of him and he just sat in his chair staring at us dumbly the entire time, as if it was perfectly normal behavior.

I had mixed emotions about leaving Ronnie and June’s place when I’d stay with them. While it was true that I looked forward to returning to my own bed, my own toys, etc., knowing I’d soon have to face my mother’s wrath could be quite nerve-wracking, even scary. It’d be worse when Tammy was with me because I knew that when we did see my mother again, she’d be sure to tell her all kinds of horrible things I said and did, most of which were made up. But Tammy was the oldest and that meant that she was the most believable which also meant that I’d certainly be in for some sort of punishment if she did decide to tell on me, made up or not.

When I was around ten the visits to their house stopped. I’m not sure why. Maybe Ronnie and June were sick of having me there, or maybe my folks were fighting with them. I know they have had their fights with them, just like with my father’s brother and his wife. Someone was always fighting with someone in my family. Mom or Dad beat up on Larry who beat up on Tammy who beat up on me. It was crazy and I often wondered if there’d ever come a day when someone was killed.

The more I think about it as I write this, the more I think that yes, they did have a falling out, and it was probably over an injury I received in the town’s high school gym. This seems to be around the time the visits stopped, too. During the summer I was around ten, I spent most of the summer at their house, and Lori, Lisa and I would ride our bikes to the high school for daytime activities. There were sports, crafts, swimming, etc. It was actually kind of fun.

I was a bit of a gymnast in these days, though I certainly preferred ice skating and roller-skating. I was doing a series of handsprings over the vault in the gym one day. On one particular handspring, I veered towards the side once my hands hit the vault and my feet were directly overhead. I ended up spraining my pinky finger quite badly. At first, I thought it was broken because of how swollen it was.

My less-than-sympathetic uncle did nothing about it, and this could’ve very well been why they stopped talking. I know that when I later joined my folks at our summer cottage at the beach, Mom wasn’t too happy about it at all. She took me to a clinic right away and a splint was put on my finger.

I always felt more uncomfortable when Lori and Lisa would come to stay with us, versus when I would stay with them. There may’ve been Ronnie to deal with at their place, but at my place, there was my mother to deal with, who would often compare me to them (not in a good way) and give me the why-can’t-you-be-more-like-them? spiel, making me feel like I wasn’t good enough as I was. In fact, it seemed I could never measure up to Lori and Lisa no matter what I did.

My other uncle, Martin, who people called Marty, wasn’t much better. He was a mean bully too, and I doubt he’d have hesitated to kill me one particular day when I pissed him off by slamming the door in his rude face, had I not frozen scared stiff like I did.

“Open this door!” he demanded when I shut it on him when he came over looking for my folks who weren’t home at the time. This was for the way he and his wife treated me when I stayed with them at the campgrounds they camped at. So I opened the door and let him scream at me. Even his mother was scared. As I grew older my fear would turn to anger, however, so it’s lucky for both of us I simply stood there. Had I been like I am now, I’d have either gone to jail for kicking his ass, or he’d have gone to jail for kicking mine. I hope he would have anyway!

Even my father had an underlying macho stance about him as mellow as he usually was, and I did see him slap my mother once when I was around eight. This memory has haunted me throughout the years. It’s even more disturbing to know that had my mother put up any resistance after being slapped, he’d have probably beat the crap out of her right there in front of me, never giving a damn how it may have traumatized me. After he slapped her, my mother tried to justify his behavior, in a private little one-to-one, assuring me it was only because of his poor health. I was just a kid back then who bought anything that was told to her. However, as a grown adult, I know that this was a poor excuse for his actions and that if my mother had had any self-respect, she wouldn’t have made such lame excuses for him. Lots of people have heart problems such as he did and still has today, yet they don’t go around slapping their wives and traumatizing their children.

Marty’s wife Ruth could be sweet at times, but she was the phoniest thing I ever did meet! She had a big mouth and loved to gossip, but so did the whole family. Their two kids Polly and Philip were ok, though I rarely saw Polly. I doubt I’d recognize her if I passed her on the street right now.

Bio 3

James and Charlotte were my parents’ good friends. I liked Char and Jim. They had a daughter Shelley, also gay. Another couple that was close friends with the family was Goldie and Al. I liked them as well.

Richard and Beatrice, beach friends of my folks, owned an ice skating rink down in Windsor, Connecticut where I took some ice skating lessons. I didn’t see much of Dick, but I remember bleached-blond, tanned Bea to be one of the phoniest people I’d ever met! She and my Aunt Ruth could’ve been sisters, though they certainly didn’t look alike.

I rarely saw cousins Norma and Milton. They seemed nice, but they could’ve been ax murderers for all I know.

Cousins Max and Dorothy were a different story. I liked them, but I didn’t. They were very generous, giving me money upon my big cross-country move, but they had their faults. After I moved, I found out that they regularly visited Tammy. She lived over an hour away from them, yet when I was just ten minutes away, they never came to see me. I understood why, though. It was because of the “crazy” label my mother had worked so hard to stick on me. The fact that I didn’t have kids may’ve been a factor, too.

It really bothered me how Boo (Dorothy’s nickname) reacted to a question she once asked me. When she and Max were driving me home one day from seeing my father at his friends’ house in Brimfield, Massachusetts when he was visiting the area, she asked me how I was getting along with my mother. I told her, and it was obviously not what she wanted to hear.

“I love my cousin Doe! She works so hard! How could you cut her down like that?” she demanded.

Hey, she asked!

So far, my physical negatives have been having a deformed outer left ear that I’m deaf in, ADHD, asthma and allergies.

ADHD simply means you’re hyper and that you often have trouble sleeping and concentrating on things. That’s all it means. Nothing more or less. However, my mother tried to brainwash me into believing I had a chemical imbalance and needed drugs all my life simply because I was energetic, a bit eccentric, rather unique, and often viewed the world differently. Maybe the doctors brainwashed her a bit as well. Guess I’ll never know for sure. Nonetheless, this was back in a time when people preferred to put labels on certain traits and prescribe pills for them simply because it was easier to do so than to either accept the person as they were or to address the real root of the problem.

Because my mother nearly miscarried me, she was given an estrogen drug (DES) that they felt, back in those days, would help. Then they later learned it can cause cervical cancer in DES daughters and an increased risk of infertility. I don’t know if I’m sterile because of this drug or for some other reason. I may not be sterile at all, but just not meant to have kids (I did have what might’ve been an early miscarriage in the late 90s). Despite coming to decide I didn’t want kids in the end, somehow I knew this would be the case too, since I was a little girl. This would be part of my prominent sixth sense, but that didn’t really develop till I was in my twenties.

In the seventies, I had fifteen plastic surgeries in Boston to build an outer ear. It didn’t turn out so well. It never did look natural, and twenty years later it brought me problems. Persistent sensitivity within the frame caused me to seek medical attention which led me to two surgeries to dismantle the frame as well as to have a canal drilled. The amount of hearing I got in that ear is next to nil.

I was amazed at how I could be in and out of the hospital on the same day for just two operations in Arizona in 1994, yet had to stay in the hospital for two days for each of the many reconstructive operations I had in Boston. In Arizona, all they did was bandage the area. Back in the seventies, my whole head was covered with bandages except for my face and a small area at the crown of my head where I’d have my hair sticking out in a ponytail. The part that went under the neck was a real killer. I would itch like hell and I’d have to wear the thing for weeks at a time.

The only other physical problems/accidents I can remember is being hospitalized for a couple of weeks with pneumonia when I was around nine, and falling off my bike and needing many stitches in my chin when I was around twelve.

They say our health is supposed to decline with age, yet I’ve been much healthier in my thirties than I was in my twenties. Especially seeing how I couldn’t even breathe throughout most of my twenties.

I grew up in a small affluent town in Massachusetts just outside the city of Springfield. The Connecticut state line was just minutes away. We lived in a two-story, four-bedroom house with a large backyard that was built while my mother was pregnant with me. I had a little playroom down in the cellar until my paternal grandmother came to live with us. She had lived in California, but after husband number two died and she had a stroke, she came to live with us. She lived in the finished cellar since it had a bathroom and shower stall she could use. My new playroom was to be one of the bedrooms since Larry and Tammy were out of the house before I was even ten years old. For the most part, I felt like an only child, and believe me, there were plenty of times when I wished I truly was!

Next door to us lived my maternal grandparents in a two-bedroom ranch.

I’m not going to even try to sugarcoat my childhood, for sadly the only fond childhood memories I really have are those of birthdays and holidays, but even those could be shaky at times. Being with family could be a very stressful thing for me. It made me very uncomfortable. I felt like such an outcast, always walking on eggshells and like I just couldn’t be myself. Particularly around my mother and sister.

When I was around grade-school age, Chanukah get-togethers could be kind of fun. We’d go next door to Nana and Pa’s and they’d dump a bunch of coins in the middle of the cellar floor, where everyone was gathered, for the youngest kids to gather up.

I’d look forward to getting new records and was into TV shows like Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman.

The most unpleasant preteen experiences were school-related, which would become Doe-related, as my mother was commonly called. Yes, my mother’s wrath could be quite scary and my dad didn’t do much to step in and defend us kids. Though there was physical abuse, there wasn’t nearly as much of that as there was verbal and emotional abuse. Her stripping my room of the things I treasured most (my little victrola was always at the top of her list) when I’d do badly in school which was usually by being a little bully, would leave me thoroughly depressed. Sometimes just going home with a bad report card in hand was quite a task. My heart would be pounding with anxiety every step of the way, knowing I was probably going to get hit or punished or both.

Despite how much more passive my father was, he did most of the hitting. I’ve personally seen him beat the crap out of both my brother and sister. I remember waking up at night terrified when I was really little by the sounds of my father beating them with his belt. Once, my mother even came in to comfort me while she allowed it to go on.

But they stuck together no matter what. If one of my parents had killed one of us, the other would still be standing by them today, never mentioning it, forever acting as if it never happened. In a town like Longmeadow in the seventies, they’d have gotten away with it, too.

My father once went to attack Larry during a Passover feast next door at Nana and Pa’s house when Pa jumped up and shouted, “Not in my house!”

“I’m going to call DYS,” should’ve been more like it!

A teacher hit me once as well. It was only on the rump, but it was still wrong. To me, violence is violence whether it’s a little slap or a major beating. No one should hit anyone unless it’s in self-defense. I believe that hitting kids usually leads to aggressiveness. My mother brainwashed me into believing it was an act of love. She’d tell me she did it because she loved me. I thought it was normal for parents to hit their kids. So, for a time I believed that when I had a problem with someone, like a classmate, hitting them was the proper thing to do, and I usually did.

Because she was eight years older than me, I was often left alone with her. That was rather terrible since she was so much like my mother. Tall and wide, it was often said that she was jealous of me. Not just because I was small, but because of the things I’d later be able to do that she couldn’t do. She felt stupid and ugly compared to me, so I heard, but personally, I wouldn’t have cared what she looked like or what her IQ was if she had only been less of a monster! While her jealousy was rather frustrating to deal with as well as embarrassing at times when she’d pick on me in front of others, I felt sorrier for her than I did angry. This is because while Tammy may’ve had nice eyes and wasn’t the dumbest person alive, she was still quite homely-looking and lacked skills or talent of any real kind.

Bio 4

We had a summer cottage at Old Colony Beach in Old Lyme, Connecticut. We’d head there as soon as school let out and wouldn’t return till Labor Day. We started going to this beach when I was a baby and stopped going as a family when I was in my mid-teens or so. This is partly because my folks made enemies there. The beach had its fun points, but for the most part, I preferred to be at the Massachusetts house. It was mostly a Jewish beach since my folks weren’t the least bit thrilled about hanging with those who were different than them. Not that they told me to hate others, like blacks. No, I’d come to hate everybody in general, regardless of race, color, etc., later on in life all by myself.

When I was around eight, Tammy and I would go and “be bad” when we’d go to check the cottage during the off-season. We’d rip screens off of other cottages, yank old doors off their hinges and things like that.

I mostly hung out with Andy. Andy was the youngest of six kids. They all lived in the cottage next to us. My parents and his parents, Judy and Al, had been friends for years. Since before I was even born. The friendship ended in the seventies and Judy and Al sold their cottage shortly afterward.

My parents had a falling out with at least three other families there, but it was mostly because of my mother. On and on went these childish little cliques and their struggles for popularity. I didn’t realize just how silly and immature it all was until I got older.

For the most part, the days were spent with me being bored on the beach (I could only swim and shovel so much sand), and the nights were spent doing a variety of things. Sometimes I was out interacting with other kids. There were bingo and movies on the beach. When I stayed in, I’d either watch TV, listen to the radio, or play with my dolls.

Despite my boredom, there were a few positives to the beach like ice cream, fried dough, candy necklaces, miniature golf and glow-in-the-dark wands. There was Mrs. Labriola too, an old lady at the other end of our street. I don’t remember how we met. I know my folks knew her somehow. We probably met while she was out in her yard which was beautifully decorated with lawn ornaments and I was walking by. She lived there year-round. Other than her kids who’d come to visit her and her dog, I was pretty much the only company she had. She was very good to me, often spoiling me with little treats when I’d visit. I was between eight and ten when I started visiting her. The last time I saw her was when I was around twenty-four in 1990. After moving to Phoenix in 1992, I learned she died in 1994 when I called her home and her son Vito answered.

My folks often played cards or other games with other couples just like them – very white, very straight, and very Jewish. My mother, as did my sister, had a thirst for praise and popularity. Recognition and acknowledgment were everything to them.

The most horrible memory I have of being at the beach was the one where my mother nearly left me for dead.

Literally.

The older I got, the more obsessed my parents, particularly my mother, became with my appearance. I had a chubby spell on occasion as a kid, causing my mother to taunt me as if I were a beached whale. I began to get more and more self-conscious and my self-esteem started to crumble. I also began to eat less and less as the pressure to fulfill Dureen’s obsession with me as the “beautiful” child mounted. Known for my big, long-lashed eyes, thick curly hair and being petite, I felt pressured to keep up the image, or else! When I finally did lose a little weight, she congratulated me as if it were the biggest accomplishment I could ever make in my life.

On one particular crash diet I threw myself on when I was around ten, I had not only no food but no water. I had nothing at all. I did this for a few days, then on the third day or so, I could barely lift my head off the pillow when I awoke that morning. I was so incredibly weak.

My mother and her best friend, Charlotte, were just off of the little kitchenette that was just outside my room. I called out to her but it was useless. When I asked for food and water, she refused to help me.

“You did this. You correct it,” she said to me, anxious to return to her backgammon game which was obviously much more important.

I was confused. I just didn’t know what to think at this point. Here she had been picking on me for being fat, yet when I insisted I was too full to eat anymore at a restaurant one night, she had made me eat it anyway and I ended up puking in the parking lot. It took all that before she quit making me continue eating once I was full.

As I lay there in my weakened state for many hours, I knew it was going to be up to me to save myself and that I’d surely die if I didn’t. I guess something must’ve wanted me to live because if that kitchenette hadn’t been right off my room – forget it. With all the strength I could muster, I pulled myself up out of bed, stepped just outside the room and yanked open a cabinet. Then I grabbed a Devil Dog, spun back around towards the bed and collapsed onto it. My heart was pounding. It took me all of ten minutes to gather enough strength to unwrap the wrapper and eat the damn thing. By this time it was late afternoon.

After I ate, I showered and went outdoors. My legs were shaky. And being the kid that I was, I didn’t hold the fact against my mother that I could’ve died had I not managed to feed myself, and I almost didn’t!

In my early teens at the beach, I’d often cruise the next beach over, which was a public beach, for anyone who had some pot to spare or share. Once, I was dumb enough to get into some guy’s car and drive away to get high where there were fewer people. He hit me for sex but dropped me back off at the beach immediately when I said no. The guy could’ve kidnapped, raped and killed me, so something was looking out for me that day, too.

I attended two camps in Maine. One when I was eleven, the other when I was fourteen. I was supposed to be there the whole summer, but that didn’t happen. I managed to get kicked out of both camps. I really hated camp. Not so much because the activities weren’t fun, but because it was too structured and hectic, leaving no time for any space or privacy. I always valued my solitude and I missed being in my own room with my own things and not having to share a bathroom with twenty other girls. I missed my stereo the most.

Camp M, the one I was in when I was fourteen doesn’t stand out in my mind in any way. All I remember is making sure I’d get caught smoking cigarettes so I could get kicked out, and slugging the camp counselor assigned to my cabin. I guess she startled me when she went to wake me up, so I didn’t literally “slug” her. She said I did, though, but I knew she was exaggerating because she wanted me out of there just as much as I did.

Camp N, the one I went to when I was eleven, does stand out in my mind because of a woman whose name I can’t remember. She was somewhere between her late teens to mid-twenties. She was extra nice to me and seemed very fond of me. I think she was some kind of supervisor because she had her own cabin in which we spent my last night in together.

Twenty years later, in Phoenix, Arizona I tried to track this woman down to thank her for caring for me in a time when so many people didn’t. I was never one to take good people for granted after all the bad people I’d dealt with, and I’m still not. Though I contacted Unsolved Mysteries for help and was shocked to get a phone call from them inquiring about her, I never could find her or learn her true name. No one I spoke to seemed to remember her. All I learned was that the camp was predominantly a Jewish camp. I should’ve figured as much, I suppose, since my parents were pretty big on hanging with our own kind.

Jenny, a friend I’d had since I was nine, wasn’t a very good influence on me. On top of a controlling mother, I had this bossy friend telling me what to do, too. But being the nice person that I was, I put up with it till I was in my twenties.

After a year of our friendship, Jenny moved to a rural town about forty minutes from where I lived, but we visited each other from time to time.

She had an older gay sister, Robin, who was on her own. Both Jenny and Robin were adopted. Her father seemed pretty passive, but her mother was a neurotic alcoholic that I never really liked.

Jenny and I had our share of good times, but I can’t say I was too thrilled with her for getting me started on cigarettes. Who knows, though? Maybe I’d have started anyway. She also introduced me to pot, though fortunately, I never got carried away with that. Just an occasional joint from my early to mid-teens. Actually, my last joint would be when I was twenty, but that story will have to wait.

As kids Jenny and I would hang out together, smoking our cigarettes and stealing from stores. Petty things like candy and cigarettes.

My other friend was Jessica. She and I are still friends today.

Just like Jenny had gotten me hooked on cigarettes, I got Jessie hooked on them. I spared her the pot, though. She and I didn’t cause too much mischief together, though we did skip school once.

Jessie was also adopted. Her adoptive parents were divorced. She lived with her mother a few houses away from mine. Her father was a very famous public figure.

I stayed with Jessie at his house in Connecticut a few times. His house was quite impressive. The layout was really cool. He had a lot of photos of him posing with other celebrities. The show’s set was in New York where he had a nearby apartment as well.

I hated school and having to get up early, though I found middle school to be a little better than elementary school, and high school to be even better. Before I became a ward of the state, that is. I totally loathed math, history and English. Science was ok. My favorites were chorus, gym, and the typing class I had.

I ended up at an alternative school at one point, the last public school I ever attended, if only for a brief time and it wasn’t too bad. That’s because we could get away with murder there. This was in Springfield and there were only a few teachers and students at this school. We could smoke freely and goof off all we wanted. Even our bus driver got high with us!

Throughout most of grade school, I was quite a rebellious little terror. Experts say my behavior problems were linked to the abuse I received at home, or my ear/hearing and ADD. Maybe it stemmed from all of the above. Who knows?

I’d do things like hit or kick students for no apparent reason and steal their snacks. Once, I hid a classmate’s glasses behind some books in a bookcase. I refused to tell the teacher where they were, so the class tore up the classroom in search of them, while I stood out in the hallway, grinning through the little square window of the door.

I played the flute and piano, but didn’t play the flute for long at all.

During the third and fourth grades, I was in the “retard room.” This was for slow learners or troublemakers such as myself.

One particular horrible memory I have of grade school was when I was in the first or second grade. I was afraid to go home that day because my mother had been fuming at me before school. This was because I had to wake her up because I couldn’t find the dress she wanted me to wear that day. I don’t know what went through the teacher’s mind when she thought she could save me by having a schoolmate walk me home, but that was her solution to the matter.

So this boy walked me home. I kept insisting that he not approach the house with me because I knew my mother would be mad if she saw me with a boy, but he stuck to me like glue anyway. As soon as my mother opened the back door the boy blurted out, “She was afraid you were going to hit her so the teacher told me to walk her home.”

Enraged at the thought of outsiders knowing that she hit her children, my mother slapped me right then and there in front of the boy. All I remember after she yanked me into the house, slammed the door on the boy and slugged me, was me huddling fearfully in the corner of the kitchen.

Mr. M, the high school music teacher, was definitely my favorite and the only man I really had a crush on before meeting Tom. He was tall, dark and handsome in every sense of the word. He was like a masculine version of Kate Jackson, also someone I had a crush on. This was when I began to really learn about rejection, for he was infatuated with another student at the time whom he later married.

I had no real friends in high school. Perhaps this was because I only attended Longmeadow High for the last part of my freshman year. From September till after the New Year, I met one-on-one with a private tutor at the Willie Ross School for the Deaf on the other side of town.

This was around the time I started seeing a therapist at the Jewish Family Services center in Springfield. Naturally, when my mother was present, she’d put on her public face. I believe I had to run away for a day in order to earn myself a few therapy sessions at this place. On and off throughout my childhood, I was a member of the Jewish Community Center. One day I hung out in this cave-like thing in the playground instead of going to school. I was also becoming self-destructive, cutting myself and things like that.

Back when I was around ten, I saw a shrink in Boston who recommended I stop having surgery. It was getting to me, that’s for sure. That’s a lot of operations to be having at any age, let alone so young.

This is when they began to control me with drugs, too.

Bio 5

In 1978 we moved from the newer side of Longmeadow to the older section. Although this house was much older, it was bigger and I liked it a lot better. It didn’t have much of a back or front yard. That was ok, though, since I was well past the days of playing outside on swings and in makeshift forts and tents, not that there were any woods in this yard anyway. All there was in back was a hedge separating a small patch of grass from a small brick terrace. There wasn’t much of a front yard, either. In fact, my dad could ditch his sit-down mower for a push-mower and leave the mowing to me. I didn’t mind. It was pretty much all I ever had for chores besides laundry, other than to keep my own territory neat and clean. I didn’t do any cooking. My only kitchen job would be to set the table, clear it off afterward, load the dishwasher, then empty it.

I received a weekly allowance of $10 which I’d spend on cigarettes. A carton of cigarettes was around $5 when I started smoking and ended up being over $20 when I finally quit eighteen years later.

Unlike the first house, which was on a dead-end road, this house was on the corner of a busier street.

It was also a two-story house with four bedrooms. My stereo and guinea pigs lived on one side of the cellar where I’d hang out a lot.

When Nana Bella first came to live with us at the first house, she’d snitch on me for every little thing. Then once she saw how my mom could be at times, she kind of felt sorry for me and we became closer. She even kept her mouth shut when I’d smoke. “Just don’t burn the house down,” she’d tell me.

She died when I was away from home as a ward of the state at age seventeen. Both of my maternal grandparents died two years later.

If I had to pick a timeframe in my life that was the worst, I’d say the teenage years were definitely it. This is when my mother began running out of patience with me, and her pawning me off on others or at other places would escalate. Places that could be even worse than being with her. I truly believe that my mother never wanted kids in the first place and that the only reason she had them was for show, so to speak. She married in a time when kids were expected of any couple.

As a hyper child with wild dreams of becoming a rich and famous singer, I was more than getting on my parents’ nerves. They started ignoring me more, becoming more and more engrossed in TV and outings with friends. I felt I lacked and needed attention. My mother’s control and ridicule were increasing by the minute. It seemed I could do or say nothing right, and as the last of my optimism and confidence faded, my early teens would be when I’d have my first thoughts of suicide.

I took an overdose of sleeping pills, but all it did was make me drowsy. I began to cut my wrists regularly. Actually, I’d hack up my left forearm. I wasn’t doing it to die. I was doing it as a way of channeling and venting my frustrations, my depression, and my growing anger. No one influenced me to do this, either. I never saw anyone do it on TV, never heard anyone talk about it. In fact, I didn’t know anyone else in the world had ever cut themselves.

Although raised Jewish, we rarely went to the temple. Religion wasn’t a regular part of our lives. That was ok with me, for religion is too structured and often bigoted in my opinion.

When I was somewhere between twelve and fourteen, I was walking down the street next to ours one crisp fall day.

“Oh, what a cute sweatshirt,” said this middle-aged woman who was out raking leaves in her front yard.

I looked down at my Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. “Thanks,” I said.

With my hair pulled back in a ponytail, she noticed my ear and questioned me about it. After telling her about it, she informed me that she had a deaf son and that I was welcome to go into her backyard and meet him, so I did.

Jeff was a dark, lanky boy a year older than me with the same exact birthday. He knew sign language well. All I knew at this time was how to fingerspell the alphabet. Jeff taught me many words a day. I’d write down the words I wanted to know and he’d show me the signs for them.

I began to teach myself Spanish at this time too, using books and records. That was all I could do since I knew no Hispanic people to help me. There were no Hispanics that I knew of living in Longmeadow at this time. The only Hispanic people I’d met were this family from Venezuela in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital when I had one of my ear surgeries.

I’d never even seen a black person till I was around ten, or maybe even a little older. “Dark Land,” I’d call the black section of the city whenever we’d drive through it.

I also dabbled a bit in French and shorthand.

Although Jeff and I hung out a lot together, neither of us liked each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. For him, it could’ve been for any reason. For me, it was because I was gay, though I didn’t know or understand that yet. I just knew that women in general were better looking than men in general. I was attracted to what I was attracted to and I didn’t question it. Not when I was attracted to someone I’d see somewhere, or when I was attracted to singer Linda Ronstadt, who’d be one of my favorite singers, or actress Kate Jackson.

The summer of 1980, when I was fourteen, was not a fun one. Instead of being at the beach, my parents were traveling daily, selling eyeglass frames to optometrists. I had just gotten kicked out of camp, and so my mother, not ready for me to come home and spoil her peace, dumped me off in Connecticut at the campground Uncle Marty and Aunt Ruth spent their own summers.

Although I was allowed to take my guitar and new guinea pig with me after losing one that I’d had for two years, I was not a “happy camper.” My only good memories of this time were the day I went water-skiing on the lake. Also, when I went diving with a bunch of other kids from a cliff that was a good fifteen to twenty feet high. It was scary at first, but I found it to be a lot of fun once I got used to it.

Marty and Ruth stayed inside a trailer while I stayed in a small outdoor tent. I didn’t mind the tent. It was my uncle I minded, along with my spineless aunt who went right along with his domineering ways. Believe it or not, though, she was the one that hit me that summer, not him. She slapped me across the face. I’m not sure if I earned that slap for bumming smokes off of others, or for the boy that was in my tent that they were convinced I had dragged in with me.

This kid actually came into the tent one early evening when I least expected it. He sat on my cot next to me as I held my guinea pig on my lap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.

Saying nothing, he pulled my mouth towards his. Before his disgusting lips could touch mine, I heard, “Jodi, who’s in the tent?”

It was my Aunt Ruth. Both of us emerged from the tent, but before I could explain, she’d already made up her mind as to what had happened.

“Get in the trailer!” she demanded, where I would spend the night.

Shortly after this incident, my father came to get me. Before we left, he and Marty and Ruth openly discussed my “problems” as if I weren’t even there.

[kahran042]

Even more incorrect JCGTL quotes!

Brad: Dude, what's with the tux? Jonas: Kiera hasn't asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance yet, so I'm just laying out a little sugar to catch my snake. Nate: Flies. Sugar catches flies. Jonas: What catches snakes? Brad: You gotta wear a snake trap! Chloe: No, you need those metal sticks with the grabber at the end! Nate: My grandmother uses those to get cereal down from her cupboard. Brad: Why are there snakes in your grandmother's cereal?! (Source: 6teen)

Stephen: You must understand, Kiera, your mother had a very terrible childhood. Kiera: I understand. I’m having a very terrible childhood right now. (Source: A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Courtney (to Thom and Kyle): You guys should just fuck and get it over with. (Source: American Dad!)

Morgan: My brother is kinda weird that way. Chloe: Yeah, he's kinda weird a bunch of ways. (Source: Archer)

Mark: Sometimes, I feel like I failed as a brother. Chloe: Sometimes? (Source: Archer)

Jacob: I have two sons. Zach, and another one. (Source: Blackadder)

Brad: Do you think there’s a God? Jonas: Well, somebody’s out to get me. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Jonas: I find my life’s a lot easier the lower I keep everyone’s expectations. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Nick: I’m a man of few words. Jared: Maybe if you read more, you’d have a bigger vocabulary. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Chloe: What're you doing? Justin: I'm writing my autobiography. Chloe: But you're just twelve years old. Justin: I've only got one sheet of paper. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Chloe: What are you doing? Mark: (leaning against a tree) Being “cool”. Chloe: …You just look bored. Mark: The world bores you when you’re cool. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Kiera: I'm not sure what’s sadder - that you’re fighting a kindergartner or that you seem to be losing. Jonas: I'm not losing! Samantha cheats! (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Morgan: Do you ever think about the end of the world as we know it? Kiera: You mean a nuclear war? Morgan: I think Connor was referring to if he ever caught me thumbing through his journal again. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Mark, flexing in a mirror: Made in God's image, that's right. Chloe: I'm glad God has a sense of humor. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes)

Lauren: Lots of people think I'm a tomboy, but I like pretty things too. I can rock a pair of heels! (Source: Crush Crush)

Valerie: Why didn't you buy Mark a birthday present? Chloe: First of all, I have zero money. And second of all, if I DID have money, I wouldn’t be wasting it on Mark. (Source: Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Monica: I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m married to a child. Richard: You better watch who you’re calling a child, Monica. Because if I’m a child then you know what that makes you? A pedophile. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand here and be lectured by a pervert. (Source: Family Guy)

Nate: Why do I always have to figure everything out? I'm 15! (Source: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends)

Sarah: What's this, 'The Jonas, Brad, Chloe, Kiera, Nate, Alicia, Mark, Connor, and Morgan Show'? (Source: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends)

Nate: So for games, I blacked out the names of countries on my world map and wrote them on pieces of paper. Chloe: Nate, those are boring things YOU like. (Source: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends)

Jonas: Nothing beats a mug of hot cocoa on a cold day like today. I love the taste, the chocolaty smell, the way it warms up your hands as you hold it… I love everything about it! Donna: Except making it. Jonas: Please? You're so good at it! (Source: FoxTrot)

Justin: Hey, Mark, want me to make you a PB & J sandwich for lunch? Mark: Sure. *later* Mark: BLECCH! What IS this? Justin: PB & J. Valerie: Justin, why are there jalapeños out? (Source: FoxTrot)

Mark: Connor, how do you know a funeral dirge? Connor: I composed it in honor of my own departure. (Source: Fraggle Rock)

Nate: I'm a worthless coward. Jonas: Nate, it takes a very brave person to admit he's a worthless coward. (Source: Fraggle Rock)

Brad: Uh-oh. Jonas: What? Brad: Somebody's in love. Jonas: Pfff, please. I just think Kiera's cool, okay? It's not like I lie awake at night thinking about her! *Later that night* Jonas (wide awake, thinking about Kiera): Uh-oh. (Source: Gravity Falls)

Jonas: Are you wearing mascara? Connor: Uh, it’s eye-paint for men. (Source: Gravity Falls)

Adrian: Awkward sibling hug? Kiera: Awkward sibling hug. *Adrian and Kiera hug* Adrian and Kiera: Pat, pat. (Source: Gravity Falls)

Richard: My ex-wife still misses me. But her aim is getting better! (Source: Gravity Falls)

Brad: Wow, Jonas, that was so amazing. You're so good at sports, I've always wondered why you don't join a team or anything. Jonas: Because if I got on a team and started playing sports, I'd miss all of my shows. (Source: Lucky Star)

Jonas: I think Kiera hates me now. Brad: Of course she does. You didn't eat her cooking. Jonas: Thanks for rubbing it in. Brad: Well, maybe she doesn't hate you that much. (Source: PaRappa the Rapper 2)

Thom: I hate you, Kyle. Kyle: I hate you more. Thom: I hate you no matter what. Kyle: I'd hate you even if I didn't hate you. Thom: I'd hate you even if that made sense. Kyle: I'd hate you even if you were me. That's how much I hate you. (Source: Spongebob Squarepants)

Alicia: We make a pretty great team. Chloe: You were absolutely no help whatsoever. (Source: Steven Universe)

Morgan: *about Connor* I'm his little sister and sometimes even I don't understand him. (Source: Suikoden II)

Nate: *about one of Jonas' plans* It's a ridiculous idea, but ingenious at the same time. (Source: Sword Art Online)

Connor cast a sexy look! Mark is immobilized! (Source: Terranigma)

Michael: Where's Kyle? Thom: He's probably upstairs combing his hair so he'll be the prettiest boy at the party. Kyle: *combing his hair* I'm going to be the prettiest boy at the party! (Source: The Powerpuff Girls)

Nick: You're gonna eat your words, spit ‘em out, and eat ‘em again! Jonas: That doesn't even make sense. Nick: I know you are, but what am I?! (Source: The Powerpuff Girls)

Zane: Crap! I promised Sarah I'd go out with her today. I am the most evil man in the Three Kingdoms! (Source: Tokimeki Memorial)

Morgan: *singing* But when I think about it, if we search for lovers together, Sarah: *singing* One of us will be left behind when the other finds someone… Morgan: *singing* I’m sorry for being your rival! Sarah: *singing* Even I feel the same, so Morgan and Sarah: *singing* From now on, how about we just become a couple? Sarah: …There's no way that's happening, right? Morgan: *disappointed* …Yeah. (Source: Vocaloid)

[sarcastic-salem]

I bought womens’ clothes for the first time in five years. That’s one of the things I’ve realized I missed the most — the clothing and the accessories, the soft colors, and fun shapes like hearts, flowers, or teddy bears. Mens’ clothing feels angry lately — “nice” clothes come in neutral colors like black, grey, navy, or khaki. Casual clothes come in bright, loud primary colors and they’re decorated in crude jokes.

I don’t mind crude jokes. I like them — I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old. But I feel like seeing them everywhere just contributes to the stereotype that a lot of guys are meatheads without a single mature bone in their bodies. And the ones who aren’t wear stiff polos. Personally, I can’t think of anything uglier or more offensive than a polo.

I’m not gonna lie — that’s partially because of trauma. It reminds me of my childhood hometown which was filled with classist, middle-class gossips and drug addicts. My family — well, my mom’s family — had lived there for years before I was born and they had…….A reputation for being violent and destructive, especially my grandmother and aunts.

So a lot of the middle-class families that lived nearby really hated my mom. She used to be sort of a party girl before I was born and before that she was just…..An asshole who would jump people she didn’t like with her friends and sisters (she has nine but there might be more). She used to brag about it🙄

And the other thing is polos seem so symbolic of just being trapped inside a cubicle.

I just really missed the softer elements of femininity and womens’ clothing, I guess. And I’m tired of my life feeling like some sort of political rebellion. I’m nonbinary but that doesn’t mean I should have to spend the rest of my life pissed off at straight people or the government or whoever. I’m tired of being angry.

I am angry, though.

I’ve been off my hormones for almost a month, and I look more feminine now…..More like how I looked pre-transition. I was one of those people who was really awkward and ugly as a kid. Then I grew up and suddenly, I was attractive. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I don’t quite buy into the idea.

But people look at me differently now. They’re nicer, they smile at me, they check me out. And, honestly, it makes me sick seeing the difference between then and now.

Loki thinks I shouldn’t fixate on it, so I try not to. Its hard sometimes, though. I went grocery shopping on Friday, and caught three different people just staring. And I just stood there, praying they wouldn’t talk to me or do something like insist that I give them my number or vice versa. Then the only way I can get rid of them is by blocking them on my phone.

That’s happened before.

Multiple times.

[glitterytidalwavedragon]

Uninvited (Sesshomaru x Modern Reader Part 3)

It officially has a title! :D I am very excited this tumblr exclusive, at least for now, has a title and I even started to brain storm how to make this more complex for AO3 if it ever ends up there. This might just be a different story all together. I am going to go back to my other parts and put the links for the following section in each. So part 1 will take you to part 2, part 2 to 1 and 3 and so on and so forth.

I am very excited for this. I am having so much fun just writing this short story it’s been a blast!

Here we go!

Part 1

Part 2

Sesshomaru returned to the stars twinkling above him. He was indeed back where he belonged. No sooner had he jumped from the well did his half-brother dash to greet him. There were a lot of questions shooting off from his mouth annoyingly quickly. Landing on the soft grass with effortless grace, Sesshomaru flipped his hair over his right shoulder and began to walk in he direction of the village. Inuyasha spouted insults towards him which the demon lord ignored. Sesshomaru wanted to know if any time had passed while he was on the other side. Was it a few days, months, years? Whatever the case, he would find out by checking on one creature.

Entering the hut, he was relieved to be greeted by a youthful smile. She was still small, still innocent and still beamed to see him. She was around twelve now, and in a few years, she would wed and carry on a life most mortals did. The slayer boy had been visiting more and more, and he knew the time they would share was growing short. Quietly, he took his usual place in the corner of the room, sitting with on arm resting on his knee with eyes closed as she talked about what she had been doing for the pass three days.

Sesshomaru never expected to be taken into the role of fatherhood. The demon lord had an empire to build and one which would surpass his own father at that. He had little time to spend, and whatever free time he deemed, he used visiting Rin. Even if he did leave her in the care of the old priestess to train her in matters which were human, he showed her a world humans could only dream of or imagine. That was how he raised her, to be strong and to go beyond the limits of her human expectations. However, it was her sudden change in topic to the slayer boy which stopped his breathing and had him open his eyes.

Rin did not look at him as she talked about their trip to the lake. Her cheeks turned red at how she described how they playfully pushed each other in the water and laid upon the grass. Perhaps she would be leaving her childhood behind faster than he expected. The large and warm smile on his face told him that maybe sometime soon, once young slayer boy would be approaching him as a man and ask for Rin. Closing his eyes again, he listened, enjoying the moments he would have now. Tomorrow, he would work on deciding if the faith of demons really were doomed to never walk on the Earth again.

~*~

You did not sleep the first night he left. You honestly expected him to jump scare you out of nowhere. You don’t really know why, but you had come to figure that maybe he had a twisted sense of humor. Then again these were half tired thoughts as you also imagined what on Earth he had to do to keep his hair so beautiful while being in a time where shampoo and conditioner were not a thing. The first day he was gone, you were unsure if it all really happened. Until you were recruited to put in the new door for the well’s shrine. On the second day, you were reminded why you came to Japan in the first place.

Excitedly you opened your letter, a hopeful smile on your face as you read the first line. As your eyes travelled down the page, your smile fell. Another rejection letter. Pressing your lips tightly together you sighed through your nose. You would have to make another one and try again. That lead to hours of staying up late, pens, papers, textures, cutting, and everything else. You would make another thirty-page pilot for a new manga idea you had brewing in the back burner. You had a binder of ideas, and you would make comics for each of them until one was a hit. As you worked long and hard, you only called it a night when you began to see double on the paper.

When the third day arrived, you had forgotten about the promise the demon had made to return the following day. Shivering slightly at the chill breeze that went passed, you swore as the pile of leaves you swept were blow away. You were really too tired to deal with nature working against you. Grumbling to yourself, you walked over to the scattered leaves and began piling them again only for them to again escape you. Letting your arm go slack, you looked to the sky and whimpered. Today was not your day.

“Miss, could you direct me to the ancient tree?”

Now I have tourist to deal with. Putting on your best smile you turned to the person. “Su-re”. You blinked in surprise at the person. You could not completely tell if they were male or female, but they were beautiful in their traditional clothing.

“Thank you.” They smiled happily.

You lead the way and tried not to think of the person behind you. They had other plans.

“I came for an errand for my dad. My sisters are somewhere around here with my grandmother. Probably at the gift shot.”

“Ahuh, are you locals?” You looked over your shoulder.

He gave a toothy grin. “Kind of. We own some land outside the city.” Charisma oozed off the young man.

“I see.” You faced forward and stopped in front of the tree. “Here’s the sacred tree-what are you doing?”

The young man whistled as he kicked up some dirt. You began to panic as you looked around in fear that the old man would come storming out the gift shop, yelling at you and the guest.

“Ah, there it is.” You looked back over to see him pull out an old box before filling the hole and patting it down. “This should do it.” He dropped some kind of powder on the ground before walking towards you. “Thanks for your help.”

“W-w-wait! That could belong to the old man!” You panicked.

“Nah. The only old man this belongs to is one who can be a real pain to live with.” He chuckled as he pocketed the box. “See you around.”

As he began walking he stopped and looked at you from the corner of his eyes. “By the way, don’t let anyone bully you. You’re a lot tougher than you give yourself credit for.”

“HEY!”

You called but he just waved at you to join a group of three waiting by the shrine steps. As you watched them walk off, your brain did some mental math… none of those people with him looked old enough to be a grandmother.

~*~

“You were meant to avoid her.” A stern famine voice directed at the young man.

“Eh, I got curious. Wouldn’t you be.”

“You were told…”

“Ah! You worry too much.” The other young woman stated to the other.

“He should know better! We shouldn’t go easy on him since hes the baby.”

“I guess…”

“Children, children.” The older appearing woman called, a smirk on her painted lips. “He can’t help himself. Afterall, his namesake should be enough to explain his actions.” She watched as he pulled the hairpin from the box. “Isn’t that right, Toga?”

The young man smiled as he held up the pin. “You would know, grandmother.”

I made an image of what his son might look like based on how Sesshomaru's other children look. And I am very happy with how it came out!!!! I really enjoyed writing this and I super enjoyed making this autumn artwork!!!!!

This was meant to be a modern Sesshomaru but went against it cause the hair. Already working on how he might look, just fyi!

Thank you everyone for the support! It means loads!

[weirdmageddon]

five years too late let’s analyze this. the commentary has gotten me back into gravity falls reigniting thoughts and insights i came to years ago

i love everything about this commentary in general it hits the points of humor, genuine analysis of the characters, but most of all im so glad hirsch addressed that the droid not detecting any fear from dipper here doesnt make any scientific sense because that was a massive CinemaSins moment for me

IDK the fact that dipper can fucking stand after an airship crash because theres a bigger threat at hand is literally one of the defining capabilities owed to adrenaline lol...... IM SORRY im a biopsychology student if i dont point that out iwill seethe and die because that was just . its a grudge ive held for a long time about this episode but didnt rant about because it was something so minor and i’m sure nobody would care.

i was 13 when this episode came out and i’m almost 19 now, i had a special interest in biology and i still do but now i’m actually having college classes in biopsychology so i can give my arguments more oomph now. and i have to say, now that i know more about the brain and autonomic nervous system the more this scene bugs me, if that was even possible. and it says a lot of dipper and ford’s relationship.

if dipper clearly wasnt calm before, why would he be now just because he’s put up an outwardly confident facade? before he was in the flight but now hes in the fight. my boy just rode on top of a spaceship by nothing but a magnet gun that could detach at any time if it failed and then the ship crashed, he sustained injuries, is in emotional turmoil because he thinks his uncle is Fucking Dead and the threat of a security droid that detects adrenaline is on his tail and produces a Big Fucking Gun in response to dipper saying “i hAvE a MaGNeT gUn” and hes screaming and has his teeth clenched but sure there’s no adrenaline coursing through his body in that moment i can totally believe that

when dipper asks what happened, ford says “the orb didn’t detect any chemical signs of fear, it assumed the threat was neutralized and self-disassembled” but i don’t think measuring someone’s heartbeat alone is particularly relevant in detecting ... chemical signs of fear?? they dont really tell you this shit but noradrenaline (and maybe adrenaline too if the acetylcholine from sympathetic outflow always activates the adrenal medulla??, theres two pathways) is always active in small quantities to make sure your parasympathetic nervous system doesnt slow your heart to dangerous levels on its own, regardless of your emotions. it’s just a homeostatic mechanism. your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are CONSTANTLY modulating control of your organs on a see-saw, literally with every breath you take. simply standing upright causes specialized mechanoreceptor neurons in blood vessels to signal your brain to project signals to release catecholamines via the sympathetic nervous system to constrict your blood vessels so that blood is able to reach your brain and not pool in your legs. i have a deficiency in my body’s ability to adapt to this which is why i know so much about it. if i stand up my heart races to compensate. i’m not feeling fear, my body is just adjusting—albeit grossly and incompetently lol.

but what im saying here is that the security system is flawed. it’s a cool idea to have security droids detect fear, but in practice by detecting adrenaline, and not even directly by detecting the molecule itself—it’s done in a roundabout way by reading the heartbeat, could be a recipe for false alarms. like what if someone’s on beta-blockers. that’s not really an adequate way to measure “fear”; there’s so many variables that could interfere with the measurement the farther you abstract from what you’re really trying to detect. and besides, adrenaline is NOT just a sign of fear, it’s just for preparing the body for action. i know the sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline is constantly linked with the “fight-or-flight” reaponse to a stressor, but 99.9% of the time the sympathetic nervous system is used in your life is to balance out your parasympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostatic equilibrium for mundane things.

i think detecting amygdalar activation would be more efficient in detecting fear. the amygdala sends projections to the hypothalamus which then in turn modulates the autonomic nervous systems. but the amygdala is intensely activated specifically in response to a fear-inducing stimulus (it does activate in response to other emotions but they’re mostly negative and is most activated by startle and fear), and wouldnt be highly activated by many other confounding variables like measurement of the heartbeat could be. the amygala is one of the first stops directly from external stimuli.

to show you how integrated the amygdala is as the first step in registering fear after receiving input from sensory stimuli let’s look at the auditory-amygdala connection for example

see how the auditory thalamus projects to the primary auditory cortex and auditory association cortex? the cortex is where conscious awareness of what the stimuli is comes from. this is the “high road”. it goes sensing -> perception -> emotional response. but sometimes you can be startled without even processing what it is you’re sensing, like the startle response of an alarm or a phone ringing in a quiet house before you even register what it is. this goes sensing -> emotional response, without perception happening until after you’ve already felt the startle. that’s when it takes the “low road”. here’s a simplified version:

even if that were the case with these droids though it’s obvious dipper is still fearful on some level here. his body language, voice, expressions all give it away. for the amygdala, aggression isnt too off from fear so it would be detected equally.

the reason this is so important is because ford uses this as evidence for why dipper is special, “i did it?” “you did it. this is what i was talking about, how many 12 year olds do you think are capable of doing what you’ve just done?”

but like....did he really? i’m not saying this to shoot dipper down or make him out to be more of a wuss, he was incredibly strong-willed here and i dont want to take that away from him because it WAS growth on his part. but the underlying psychophysiological reactions of aggression and fear shouldn’t be that different and this was a total asspull. maybe the droid was so old that it fucked up. maybe dipper being covered in grime and dirt made it harder for the droid to measure the correct heart rate through photoplethysmography (im assuming since they use a camera and are non-contact).

and in all honesty everything i just said brings into question the interpersonal healthiness of ford’s judgements, what he thinks, his expectations, and how he communicates that. in this video alex already talks about how ford is projecting onto dipper. and i think ford may be projecting his expectations for himself onto people who are not him, and the fact that it’s on dipper here makes it far more unfortunate. you realize how much this boy idolizes ford, right? how much impressions matter? dipper even tells himself before he leaves in this same episode, “all right dipper, this is your first big mission with great uncle ford. don’t mess this up.”

even though it’s unstated, the implicit message dipper is perceiving from ford based on their dynamic is: “do you have what it takes for me to be proud of you?” and to accomplish this he must be like ford, even though he’s clearly not and he knows this. he says “i don’t think have what it takes. i was tricked by bill, i was wrong about stan’s portal, heck, i can’t even operate this magnet gun right.” then, by simple chance without even knowing what he did, he activates the magnet gun and pulls out the adhesive, which immediately takes the focus away from what dipper was telling ford about his feelings of inadequacy to ford saying, “yes! dipper, you found the adhesive!”

these thoughts of dipper’s hang in the air without resolve or comment from ford. we don’t know what ford would have said. but it then becomes painfully self-evident in the scene immediately after when the droids emerge and ford tells dipper, “they’re security droids and they detect adrenaline. you simply have to not feel any fear and they won’t see you”, to which dipper replies with an exasperated (and rightful) “WHAT?”

dipper goes in a panic trying to indirectly tell his uncle that this isn’t something he can do. and he is completely right and valid to be freaked out by that full stop. that IS crazy. you can’t control your fear. you can control how you interpret that fear in your higher brain regions but the physiological changes will stick around for longer than it takes to cognitively calm down. it’s easy for me to detach from my emotions to analyze them, but being able to do this does not come naturally for everyone. even i have an irrational fear of wasps and i can’t control it by detaching myself, my body is just automatically primed to get the fuck out of there. i know it’s stupid and i know it’s irrational and isn’t helpful to get myself worked up but i literally can’t stop how my body reacts no matter how i cognitively think about it. expecting composure from dipper in a situation like this when he’s being made to consciously be aware of his anxiety is absolutely fucking insane. look what you did, placing these cruel expectations on him, now he’s afraid of being afraid! this isn’t a case where two wrongs cancel out, they just stack on top of each other.

there’s a good reason these scenes were put side by side but it seems up until now it had remained unanalyzed.

what dipper fears from ford is disappointment. not living up to his uncle’s (quite frankly badly placed) expectations for a twelve year old with anxiety. not once did ford say or subliminally communicate “i don’t expect you to be able to do what i can since you are not as experienced as i am and that’s perfectly okay, no judgements”. you don’t put a child on bike before training wheels. you don’t throw a kid into a swimming pool without giving them swimming lessons. the way ford is doing it, there’s no room for trial and error or mistakes that are an opportunity to grow and learn; instead, it’s life or death. he only seems to pride dipper on what he can do while ignoring the underlying struggles that plague him and never making it known it’s okay for dipper to fail in front of his hero and that he won’t think anything less of him for it.

and that’s why i found the ending scene for dipper and ford’s adventure in this episode to feel so.. wrong. on a scientific and social level. because by the sound of it ford focused more on what dipper had done to dismantle the droid (the droid not detecting any fear) instead of how dipper displayed love and protection for him even if he was truly afraid. what if the science was accurate and the droid detected adrenaline while dipper was confidently standing up for his uncle. would ford still be proud of him regardless?

[frgdstars]

emily alyn lind, pansexual, cis female + she/her ― hey look, it’s lexi hartwood! they’re twenty-two years old, they’ve lived in shrike heights for five years, and they’re currently working at sunrise drive in and theatre . i heard they’re pretty self destructive, but i think they’re so emphatic at the same time. can they make it out alive? || 

tw: death mention (very brief), depression (brief), addiction (brief)

lexi hartwood was the only child born to mrs and mr hartwood. she has an older sibling that was adopted into the family when lexi was five years old, her sibling being nine at the time, and she adores them with her whole heart. the hartwood’s didn’t have much but what they did have they were not shy to share with those around them; a trait that for a brief period of time was passed down to lexi as well. if there was one thing everyone agreed with when it came to lexi hartwood, even from birth, it was that she had a light in her that wanted to shine bright.

growing up she was extremely close to her mother. she would often join her mom on long car rides while she searched for a job or went to interviews. lexi can tell stories of all the times they would get lost, they would laugh, but eventually with their teamwork they always found their way back home. she wasn’t ashamed to say her mother was her best friend either, often the two would also go to the theatre together and watch film after film (though sometimes their double features came at the price of one). things for lexi, and all the hartwoods, would change entirely when lexi was twelve years old. (death tw) her mother passed from an illness she simply never recovered from (end tw).

her father was very attentive to her and her sibling at first, but he soon dove into work and his whisky a bit more than looking after the family he had left. she was never too sure how her older sibling felt about their father’s detachment but lexi simply accepted it and adapted to the changes as best as she possibly could. although she didn’t speak much about it, the passing of her mother hit her extremely hard. there are nights even to this day in which she finds herself crying and asking ‘why?’. she’s taken on lighting a candle every night for an hour and allowing herself that time to just cry, laugh, or vent to her mother and she has found that’s helped her cope a bit.

NOW: now a days she works at the movie theatre inside of the shrike mall, a job she decided to take up because it reminds her of the fond memories she shared with her mom  at the movies once upon a time. despite her darker look these days, sarcastic, dry sense of humor, lexi still has a heart of gold buried deep within her. she’s very much into horror, rock and roll, and anything space related you can think of. she’s the kind of person you call up at 3am and be assured she’ll pick regardless if she is asleep or not. (addiction tw) one day at the age of nineteen she went to a party and was introduced to the drug she is now dependent on. she’s turned to snorting blow in order to help her numb the sadness she still feels over the loss of her mother. (end tw)