#that last one is from what someone said Heart was like writing haiku and i’ve been thinking about it ever since

[breadhalfburnt]

i have been rotating these guys around in my brain for days and i haven’t been able to access my drawing tablet in weeks. i am going insane. so enjoy some doodles!

[psychewritesbs]

Chapter 217: Bath, part 2—Cursed Lover: Introduction to the Psychology of Romantic Love 101

Cursed lovey-dovey JJK Sunday! 

I know this chapter in specific has had polarizing reactions but I personally loved how unserious it is and I LOVE YOROZU! crazy bitch I love her

There are no coincidences in this world, what is there is hitsuzen 必然. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been re-visiting the Psychology of Romantic Love. So when this chapter dropped with its implications of one-sided love, I couldn’t not write about it.

So just a heads up, in the spirit of chasing after my own love-induced delusions, I went on the usual massive tangent and wrote about LOVE under the cut. 

Thing is... and this is just a theory but... love is the most twisted curse of them all.

愛よ。

So anyways... 

And yes... this is also a Depth Psychology lecture.

That said...

Welcome to Introduction to the Psychology of Romantic Love 101.

Drunk in love

First, I’m not going to do an in-depth exploration of the Psychology of Romantic love here because I am saving that for a different essay that I am working on. So what you’ll find is more of a brief introduction to this complex subject.

Second, DESPITE the impression you might get from reading this, I am actually a romantic who willingly and perhaps rather foolishly loves/hates to get drunk in love. 

Third, music is perhaps one of the best ways to convey something as indescribable such as love. So you’ll find I drop specific lyrics and song titles for reference. Feel free to listen to, skip or ignore. 

That said, I’ll also admit that since I started re-visiting the Psychology of Romantic Love, I’ve literally been looking for the right opportunity to drop these two song titles: Lovefool by The Cardigans, and Drunk in Love by Béyonce and her babydaddy, Jay-Z.

And while Lovefool is more appropriate for a one-sided obsession (I think we’ve long since left “crush” territory) such as Yorozu’s...

So I cry and I pray and I beg

Love me love me Say that you love me Fool me fool me Go on and fool me Love me love me Pretend that you love me Leave me leave me

The idea of being drunk in love also applies quite well. In the Psychology of Romantic Love, this is known as “drinking the love potion” by Depth Psychologists. 

Boy, I'm drinking, get my brain right

In drinking the love potion, the lover (aka the one doing the loving) is privy to experiencing the magic realms of the heart--the beauty of love itself. This is what is described as the usual symptoms of being in love, like butterflies in your chest or stomach and having an overall dreamy temperament.

The problem with drinking the love potion often lies in the delusions that are inherent to being drunk in love. At their best, these delusions are nothing more than an overall feeling of pleasantness, sort of like seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. But at their worse, these delusions can alter how the lover perceives reality itself.

But don’t take my word for it, when it comes to describing what it’s like to observe someone who is drunk in love from drinking the love potion, Fuel said it best in their song Shimmer: 

She dreams a champagne dream Strawberry surprise Pink linen on white paper Lavender and cream Fields of butterflies Reality escapes her

What I love most about Yorozu being completely out of touch with reality is that her version of “lavender and cream” and “fields of butterflies�� is more akin to destroying 3 villages and writing haiku about the decapitated head of the most handsome man in each of those villages.

crazy bitch I love her

Tainted love

Also, can we stop and appreciate how comical this whole page is?

Gege, of course, uses the Sakura trees in full bloom in the panel above (cut off) as well as Sakura blossoms raining down on Yorozu and Sukuna--a trope commonly used to emphasize the ephemeral nature of beauty that can also evoke romantic undertones.

If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting Japan during Hanami season and gotten to see Sakura blossoms falling, its undeniable how poetic and beautiful such a mundane spectacle is.

But, just as I am exploring the darker side of love in this ramble, you can be sure there is shadow side to the Sakura trees. 

What if there was a more sinister reason as to why the cherry blossoms are pink?

Just the way Gege is exploring corrupted and twisted love through Yorozu, In Tokyo Babylon, CLAMP uses cherry blossoms as a corrupted symbol of love--tainted love that corrupts (cue Marilyn Manson’s version of Tainted Love).

Sometimes I feel I've got to run away I've got to get away From the pain you drive into the heart of me

Once I ran to you (I ran) Now I run from you This tainted love you've given

That's what I meant when I shared how I would have liked to see what it means for the King of Curses, Sukuna, to “love” or have a one-sided crush. Basically I headcanon Sukuna’s love language is inflicting pain.

But Sukuna isn’t necessarily running from Yorozu because he’s not digging the pain she dishes with her tainted love but more because... well... she’s so delusional she annoys him. I can see why Kenny asked Sukuna why he’d go see her.

But since Yorozu is the one dishing pain with her tainted love, I loved that her love language is basically to die in the name of the Beloved--whether she’s the one who dies or its Sukuna.

In German, liebstod is a word for a kind of love that is so unreal and so Divine, that it can only be achieved in death.

“I want you to be the one to kill me...

I want you to be the one who hurts me...

... as the ultimate expression of my love for you.”

crazy bitch I love her

To quote Jungian Analyst, Jim Hollis, “to love the Other, with all the Other’s presumed power to hurt us, requires a substantial amplitude of soul, an enlargement of one’s sense of self”.

Not me using a quote from Dr. Hollis to write about JJK because he talks about the sense of self.

After all, is there a greater form of showing one’s devotion for the Beloved than by baring our bleeding heart and offering it on a silver platter to say “I trust you”? that or maybe I’m just twisted af too. like... is that why I'm still single? bahaha

Absolute love corrupts absolutely.

The Demon Lover

There’s also something to be said about how Yorozu’s tainted love is also a reflection of her psychoemotional development as an individual--which is an interesting thing to say given her vessel is a teenager with a history of childhood neglect and abandonment.

Now, part of what is so comical about Yorozu is that everything from her reactions, her behavior, and her obsession with Sukuna are, quite literally, so infantile.

That’s because Yorozu’s love appears to be stuck in a level of ego development that objectifies the “object of her affection”, Sukuna, and sees it as something to be claimed and owned. She sees it as her duty to the Beloved to subdue him with her power.

Ironically, as Jung himself used to say, “where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”

Jungian Analyst, John Haule further tells us that “the goal of love appears to be nothing less than a loss of ego.”

He adds that the Demon Lover archetype is often constellated in romantic relationships when the lover lacks the psychoemotional maturity to see the delusions caused by the love potion as a projection of one’s shadow onto the Beloved.

Instead, we are invited to consider that this kind of love is more like an addiction.

Or in the words of Børns’ Electric Love...

Drown me (drown me), you make my heart beat like the rain Surround me (oh), hold me deep beneath your waves

Baby, you're like lightning in a bottle I can't let you go now that I got it And all I need is to be struck By your electric love

Which, thematically, is so perfect for a story like Jujutsu Kaisen where selfishly prioritizing satisfying the hedonistic and fleeting desires of the ego sense of self is what drives the strongest sorcerers.

crazy bitch I LOVE HER BECAUSE SHE’S SO RELATABLE AF!

Thank you if you’ve made it this far. 

I hope you have a cursed lovey-dovey JJK-Sunday!

[solacefruit]

For the ask meme, 3) and 17), please? And maybe 25) if you're up to it? Irrelevant but I'm the Tormentil- missing/Harrierpaw ruddles from Ailuronymy – I love your writing too, it's amazing! (I'm very excited for a potential Riverclan full-length story, like MAMS, at some point – even if I have to wait quite a while)

Hello there! Thank you so much for saying so, that’s lovely to hear. Please don’t hold your breath for a Riverclan novel, though! It’s not even on my concept list at this point and there’s a lot of other stories, including full-length ones, I’m going to be attempting first. So it’s not impossible for me to write a Riverclan one--it would be pretty neat to have a novel for each clan--but I can’t promise it’ll ever happen at this stage. Maybe! But also maybe not. It’s a mystery for me too.

Now on to your questions!

Send an ask: get to know the author.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favourite scenes first? Something else?

For all my Warriors work so far, I’ve written from beginning to end. In part that’s just because of the episodic nature of chapters, but also I’d say that’s my default approach for all my writing. When I get into original fiction--and especially big original fiction, novel-length work--I expect I’ll be taking a much more flexible approach, probably jumping around based on the vibe sometimes, but I like linearity because the first draft is really just getting the building blocks on the page. After that point, then you start really sculpting and being clever with it and moving bits around once you have a sense of the whole.

But for me, I think that first stage is more about getting a clarity of purpose and a rough outline--and that can be done pretty well with front-to-back writing. 

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Don’t sweat it. That stuff you think is important is completely not important at all. You’re doing all this nitty-gritty obsessive researching and “world-building” pointless, mundane aspects of the world because you: 1. are procrastinating actually writing; 2. have been tricked into thinking that’s what the “good” “serious” fantasy writers do, because that’s what a lot of boring old guys you don’t even like to read do and brag about, and you’re still believing can’t be a good fantasy writer without that, because that’s the popular image of a fantasy writer; & 3. are scared if you’re not perfect and exact in every detail, people are going to tear your writing apart for being “inaccurate” or making a mistake. 

That’s no way to live. You don’t like doing it, really. You’re trying to preempt criticism from people who weren’t ever going to like your writing anyway, and I think you know that. You’re trying to imitate authors you don’t even want to write like, because you think what they write is kind of boring and flat and it’s really straight and you sort of hate it, but you feel you should since it’s what’s “right”.

But you’re not being authentic to yourself, or your vision, or your talent, or what you want to write, and you should be. 

It’s really not your fault you feel this way, but you’re going to be so much happier when you realise this version of a fantasy writer is all total hokum and not your style and instead start writing what you want to, the way you want to. People are really going to like what you’re bringing to the table. It’s going to set you apart and you’re going to love writing fantasy that’s a bit weird and kooky and self-indulgent and fun and queer and all the things those old books just aren’t. 

I can’t stress how liberating it will be to put on heart-shaped pink sunglasses and decide that the most important thing your writing has to be is genuine and fun for you. You never wanted to write realist fiction anyway. Secondary worlds forever. 

25. Copy-paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

I thought about it for a bit because something I never do here is share any poetry I write, despite writing a decent amount of it. Partly that’s just not this blog’s audience, but also a lot of it I hope one day to put into publication, if only in a little chapbook. That said, I wrote this a while back on commission for someone’s character who was deathly ill and his lovers left behind, so I don’t mind sharing it now. It’s a tanka set (5-7-5-7-7, a bit like a haiku). 

summer has four hands,  he remembers, and twenty  loving fingertips-- and it doesn't end, ever;  it lasts a lifetime--at least, in his heart--even as his own fingertips grew slow and cold, his hands too weak to return a touch, to reach out and hold on, to find comfort in their  warm skin and promise them that he would be okay: each new winter weighed him down with the too-familiar  tiredness of a body with not quite enough life in it, like a garden under the frost, cold and withdrawn at the edges of the leaves, waiting for a sunrise that isn't coming. The ground, he remembers, was solid as stone under the snow that last winter, a final  cruel laugh from the world, as though giving him to the  earth--as though burying a lover--was not hard enough for them already-- but it was a pain that time alone could heal; so he waited, in the place so near and so far away, until the seasons moved once more and time brought them to his open hands, ten fingertips made of light, never to let go again. when he remembers the living world, he thinks of it better than it  was and forgives it for the brevity and falling snow.

[hyphypmic]

Hi hewwo bby girl yk who this is❣️ could u write me a saburo scenario where his crush confesses to him through smol puzzles thankies❣️

SCHOOL AND WORK IMMERSION IS A BITCH I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this! Thanks mom for the request!

Saburo wasn’t sure when it started, but he remembered all of the puzzles he found in his locker.

1.

“Eh?” Saburo’s classmate sat next to him. “What’s that you’re fidgeting with?”

Saubro cocked his head. “I’m not sure?” He was holding some sort of Rubik’s cube with a letter written on the center square of each side and a heart. Of course he solved it already, but the letters made no sense.

I mean, they formed a word, but Saburo couldn’t figure out why the letters R-H-U-S-C formed the word CRUSH (and there was a heart).

“I think you might have a secret admirer.” His classmate snatched the cube out of Saburo’s hands and studied it. Saburo felt the irrational desire to take it back.

“Who would admire me?” Saburo mumbled and took it back.

The classmate shrugged. “Not sure.” She smiled at him. “Maybe someone who finds you incredibly smart.”

“That narrows it down.” Saburo said sarcastically.

“And cute maybe.” She looked away, blushing slightly, but Saburo failed to notice this because he was still studying the cube.

“I’ll figure this out.” Saburo said, twisting the cube again. “She didn’t even leave a note.”

“Maybe she wants it to be a mystery?”

“I guess? But I want to find out who she is.” He looked up at his classmate then cleared his throat and then looked away.

“Hopefully.” She replied.

2.

“This code really makes no sense whatsoever.” Saburo scratched his head. “I’ve really tried everything.”

“Letter to alphabet?” She took her seat beside his again for homeroom. Apparently, Saburo had found another puzzle in his locker.

“Yep.”

“Atbash?”

“Yep.”

“Binary?”

“There’s not enough zeroes and ones.”

“Hmm….” She sighed, a kind of resigned sigh really and she opened her book. Her eyes widened. “Shit.”

Saburo looked up at her. “What?”

She slammed her head into the book. “How long did it take you to do the homework on Caesar?”

“Caesar?” Saburo thought to last week when he finished it. “Um… three hours?”

“Perfect. I can do it in one.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

“Caesar…” He bit his lip and stared at the paper (which was burned and smelled like coffee, he figured his admirer was artistic as well as smart and extra), he tried something and it clicked into place. He grabbed the hand of his classmate and smiled at her. “You’re a genius!”

“Eh?”

“Caesar’s cipher!”

“Three letters back?”

“Yeah!” Saburo slapped his forehead. “It’s so simple why didn’t I think of it?”

She squeezed his hand. “Sometimes the hardest things to see are right in front of you.”

He smiled at her and looked at their hands that we’re still touching. He blushed slightly and let go. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

He set to work on the code, and in no time he deciphered it. It was a short poem, a haiku if you will.

You make me happy

When you smile brightly at me

Next time you’ll know me

“Next time you’ll know me?” Saburo cocked his head. “Oh my. She’ll tell me soon?”

“I guess?”

Saburo looked absolutely excited. “I hope it’s not too easy though. This is actually kind of fun.”

“I’m glad you like it.” She mumbled under her breath, softly enough so Saburo won’t hear. “Anyway.” She said louder. “Hope you find out who that is soon.”

“Me too!”

3.

What Saburo said about it not being easy, well it definitely wasn’t.

Instead of having just one puzzle in his locker, he had a map of the school (which each location was written in morse or binary code) and he had to go to the places in a specific order (thankfully it was just a dotted line and arrows.

There was a note that told him to do it after class only, so that no one would really interrupt him.

Saburo couldn’t sit still the whole day and barely paid attention in class as he was trying to glean any hints from the map. (Of course he got none of the sort.)

“You’re not paying attention.” The girl beside him whisper-teased.

“This is… quite exciting.” He showed her the map.

“Is that binary?”

“Yeah.” He translated the locations just for the sake of it. “And morse too. It’s kind of cool how she mixed them up.”

She smiled. “Really?”

“Keeps me thinking.” He tapped his pencil to his lips.

“Mr. Yamada.” The teacher called and Saburo flinched. “If you would be so kind to answer the question on the board.”

“Busted.” She teased, which got her a small slap on the arm as retribution.

Later that day, Saburo stood in front of his locker, where the map said where he should start.

The first stop was the library, where he found a riddle (written in navy flag code) which told him to go find a book in the history section.

The Dewey Decimal code was written in binary on the paper.

He flipped through said book (which he found in the children’s section of the history section) and found a clue for the puzzle in the next location.

He brought the clue to the gym and he found five basketballs in a row. He would have to pick the right one or else he wouldn’t be able to pass. (Well logically, of course the gym doors wouldn’t be locked because that would put both him and his admirer in a stint, but it gave him thrill to imagine if it didn’t open.)

Kind of like his favourite Harry Potter moment, you know, the one with Hermione and the potions. Harry could have died if she picked the wrong one, but she really got through the riddle and solved it. He was a huge Harry Potter nerd, and he had to appreciate his admirer to making something of the sort.

He picked the third basketball from the right and it was attached to a super thin string, If he had noticed it before, it would’ve been a lot easier.

“Yes!” He shouted and his voice echoed in the empty gym. He blushed, even if no one was watching. He was behaving like a child who just got candy as a prize.

He pulled on the basketball and pulled the rope. It extended to the bleachers and at the end of it,  another paper was apparently attached.

Saburo was actually enjoying this and was excited when he picked it up.

The code was written in morse again, plus the Caesar cipher. The riddle said that it was the last puzzle he had to solve.

The next location was… Saburo stopped right outside the door. His classroom? He stepped inside and found a note on the teacher’s table. It was just a sequence of numbers and arrows.

3 up, 2 left, 4 right, 7 up, 9 down, 1 left

And another note written at the bottom, Saburo sat down on the teacher’s table and translated it from Morse to numbers to letters.

Start from the back. Face the board. Opposites attract.

Saburo picked up the paper with the numbers and the arrows and moved to the back of the classroom.

“They’re steps.” He mumbled and started. It didn’t make sense though, because his classroom didn’t really fit that many- oh. Opposites. Saburo restarted and this time it made sense.

He found himself in front of the seat beside his. “What?”

There was a post-it taped to the table.

He picked it up, and written in his seat mate’s handwriting were two words.

“Found me.”

Saburo whirled around to find his classmate at the door. She entered so quietly he didn’t notice.

“Hi.” She said timidly. Her face was sporting a blush and she chewed on her lip nervously as she swayed on the spot. “Um…”

Saburo pocketed the note and slowly walked to her. “You?”

“Me.”

He put his hands in his pockets nervously. “I… uh… you’re…” He scratched the back of his head. “Fun?”

She blushed. “Sorry. I’m not good with words. This was how I talk to you. We bond over puzzles and math and…” She turned redder. “I guess I started liking you because we had a lot in common…. And that you’re really smart and cuteandfunnyandreallyishouldstoptalkingohmygodimnotshuttingup-“

Saburo’s hands were shaking but he grabbed her hand with one of his. “No it’s okay.” He smiled a little. “Eh… uhmmm….” He stayed quiet for what seemed like forever. “I like you too.”

Her head snapped up. “Really?”

He nodded. “I really like the riddles. They were really fun and smart…” He looked away from her, he hoped his hands weren’t shaking that bad. “Um… c-can I….” He swallowed. “Can I…. ki-“ He inhaled sharply. “Take you out?” He mentally smacked himself.

“Now?” She blushed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I… um sure.”

Saburo smiled nervously and opened the classroom door.

[criterioncollectionashaiku]

Criterion Collection as Haiku: Paris, Texas

I’ve seen over 250 movies in the Criterion Collection, and one of my all-time favorites has consistently been Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas. The movie has popped up twice this week in very unexpected ways: once last night at a dinner with friends, and also on Reddit’s Criterion page, where someone linked to an essay by Nicky Smith called “The Emotional Terrorism of Paris, Texas.” Smith HATES Paris, Texas, and I’ll explain why shortly. Her essay has definitely changed the way I’ve thought about the world within the movie, but I’m here today to provide a different read — one that explains why I’ve loved it all these years.

Needless to say, major spoilers ahead. If you’ve never seen Paris, Texas and would like to view it tabula rasa, then stop reading and come back after you’ve had a chance to watch and digest it.

First, let’s start with a quick plot summary: The movie opens with Travis (played by Harry Dean Stanton) walking through a desert. He’s dressed in a dusty suit, a red cap, and an unkempt beard. We come to learn that Travis has been missing for four years. No one has heard from or seen him until, one day, his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), gets a call that Travis is at a doctor’s office in a remote part of Texas. Walt and his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) live in California, but upon hearing the news of his brother, Walt immediately drives to Texas. By the time he arrives, Travis has left the medical office and is roaming the desert once again. Walt searches aimlessly for Travis and eventually finds his brother.

Walt is full of questions, but Travis remains mostly silent. The two eventually make it back to Los Angeles, where Travis is reunited with his now seven-year-old son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), who for the past four years was raised by Walt and Anne. Hunter’s mom/Travis’ ex, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), left Hunter in Walt and Anne’s custody shortly after Travis left, and she’s had limited communication with Anne since then.

The first half of the movie is about Travis’ return to humanity — learning to reconnect with his son and brother and sister-in-law. He slowly becomes more communicative, although he’s largely silent on what happened between him and Jane.

The second half of the movie begins when Anne tells Travis that she thinks she knows where Jane is. For a year now, Jane has been making monthly deposits in a bank account under Hunter’s name that she asked Anne to open for her. These deposits always happen on the 5th of the month, and they’re always at a bank in Houston. Travis asks what day it is, and Anne says it’s the 1st of November.

Travis is determined to find Jane. When he tells Hunter this, Hunter says he wants to come along, too. Even though Travis knows Walt and Anne wouldn’t approve, he picks Hunter up from school and the two drive to Houston to find Jane.

They spot her at the bank Anne mentioned and follow her to a peep show club. Travis leaves Hunter in the car, then goes into the club to confirm that Jane does, indeed, work there. The next day he leaves Hunter in a hotel room and goes to the club for the climactic scene between Travis and Jane. Because it’s a peep show, the glass in the room is one-way: Travis, as the customer, can see Jane, but Jane can’t see Travis. All communications is done through a telephone on Travis’ side of the mirror and an intercom on Jane’s side. Travis tells a story in the third-person that’s actually their story: a story of a man and a woman in love, but the guy gets jealous and possessive. One day the woman says she’s pregnant, and things are okay for a while, but then once the baby is born the mother has postpartum depression, and the two start fighting more and more. The guy starts drinking and becoming abusive; the breaking point is one night when he catches the woman trying to escape, and he ties her to the stove. He goes back to sleep and wakes up to their trailer engulfed in flames, the woman and the son gone.

At this point, the conversation flips. Travis shines the light in his face so that Jane can see him, but he can’t see her. She has a monologue about how she couldn’t care for Hunter by herself, that she had an emptiness inside her. And even though she loved Hunter, it hurt to talk to Anne about the boy, so Jane stopped calling. She also played out conversations in her mind between herself and Travis, all the things she’d say, but since Travis disappeared she eventually moved on. Travis tells Jane where Hunter is, and the movie ends with Jane and Hunter embracing while Travis watches them from the top of a parking garage across the street before he drives off into the night.

Whew. Okay, so that summary was a little bit longer than I expected. But I wanted to lay out some of the key points that I’ll get to in a bit. Before that, let me summarize Nicky Smith’s argument about why she hates Paris, Texas. Her critique is with the second half of the movie, when Travis kidnaps Hunter to go to Texas. The crux of the matter is that we don’t ever see Walt and Anne again, and thus we don’t witness the deeply hurtful emotional turmoil they’re going through. Moreover, the climactic scene between Travis and Jane, Smith argues, is problematic. “What’s criminal and irresponsible,” she writes, “is shown as heart-warming and fun.” She views Travis’ monologue as valorization of his actions, completely whitewashing his atrocious behavior.

I have a very different read on these points. Because for me, what I love about Paris, Texas, is the structural reversal of traditional story arcs. This is not a redemption story. We don’t start with a character we dislike whom we grow to like (or at least empathize with). The example I’m thinking of here is Citizen Kane, a movie I absolutely hated when I saw it in high school. I couldn’t get over how much of an asshole Orson Welles’ character, Charles Foster Kane, was. But I rewatched it maybe five or six years ago and had a slightly different take. I still think Kane is a piece of shit, yet isn’t the whole “twist” that Rosebud is his childhood sled supposed to be humanizing? It’s an element to make him appear more gentle, to get us to feel for this horribly despicable character.

Paris, Texas does the opposite. Here, we start with an inherently relatable character. Casting Harry Dean Stanton as Travis was a genius move, because Staton’s face — especially when rugged and sunburned — is one that conveys sadness. He seems so gentle and quiet, so hurt and broken that we, as the audience, are drawn to him. The film’s grammar tells us that Travis is our protagonist, and by virtue of being the protagonist we give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s a Good Guy.

But this isn’t true at all — Travis is horrible. He’s abusive and emotionally manipulative, as we learn in the scene between him and Jane. I don’t view Travis’ monologue as in any way valorizing his actions or whitewashing over them. Instead, this is a deeply affecting moment of reckoning — not of Jane to Travis (who has had plenty of time to do so already), but of the viewer to Travis. We have to come to terms that this person we’ve followed for the past two hours was (is?) a monster. This isn’t redemption because the movie never full exonerates Travis. I had to put the “is?” in parentheses a sentence ago because I’m not sure myself how much Travis has changed. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he hasn’t fully earned it.

Take Smith’s example of kidnapping. That is, indeed, a supremely fucked up thing Travis does. I’m not going to try to excuse that behavior, but I do think Travis’ actions aren’t quite as nefarious as Smith depicts. In the scene when Travis and Hunter are driving after Hunter cuts out of school early, Hunter says he wants to come along to find Jane. Travis responds, “What about Walt and Anne?” because he’s aware of how this is going to affect them.

A few hours later, when they’ve reached San Bernardino, Travis has Hunter call Walt and Anne from a payphone. And here’s where we DO see Walt and Anne’s emotional turmoil. Walt is borderline angry at Hunter for not being home yet, and once they find out Travis is taking Hunter to Texas, Anne sobs. This is the last time we see them in the movie, and I argue that it’s the perfect way to hint at their devastation without turning it into a melodrama. Immediately after the call, Travis reiterates that Hunter can go home any time he wants — just say the word, and they’ll turn around.

The subsequent scenes of Travis and Hunter making their way to Texas aren’t some feel-good buddy road movie — at least not in my opinion. Most of their travel is in darkness, notably how they have to sleep in a laundromat because Travis can’t afford (or doesn’t choose to make?) a hotel reservation. This is foreshadowing of Travis’ more reckless side, the part of him we’ll soon learn when he talks with Jane.

Also, returning to Anne and Walt for a second: the fact that the road trip sequence follows the call from the payphone highlights their absence rather than disregards it, at least to me. The way a musical motif can establish a mood for a scene, Walt and Anne’s distraught conversation hangs over the subsequent scenes like an air of discord.

As I said before, one of my favorite parts of Paris, Texas is the structural reversals. I’ve already mentioned Travis’ arc from sympathetic to unsympathetic, but I’d like to point out a couple more. First, Jane. Our view of her changes as the movie progresses, one that’s an inverse of Travis’: I think the movie tries to get you to dislike her from the beginning, only to side with her in the end. Although both Travis and Jane are absent parents, I feel like there’s more tacit blame placed on Jane. One example is during a scene when Walt projects home movies onto a screen. Here we see Travis and Jane and Hunter on a trip to the beach with Anne and Walter. Everyone appears happy, the way we’re told to smile for photographs. Of course, knowing what we know of Travis by the end of the film, this is more Jane pretending that everything is calm and good. However, upon a first viewing, when seen through Travis’ eyes, here we see a woman who has left her family and continues to be missing. How could she be so cold-hearted???

But of course she’s not cold-hearted. She’s anything but. Jane cares so deeply for Hunter that it hurts her too much to hear about his growth and development during those conversations with Anne on the phone. She’s flawed, too, of course, which is what I love about this movie — no one is perfect. Everyone is complicated. But here, in the case of Jane, we grow to empathize with her the more we learn about her story. As our opinion of Travis diminishes, our view of Jane seesaws upward. She is a survivor of domestic abuse and a mother who never really got to raise her son because she thought she was doing what was best for Hunter.

And here’s another one of those narrative reversals: while most stories clunkily reveal exposition at the beginning of the movie, here the exposition is crammed into the last 20 minutes. We learn more about these characters in the end than we do in the whole two hours prior. In that way, the exposition becomes a twist — and not a gotcha twist like The Sixth Sense, but a genuinely disconcerting and unsettling twist.

Okay, one last example, and it has to do with Travis. If the expected narrative arc is for a character to go from being lost to being found, this film does the opposite: it opens with Travis being found and ends with him lost, adrift in the night.

There are so many reasons I love Paris, Texas. The dialogue is honest, funny, raw. The cinematography is gorgeous — all the colors! Ry Cooder’s slide guitar score is unique and fitting. The acting is phenomenal (aside from Hunter, who is wooden, but he’s a child, so I’m not holding it against him). However, one aspect that I don’t think gets discussed enough is Paris, Texas’ narrative structural elements. There’s a lot to appreciate on the surface of this movie, but it should be no surprise — especially given the subject matter — that there’s way more going on underneath.

One-way glass prisms prisons of their past, pent-up penitence roamed free.

[sofreakinmanyfandoms]

November 20 - Haiku Can Be Hard, But Not As Hard As Saying, How Much I Like You

This one was born out of a random decision to write another Clint fic. So what do I do? I pick another random thing to include. Haiku? Sure, I can write those! Plot? I have to have a plot too? Oh. Oops.

I think I did okay though.

Word count: 2179

Warnings: All the fluff

Pairing: Clint Barton X Reader (Modern!AU)

Hello, beautiful

I couldn’t help but notice

Your eyes are stunning

 You pulled the note and its attached candy bar off your door. Snickers, your favorite. Someone was paying attention, and someone was also trying to remain anonymous. It was the fifth haiku you’d received taped to your apartment door with a little gift, and whoever was doing it was definitely getting better at poetry. All you knew was they somehow knew an awful lot of things you liked and always signed a little arrow instead of their name. You’d be freaked out if you didn’t remember just how awkward the first couple notes had been. With a smile, you entered your apartment and grabbed your notepad to write a return note, the syllable pattern coming far more easily than it did at first.

----------

Two weeks earlier:

“Aw, pizza, no!”

Clint momentarily panicked as the box started sliding out of his hands when he tried to work his keys out of his pocket. Everything else he was trying to carry fell to the hallway floor as he frantically scrabbled to save his precious dinner before a hand shot out from beside him and caught it.

“Whew, wouldn’t wanna waste a work of art from Patsy’s,” a voice said with what sounded like a smile.

He turned to thank the person behind the voice and found himself staring into the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Your smile lit up your face and made your eyes look like they had light dancing through them. The most pleasant shiver he’d ever felt went down his spine and his brain turned to mush.

“Hi,” you continued, oblivious to the gray matter that must be leaking out around his hearing aids by now. “I’m Y/N. I just moved into number 5. Do you want me to hold this while you get your door open? Your arms seemed kind of full.”

Clint suddenly realized he was surrounded by the groceries Nat had sent him to get, spilling out of their bags and across the floor. The embarrassment snapped him out of his momentary trance.

“Oh! Yes, please. I’m Clint. I live in 6 with Nat. Sorry, you kinda caught me with my arms full.”

“I’ve totally been there.” You nodded in a way that made Clint feel like you really, truly understood him.

He gave himself a mental slap upside the head and pulled out his keys. As quickly as he could, he tucked the groceries inside the door, taking the pizza box from your outstretched hands when he was done.

“Thanks for the save,” he said, feeling extremely awkward as he lifted the box in some semblance of a salute.

“Oh, no problem,” you replied, your constant smile still doing things to his stomach. “Right place, right time. Glad I could help. Well,” you turned towards the stairs with a wave, “I’m off to do my own grocery shopping. Have a nice day, neighbor.”

Clint didn’t move until you were out of sight. When he finally entered his apartment, he closed the door by falling back against it with a loud groan.

Nat looked up from where she was curled up on the couch, reading. “Sounded like you met our new neighbor. She seems nice.”

“Nice. Yeah, she’s nice,” Clint mumbled, his voice slowly growing louder. “She’s nice and pretty and smells good although that could have been the pizza interfering and her voice sounds like music and if I spent too much time looking in her eyes I’d probably end up floating or something.”

By the time he finished his rant and sank to the floor, pizza box still in hand, Natasha was trying to not laugh at him and failing.

“So ask her out sometime. I bet she’d say yes.”

“Nat,” Clint patiently tried to explain why that would be a horrible thing to do, “she clearly deserves someone who makes six figures and owns a house with a dog and makes her laugh and can give her everything she’s ever wanted, not some washed-up archer who has to live with his best friend slash ex-girlfriend to be able to afford rent in a neighborhood where he’s not guaranteed to get mugged almost daily.”

“I’d hardly call a former Olympian washed up,” Nat scoffed. “And if you’re worried about money –”

“Yeah, yeah, your boss would love to meet me,” he finished, standing up and setting the pizza on the table so he could get a drink from the fridge. “I like my job, though. It just doesn’t pay that much.”

“It should, for how often you come home looking like you’ve had the crap beaten out of you. Look, just ask her out for coffee or something. Coffee isn’t a marriage proposal. Write her a note with your number if you’re too chicken to ask in person.”

Write you a note? That actually seemed like a pretty good idea. Clint pulled out his phone. If he was gonna actually do this, he needed professional advice on how to write a note to a beautiful woman.

Hello, Google.

He slipped out his aids and settled into a chair with a piece of pizza. Might as well be comfortable while he proved his lack of competence with women to whoever is tracking his web history.

----------

Now:

A couple days later, it had started. You carefully placed the new note on your fridge alongside the four others. With a smile, you reread them, remembering the gifts that had come along with them.

 This is hard to write

Harder still is saying hi

Here. Have a coffee.

That one’d come attached to a gift certificate to a local coffee shop that had quickly become your favorite.

 I still can’t say hi

But every time I see you

I can hear birds sing

A day pass to the local zoo right after you’d been wishing you could see their new baby monkeys.

 If this were easy

I’d be a hell of a lot

More comfortable

That one’d just had a date, time, and location. When you’d shown up, it was a nail salon, and someone had pre-paid for you to get a mani/pedi. That was when you’d really started trying to catch your mysterious suitor, opening your front door whenever you heard a noise, but it was usually just Clint or Natasha on their way in or out.

 Today I saw you

And the smile that lit your eyes

Lit my heart as well

Attached to that one had been a paper flower, which you’d pinned on your fridge next to the note.

You still had no idea who your mysterious suitor was, but you were determined to find out.

----------

Clint was on his way home from work just as you were heading out of your apartment. You flashed him your brilliant smile as you passed him on the stairs, and he barely unfroze his brain in time to smile back before you’d rushed off.

It had been a few days since he’d left his last note, and he’d finally figured out what write for his next one. In fact, it was sitting on the kitchen counter right now. He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and nearly dropped his keys twice in his rush to get to inside and retrieve it.

Note, gift, and tape in hand, he ducked back out of his apartment and across the hall to your door. It took a bit more tape to get the gift to stick this time – It was heavier than anything else he’d given you so far. Task accomplished, he beat a swift retreat to the safety of his home and dug through the fridge in search of leftovers.

From your hiding place on the stairs, you stood frozen. You’d realized when you got back to your apartment after work that you were missing your phone, but you were sure it had been in your pocket when you’d left the office. The rush down to your car had proven fruitful; you’d found it wedged between the driver’s seat and the center console. On your way back up you’d heard a rustling in the hallway and slowed, peeking carefully around the corner and catching Clint taping something to your door.

So Clint was your mysterious admirer. The thought put a smile on your face. You remembered cheering for him in the Olympics seven years ago and had mourned with the nation when an accident left him deaf and unable to handle an athlete’s training schedule ever again. It had been a delight to realize he lived in your new building. Never would you have guessed that your teenage crush would end up having a crush on you!

It made sense now that you thought about it. You’d mentioned wanting to see the baby monkeys once when you passed him and he’d commented on your monkey shirt. You’d laughed about hardly being a professional once when Natasha had complimented your nails; she could easily have suggested the mani/pedi. You’d offered him a taste of your snickers mocha once so even if you hadn’t mentioned it was your favorite, he’d have known you like them, and it wasn’t at all uncommon for him to see you bringing home a flower or two you found growing in the cracks of the sidewalk.

The new note was taped up with a rather heavy envelope. You carefully removed it and waited until you were in the apartment before reading.

 I’m sorry to say

I think you’re somewhat like me

I hope this can help

 The note confused you until you opened the envelope and found a tracking set. There was a sticker for your phone and a fob for your keys, plus a remote that controlled both. If you couldn’t find one of them, you could hit the proper button on the remote and the trackers would beep and light up. There was even a button so you could have their coordinates emailed to you in case of theft. The instructions included explained how to set it all up.

Before you set it up, though, you dug through your junk drawer and pulled out a pen and paper. You had a note to write.

----------

“What’s with the note on the door?” Natasha asked when she got home.

Clint looked up from where he was splayed on the couch watching Dog Cops. “What do you mean, ‘What’s with the note?’ You’ve known for a while now I’ve been leaving notes for Y/N. It was your idea.”

She cocked an eyebrow and flashed him a smirk. “You’ve been leaving notes for her on our door?”

“On… our door?”

Clint froze. No. You couldn’t have figured it out. He’d been careful. He hadn’t even signed them with a real arrow; it was more of a chevron, really.

In the process of trying to scramble up, Clint ended up falling off the couch and slamming his head on the coffee table with a loud yelp. Natasha in her endless helpfulness ignored him and flopped down, changing the channel to one she wanted to watch.

“Fine. I have the DVR recording the episode anyway,” Clint mumbled, rubbing his head as he finally made his way to the front door.

Sure enough, there on the door was a note written as a haiku.

 Hello there dear friend

If you wouldn’t mind too much

Could we have a date?

 It was signed with… a monkey. He couldn’t help the sappy smile that slid across his face. Of course it was a monkey; you loved monkeys. And you’d even written your phone number.

“So, what do you think? Wanna go out sometime?”

For the second time in an embarrassingly short period, Clint yelped. He had been so caught up in the fact you weren’t rejecting him now that you’d figured it out that he hadn’t even noticed when you’d opened your door.

You laughed and he felt giddy because your laugh? Your laugh was beautiful, and he’d caused it.

“Well?”

Oh, yeah, he hadn’t answered your question yet. Clint suddenly felt very shy.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”

“You free tomorrow at six?”

He thought for a moment, recalling his work schedule. “I think so. I’d have to double-check, but I think I’m off at five tomorrow.”

“Alright.” You winked at him and his stomach did a little flip flop. “Text me if we need to change it. You have my number.” With that, you stepped back and closed your door. Clint was left standing in the hallway with what was probably a very sappy smile on his face.

He finally pulled himself together enough to at least get back inside his apartment before his legs gave out and he ended up on the floor with his back against the door yet again.

“How’d it go?” Nat asked.

“We have a date tomorrow,” Clint said, feeling his smile grow.

Prettiest woman in Brooklyn, and he had a date with you.

Life was looking up.

[freighttraininmybrain]

Day 30: A letter to fandom.

Dear Inception Fandom,

I skipped previous 29 days, but this one I just can’t miss :)

Maybe I don’t know your names, maybe I’ve never talked to you personally, but I still want to tell you:

Please, don’t you ever stop being who you are and doing what you’re doing. Cause you guys make lots of people so much happier. Cause you guys save lives. Sometimes figuratively. And sometimes quite literally, without even knowing.

With all your amazing fics.

With all your awesome art.

With just an occasional comment on AO3, just a reblog or hitting that ‘like’ button.

With just a couple of kind words to a complete stranger.

All of it matters.

With just a couple of words you make someone’s day, and then said someone makes someone else’s day just a little bit better.

And that’s how y’all, collectively, step by step, truly make this world a better place.

So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Spread the love, this world needs it, now more than ever.

And I love y’all so much.

Special thanks to:

@coffeewithconsequences​ – for being so welcoming, and so enthusiastic, for a FUCKTON of awesome fics, and for all the fic rec lists and for organizing Post-Inceptiversary Appreciation Fest for us. I don’t know how you manage all that, darling, and I’m in awe.

@deinvatiwrites​ & @flosculatory​ – for all the work you guys put into Inceptiversary and for Inceptiversary vs Bond Challenge in particular. Those were absolutely crazy, fun and intense 36 hours, and I won’t forget those for a long time, I suspect %) Oh, you know what, fuck that – I WILL NEVER FORGET HOW INCEPTION FANDOM DEFEATED BOND FANDOM IN LESS THAN 2 DAYS. Seriously, I cannot thank you guys enough.

@onceinabloodmoon​ – for being such a brilliant addition to Inception fandom and, esp., for starting very interesting, very important writing-related, fandom culture-related conversations. I really enjoyed that. Almost more than I enjoyed THAT HAIKU. But only almost, cause THAT HAIKU IS THE FUCKING KING OF HAIKUS.

@gessorosso​ – for organizing Inception Watch Parties and bringing us all together. That, for me personally, truly was a highlight of July, insane amount of fun, great opportunity to hang out with lots of amazing people. Also – thank you for all the Mr Eames pics, that cat is SERIOUSLY GORGEOUS.

@teacuphuman09​ – for holding EVERYTHING together, for giving me a chance to actively participate, for being insanely patient and welcoming.

@guiltypuknowme​ – thank you for our 10 Things I Hate About You Watch Party, it was a blast %) And I’ve told you this before & will tell you again – I’m hopelessly, irretrievably in love with ‘And we'll never be lonely anymore’ and I think I’ll actually remember this amazing fic for-fucking-ever.

@mispunt – for giving in and join Inception Watch Party to watch The Drop with us %) Remember: you promised to stick around for next year! :)

@a-forger-and-a-point-man – oh dear, the things you made me do %) Thank you for being such a wonderful person – so FUNNY, so kind and approachable, so enthusiastic it’s practically contagious (I think no one else could inspire me create an actual manip for Saito x Jumbo-fucking-Jets pairing XD ). You’re awesome beyond words, darling. And also – thank you for Inception/Bond Fandom Challenge (brought up some special brand of crazy competitiveness in me, that was… definitely surprising XD ) Last but not least – for introducing me to BRRRRRRRRRM BUTTON! The whole fucking July, every one of 31 days, it was the very first sound of my day – totally worth it.

@parlezvoustomhardy – I mean, where do I even start :) Thank you for all the watch parties (I wish there were more, but we have not only next year but the rest of this year actually too, yeah? :) ); thank you for all the Tom Hardy & Leo DiCaprio unlikely bromance – related discussions; thank you for Cobb/Eames rec list (def. wouldn’t make it otherwise and BOY was it FUN); thank you for being so supportive, and inspiring, and encouraging, and insanely easy to talk to – hope you’ll stick around for a long time :)

@swimmingrat and @kkrune – thank you for sharing your amazing art with us and for participating in 30 Days Challenge; now that must be HARD %) Inception fandom is really lucky to have you both, guys.

@dreaminghigher – thank you for being such an incredibly talented writer and sticking to Inception-verse %) You could write about anything else and be great at it – so thank you for choosing Inception fandom and giving us all those amazing fics (I selfishly hope you’ll continue to write about A/E ^_^ )

@zuulee63, @dandalf-the-disco and @kate2kat – thank you for that Mad Max Watch Party, I think I’ll never forget how awesome it was thanks, in particular, to you guys (my first time! couldn’t be better!) And thank you for being so great and so friendly to all the newcomers. We, newcomers, seriously appreciate it :)))))

@dontbesillyo – oh NaN. Oh how I love you, I cannot ever express enough. And to think – it was just a spontaneous decision, to bug you that very first time %) Turns out it was one of the best things I’ve ever done %) You’re abso-fucking-lutely  hilarious, and SO KIND and generous, and each and every one of your posts 100% gives me smile. Or a bit of laughter. Or (happens much more often) snorting so hard a morning coffee goes up my nose and it ain’t fucking pretty. I still can’t believe how lucky Inception fandom is – having you here, all these years. 8 fucking years and you’re still here, still awesome as ever, still participating in Inceptiversary and talking to random crazy-sounding strangers on Tumblr %)

and last, but not least – I wanna thank @candybarrnerd cause if not for them, I actually wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t participate in Inceptiversary, wouldn’t meet all these wonderful people... Can’t even imagine that scenario right now tbh :) Thank you, darling, from the bottom of my heart – you reaching out made me so, so happy. That ‘support group’ idea? Totally worth it, in the end XD XD XD 

<3

[askaceattorney]

(The Links in the Letter) -- Strong Language Warning in the first one

Dear James CyberLink,

Great!  Here’s the original letter, everyone:

And since it was your idea...

Dear James CyberLink,

Well said.  You don’t have to be famous or save lives to be a hero, do you?

That video didn’t make me cry, but I sure felt some warmth while I was watching it.  It takes a special kind of person to save so many lives and keep quiet about it.

-Phoenix Wright

Dear James CyberLink,

Whoa...  I sure wasn’t expecting that sort of thing.  That’s some high-class embarrassment, all right.

But, hey, at least you learned something from it.  It’s weird how even moments like that one can have a positive outcome.

-Maya Fey

Dear James CyberLink,

I agree that those are all important laws.  As any student in America could tell you, checks and balances are a fundamental part of any democratic government.  The law gets a bit messier when it comes to the internet and personal data, but it's no less crucial to maintain there as well.

I’d imagine the same to be true for drinking laws.  Without a breathalyzer, a bartender may have trouble distinguishing a drunk individual from a sober individual who simply acts the same way.

-Miles Edgeworth

Dear James CyberLink,

A Build-A-Bear workshop for computers?  That’d sounds like it’d be fun!  I live in a rural area too, so I’d love to learn more about how to use them.

But...where would you put the stuffed heart after you’ve finished building one?

-Pearl Fey

Dear James CyberLink,

Yeah, I’m just going to sit this one out, if that’s okay.  Good answer, though.

-Apollo Justice

Dear James CyberLink,

It’s okay to be unsure about your personality.  People have been known to change from one to another several times before they settle on one.  It’s not uncommon for them to fit into more than one either.  It’s still not an exact science.

That doesn’t mean it’s bunk, though!  If you ever meet Adam, you can tell him he’s a J-E-R-K type!

-Athena Cykes

Dear James CyberLink,

You recognize genius when you see it, don’t you?  We can thank the scientific method for helping us save lives, develop as a society, and learn things we never would’ve thought possible.  I use it in everything I do, from analyzing fingerprints to buying snacks.

-Ema Skye

Dear James CyberLink,

You’re not supposed to find out how they work!  That takes away the whole experience of seeing impossible things happening right before your eyes!  That’s the whole point of illusion!

You’re welcome to try and figure out how my tricks work, though.  Don’t blame me if you start getting dizzy from all the spinning your head does!

-Trucy Wright

Dear rogertheegg,

To me, the difference made by a gender swap would depend on the character.  For some, there’d be hardly any difference (Pearl would be just as adorable, the judge would look and sound just as authoritative, and even some of the main characters would be practically the same), but for others it’d change quite a few things about them (Laura Butz would likely be hitting on guys instead of girls, Mason Fey would have a completely different role in his family, Frederick von Karma would be intimidating in a completely different way, and so on).  And let’s not even get into Marlene Grossberg.

No, really.  Let’s not.

Dear gunmaxx,

Thanks a bunch!  Lately I’ve been afraid I might be losing my edge, so I’m very happy (and relieved) to hear you’re enjoying this blog.  Coming up with new letter responses every day and trying to keep them accurate is a challenge, but the sheer personality in Ace Attorney’s diverse cast of characters makes it a lot easier than it would be for, say, a Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Kirby blog.  (Would that last one even be possible?)  It’s still a challenge, though, so thank you for sharing your appreciation!

Also, no need to worry about spamming.  As long as you aren’t sending five or more letters every day, we’ll be happy to answer them.

Dear starry-nightengale,

The only real difference between them is that one is the real “champion of justice,” and the other just acts like him.  If someone writes to Bobby Fulbright without stating whether it’s to the real one or the Phantom disguised as him, I usually answer it as the Phantom.  The games don’t give us much information about what the real one was like, so it’s probably safe to assume the Phantom’s personality is an almost perfect copy of his.

Dear Fulbright,

First let me just say that I’d be giving you a high-five right now if I could.  It’s a breath of fresh air to hear some words of encouragement about the controversies that have crept into this blog more often than we (and I imagine you all) would like to see.  I do my best not to let those stress me out too much, but there are times when they do, so thank you for being understanding about it.  That’s an attitude we can all use more of.

There aren’t very many characters I like but dislike answering as, or vice versa, but I guess one example of that would be Apollo.  He’s a nice guy and a great character, but he doesn’t seem to have the same goofy sense of humor as Phoenix, Trucy, and Athena -- in fact, probably the funniest thing he does is to get fed up with their jokes.  I do enjoy answering as him, but I think he takes himself a little too seriously most of the time.

A good example of a character I’m not fond of but enjoy answering is, oddly enough, Dahlia.  As much as the cut of her jib sickens me, it’s interesting to think of how she might try to out-clever people who get sassy with her (as I have many times before) or come up with a twisted rationalization of her sadistic actions and thoughts.  Not to mention I sort of like the creativity in her haiku.

(Sort of.)

Lastly, while submitters are under no obligation to keep away from any specific topic, they are advised to keep in mind that, as our Submission Guidelines page states, letters that include hot-button topics will be less likely to get an answer.  How much less likely depends on the topic, but if the risk of hurting feelings is too high, they’ll be deleted.

(Previous Letter)

Dear Mothmouth,

That happens to the best proofreaders out there.  Thanks for clarifying, though (and for expressing your frustration in a family-friendly way).

Dear Mothmouth again,

This is sort of embarrassing, but...I actually didn’t know quite how to do that until the Modthorne gave me some help.  Here you go.

Dear Guquis,

No one’s made that joke here as far as I can tell, but it has been done before.  (Epilepsy Warning)

Dear idk,

Really?  That’s a shame.  A moment of silence, everyone.

Thanks for letting us know.  I've been neglecting to check on the status of blogs we have links to, so I’ve got some “summer cleaning” to do.

On that note, if you have an active ask blog you’d like us to add a link to, feel free to give us a shout!  It’s been a long time since we’ve added any.

Dear naitomeruu,

Sorry to break it to you, but it looks like that’s already been confirmed.  If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll release a version for 3DS as well, but if not, I guess I’ll be making a quick dash to the nearest GameStop for a Switch.  I still think the Wii U didn’t get a fair chance, but I’ll do it for the blog’s sake!

-The Co-Mod

[skeletonscribbles]

1 with Richie and Eddie for the writing prompts!

Got you covered, friend! Hope the Tumblr crowd is feeling a Stan POV on Reddie, because I sure as hell was. This is straight comedy, too, so those of you who are here because of Wildflowers…here’s proof that it’s not sad around here ALL the time.

#1, by the way, is “Yes, I did say that, but I didn’t think you were going to be a dumbass!”

And here we have:

Sugar, Spice, and Bad AdviceT-ish for language and reference to Richie’s dick (deep sigh)2500 words

Summary: Stan has absolutely no idea why Richie comes to him for romantic advice...so, like any respectable businessman, he outsources.

Stanley Uris did not consider himself a romantic person by any means.

He appreciated romance, certainly. From a very young age, he was poring through books with clever heroines and rooting for them to end up living happily with attractive, intelligent partners. (More often than not, said heroines never encountered anyone as smart as they were, and so they had to settle. Stan thought that was a shame. If he were writing books, he would write romance very differently.) That said, in real life, he tended to be more realistic and less dreamy about matters of the heart.

All of this being the case, it really didn’t make any sense at all that Richie Tozier was coming to him for romantic advice…but then, Stan had long since come to terms with the fact that nothing about Richie made any sense.

“You’ve gotta help me out here, buddy,” Richie was saying, pacing back and forth as Stan watched him disinterestedly from the couch. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say to him…do I say anything to him? Fuck, Stan, I’m gonna fuck this up, I’m such a piece of shit and he’s so….so….”

“Paranoid?” Stan offered, thinking of Eddie and smiling thinly. “Shrill?”

That was another baffling thing about the situation: Richie was pining over Eddie. Eddie, who they’d known since kindergarten; Eddie, who cried in sixth grade because Greta Bowie wrote the word ‘cancer’ on one of his papers in Social Studies. Dirty, lewd Richie Tozier was having feelings for nervous, naive Eddie Kaspbrak. It was highly illogical, and Stan usually hated things that were illogical….but for whatever reason, his brain was somewhat settled with the idea of this particular pair of friends getting together, which was bizarre in and of itself.

Richie threw himself on to the couch with a groan, sprawling across Stan’s legs. Stan tried to kick at him, but he was pinned under Richie’s lanky frame. “I was going to say perfect,” Richie sighed wistfully, blowing a strand of hair out of his eyes.

Stan made an exaggerated whipping sound and gesture, and Richie responded by pulling himself over and blowing a raspberry onto Stan’s knee.

“Disgusting.” Stan shoved Richie off of the couch, and Richie hit the floor with a hard thud. “Have you asked anyone else for advice about this? Perhaps they’d be able to do a little more for you than roll their eyes.”

Richie raised his head, peeking at Stan over the side of the couch. “You think they’d be okay with it? I keep thinking that Big Bill’s gonna kill me immediately upon hearing that I have designs on Eds’ virtue.”

“Don’t say that thing about virtue again. It was awful.” Stan shook his head, shuddering. “And trust me when I say that Bill is all for you and Eddie finally getting your fucking shit together.”

That much, at least, was true. Stan’s entire last conversation with Bill, much to his dismay, had been centered around getting Richie and Eddie to stop pining for each other. In fact, Stan’s recent conversations with most of the other Losers had been centered around getting Richie and Eddie to stop pining for each other. The situation was pretty universally annoying.

“Wait, but why would Bill’s love advice be better than yours?” Richie was looking at him curiously. “Or Bev’s or Ben’s or Mike’s, for that matter?”

Stan looked back at him flatly. “Richie. You know me.”

Richie thought about that, and then nodded. “Fair point. So…”

“Try Mike first,” Stan advised, thinking of Mike’s warm smile and feeling a little hot. “He’s got game.”

—-

The next day at school, Richie approached Eddie with a small bouquet of flowers.

It was, without a doubt, the worst bouquet that Stan had ever seen.

Richie had obviously picked it himself. Half of the flowers still had roots attached, and the bouquet was pretty much only made up of dandelions and violets, with the odd daisy or tulip that he’d probably taken illegally from someone’s garden. Richie had been clutching them tightly for quite a while, and they were starting to go limp in his grip.

In short, there was no fucking way that Eddie was going to touch that, and sure enough, when Eddie showed up, he recoiled.

“Richie, did you go through Mrs. Conway’s garden again? I TOLD you, she doesn’t grow marijuana! Not that you’d even know what marijuana looks like anyway, Went would fucking end you if he smelled smoke on your–”

Richie cut off Eddie’s tirade by shoving the flowers towards him. “They’re for you, Eds! And only a few of them are from Mrs. Conway’s.”

Eddie stared at him, horrified. “You expect me to touch those? First of all, you’ve been sweating all over them for probably twenty minutes now. Second, poison ivy–”

“Okay, if I don’t know what marijuana looks like, you definitely don’t know what poison ivy looks like,” Richie interjected hotly.

“I know what poison ivy looks like,” Stan informed them, unable to help himself.

“No you fucking don’t, jackass. Not every plant is poison ivy,” Richie all but yelled, face crimson with either frustration or embarrassment (Stan couldn’t tell).

“Anyways, asshat, bad fucking joke. Do better next time.” Eddie stomped towards the high school in a huff, and Richie looked helplessly over at Mike, who had been watching the whole escapade unfold with a grim expression.

“So, flowers are out,” Mike finally said, shrugging. “Sorry, Rich.”

“Shit.” Richie dropped the “bouquet” and sighed. “It’s okay, Mikey, you meant well.”

“That’s pretty much the extent of my flirting expertise, unless you want to bring Eddie a chicken.” Mike wrinkled his nose at the thought. “And that’s a terrible idea, by the way. He’d flip.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Bev muttered, obviously visualizing Eddie’s inevitable chicken meltdown.

Richie turned to look at Beverly after she spoke, cogs obviously turning in his head. “What about you, Bevvy? Any grand ideas for what is now apparently my crowdsourced seduction of Eds Kaspbrak?”

“Bevvy has nothing,” Bev said solemnly, opening her arms and closing her eyes. “Bevvy was clever enough to land the perfect guy without having to resort to cheap tactics.”

Richie flipped her off with both hands, and Ben crossed to her to hug her from behind, beaming.

“I have a thought,” Ben said, smiling into Bev’s hair.

“Yes?” Richie crossed his arms.

“Beverly doesn’t have a suggestion…” Ben trailed off, eyes glinting, “…but Benverly does.”

“I’m listening,” said Richie, narrowing his eyes.

—-

Ben had wooed Beverly by way of a little haiku-esque poem, and so his advice to Richie was, predictably, to put together some sort of piece of writing for Eddie.

Stan knew right away that this plan was destined to fail, but he kept his mouth shut and let Richie try, not wanting to become the advice-giver again. The strategy was good, all in all, but for it to be effective Richie would have to be…less Richie, which was impossible.

A week after the bouquet, Richie joined the Losers in their before-school spot wearing a nice, collared shirt (buttoned all the way up, so no one could see the graphic tee underneath) and a pair of khakis that was slightly less wrinkled than Stan expected from him. He had obviously attempted to comb down his wild curls - attempted being the keyword. It wasn’t a look that suited Richie at all, but he was almost endearing, Stan thought, just by virtue of his obvious effort. (Almost.)

When Eddie arrived a minute later, he just about tripped over his own two feet gawking at Richie.

“Did Stan let you borrow clothes, or what?” he asked, staring unabashedly at the buttons on Richie’s shirt.

Stan resented that, and was about to tell Eddie so, but Richie was pulling a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, so he held himself back.

“Eds,” he began, pulling at the collar of his shirt. “Spaghetti-o.”

Eddie buried his hands in his hair, pulling nervously. “What is happening.”

“Your freckles are like constellations,” Richie began. He was playing it off like he wasn’t nervous, but there was a telltale shakiness to his voice. “They trail up to the galaxies of your eyes….”

Stan couldn’t help but be impressed. Almost a whole line in, and Richie hadn’t mentioned Eddie’s mom once.

Eddie was less enthused. “I’m really fucking tired of being the butt of your jokes, Richie.”

“It’s not a joke,” Richie explained exasperatedly.

“And my mom isn’t the biggest bitch in Derry,” Eddie jeered, fed up. “Let’s just go to class, okay? Mike, did you understand the statistics homework?”

Mike looked defeatedly around at the other Losers, and then joined Eddie in walking back towards the school building. Once they were far enough away, Richie threw his poem in the air in frustration.

“If it helps, I thought you were off to a good start,” Stan offered.

“It doesn’t help,” Richie grumbled.

Ben looked perturbed. “I really thought he’d go for that. We took all references to Richie’s dick out of it and everything.”

Ah. So Ben had a hand in the creation of the poem. The sweetness of it suddenly made sense.

“Looks like it’s on you, now, Denbrough,” Bev said, looking expectantly at Bill. Bill swallowed hard, and Stan rolled his eyes. If Bill couldn’t figure out that Stan had been flirting with him for the past three years, he wouldn’t be able to help Richie.

“I could p-probably suggest something,” Bill said meekly, and it was all Stan could do not to bang his head into the nearby telephone pole.

—-

“I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again,” Stan hissed, “Bill’s advice is garbage, and this is a disaster.”

Bill Denbrough, literary genius that he was, was absolutely horrible at romantic suggestions. He had reminded Richie that Eddie had a sweet tooth, and had advised him to make cookies for Eddie as a gift (and as a kind-of apology for the last two disastrous attempts at flirting).

So far, Richie had burnt two batches, and the batter consistency of the third was…alarming, to say the least. He’d called Stan in a panic some twenty minutes ago, and Stan had pedaled over in a huff, cursing Bill Denbrough’s name.

“You’re the one that said it would be a good idea to ask the other Losers how to go about doing this!” Richie retorted, gesticulating wildly with a cup of flour and then groaning as most of the flour flew out of the cup and on to the floor.

“Yes, I did say that, but I didn’t think you were going to be a dumbass!” Stan went for the broom and dustpan, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.

“You didn’t?! Come on, dude.” Richie leaned on the counter, took off his glasses, and rubbed at his eyes. “You call me a dumbass, like, every day.”

“Yes, and I mean it, and this time I mean it about the rest of our friends, too. And Eddie. Dumbasses, all.” Stan swept the flour neatly into the dustbin, scowling. “Just tell him how you feel. The hokey tactics that everyone is suggesting are terrible. Ask each other out pointblank, for fuck’s sake.”

“Ask who out?” A high-pitched, familiar voice sounded from the doorway, and Richie whipped around so fast Stan was a little worried that he’d break something (probably himself).

“Eds?” Richie panicked and headed for the trash can, seemingly to try and block Eddie from seeing its contents. “Uh, what?”

“Bev said she thought she could see smoke coming from your house, so she sent me over to check,” Eddie said, and Stan silently thanked Bev for trying to be proactive about shutting down Bill’s stupid cookie plot. “Who are you asking out, Richie?”

Stan could all but see the ‘your mom’ that was racing to make its way out of Richie’s mouth. Fortunately, he was standing close enough to remedy it. He kicked at Richie’s ankle, and when Richie looked over at him, he gave him a significant look, hoping that that would be enough for Richie to remember what they had just been talking about.

Richie nodded, and took a deep breath. “I, um, have something to tell you, Eds, and, uh, you might not like it–”

“Is it that you like me?” Eddie asked nonchalantly. “Because I know that.”

Richie gaped. “Say what now?”

“I’m not stupid.” Eddie shrugged and peered past Richie, trying to discern what was in the trash can. “You’ve been acting weird for a while, and then you started dressing differently and bringing in weird stuff for me. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

“And you’re not mad?” Richie asked weakly.

“Nah.” Eddie stuck his hands in his pockets. “With the poem, I was just mad you were trying to pull that shit in public.”

“And the flowers?”

Eddie fixed Richie with a look. “If you can call them that, you mean.”

“All right, all right, fine.” Richie’s ears went red. “But…Christ, Eddie, why didn’t you tell me?”

Eddie smiled. “I kind of wanted to see what you’d do.” He paused, examining Richie’s face. “I like you too, by the way…even if you did burn a fuckton of cookies today.”

“Oh,” Richie blurted, grabbing his glasses from off of the counter. “Um. Can I kiss you?”

“Wait until I leave, for the love of God,” Stan begged, jolting up from where he had been leaning on the counter.

Richie and Eddie both jumped. They’d obviously forgotten that Stan was still there.

“Looks like your advice was the best after all, Stanny Boy,” Richie grinned after a moment, sliding closer to Eddie and throwing his arm around Eddie’s shoulders. “I was right the first time about which Loser to listen to.”

“Was Stan’s advice to just cut the crap and go for it?” Eddie asked. Richie nodded, and Stan rolled his eyes. They made him sound so ineloquent.

“He always tells it like it is,” Richie said fondly.

“He is truly the best of us,” Eddie agreed. “Now if you don’t mind, Stanley, you absolute gem of a human…get out of here so I can make out with Richie against this disaster zone of a counter.”

“With pleasure,” Stan said, all but bolting out of the door.

He was smiling, though, in spite of everything.

Maybe he was a little romantic, after all.

—-

(And even though he still thought that the other Losers had hokey romantic tactics, when he received a bouquet of flowers from one anonymous admirer and a batch of cookies from another, he couldn’t help but feel warm inside.)

[sofiadearos]

Any animal is more elegant than this book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Unfortunately, this has to be the top contender for the worst “good” book I’ve read to date. So many words, so little substance– I’m shocked at how many words can be written about nothing much. I really wanted to like this book, guys, I really did. I liked Heidi Sopinka’s “The Dictionary of Animal Languages”, which has the same stylistic fragrance that Hedgehog attempts. 

The difference? 

The narrator of Languages brightened my world, while I was suffocated by the alternating narrators here, named Renee and Paloma.

Renee is a concierge approaching her sixties while Paloma is a twelve-year-old intellectual prodigy who loves writing in her journal and wrist-wringing over the constant trauma of living in, uh, a patently elite apartment complex in a gorgeous Paris neighbourhood where she is surrounded by relatively pleasant people and their pampered pets. Renee, who unflinchingly pronounces herself as stout and ugly, works in this apartment complex, and takes extreme precautions to ensure that the residents never find out that she is passionate about fine art, loves experimental cinema, and worships the literary canon. She also has a cat named Leo, after Leo Tolstoy, and is at all times paralysingly worried that the residents will get the reference.  

First of all, the central premise is questionable and absurd in that it goes great lengths to cloyingly counterpreach the stigmatisation of something that may not even be a stigma. The book in 140 characters or less: a concierge affectedly and pompously demonstrates that it is okay for her to be intelligent. Here’s an excerpt: 

“Concierges do not read The German Ideology; hence, they would certainly be incapable of quoting the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Moreover, a concierge who reads Marx must be contemplating subversion, must have sold her soul to the devil, the trade union. That she might simply be reading Marx to elevate her mind is so incongruous a conceit that no member of the bourgeoisie could ever entertain it.”

The problem with this is that I don’t think anyone in the apartment complex would care if they found out that Renee was intelligent. Renee takes up half her narrative time belabouring how difficult it is to be someone who betrays societal expectations by being a smart concierge. Not once is her delusional hypothesis put to the test. Not once was Renee allowed to wonder whether, in fact, people had something against smart concierges at all. If she were, this brittle plotline would disappear and invalidate the whole book. 

Second, there are many characters living in the apartment complex, and I was interested in getting to know them. Colombe, Paloma’s older sister, was especially interesting! I did my best to piece together a portrait of her through Paloma’s exasperatingly condescending and hate-filled journal entries. I couldn’t help but feel that the fake-deep so-called “social commentary” was self-defeating and managed to destroy the storytelling. Where’s the due social commentary about hypocrites? You won’t find it in this book narrated by snobs devoid of self-reflexivity. What’s worse is that the musings of Renee and Paloma are less sincere social commentary than snooty flexings of how brutally they can tear down other people. The other characters are ruthlessly flattened and it’s a shame, because I don’t know if this is entirely necessary. The narrators sentimentally and self-importantly capitalise the words “beauty”, “art”, and “humanity” but their intellectual posturing is soulless and regrettably anti-humanity and unbeautiful. They’re so deep in their heads that they’re not ruminating on the human condition at all— they use other people as sandpaper against which to sharpen their mean verbal acrobatics. This is so blatantly their point and I rolled my eyes when Renee called herself a prophet for contemporary times or whatever. What’s the point of endlessly contemplating beauty and art when you spend hours and hours overarticulating how other people are worthless? I was not impressed by their devotion to jasmine tea and camellias. Reading about mean people is fun when the whole thing is graced with irony, when the author is so fully in on it. But the narrative voices of Paloma and Renee are so strikingly identical that I can’t help but feel that the author, Muriel Barbery, is writing with minimum effort, writing so close to her own heart that there isn’t much space for self-irony or self-parody. I could be wrong though. I also took note of how Japan was depicted in this book— all hype, no depth. This contrasts with how Paloma conflates Asia with poverty in talking about a Thai boy adopted by a French family:

“And now here he is in France, at Angelina’s, suddenly immersed in a different culture without any time to adjust, with a social position that has changed in every way: from Asia to Europe, from poverty to wealth.”

I know she’s 12, but it struck me. Japan in this book is fetishised and immediately valued exclusively because of a handful of its cultural exports. Sushi, bonzai, haiku, Ozu, the traditional bow, and wabi-sabi are briefly mentioned. That’s all. What’s afforded is the Google-able iconography. The book goes no deeper, and the peppering of Japanese references did nothing to re-posture the characters, which is what it seemed to be going for. Kakuro, the Japanese man introduced to change the narrator’s lives, was so thinly written. Extras in KDramas have received richer characterization. I was baffled as to why he, poised ummistakably as the pivotal character, was paper-thin and dimensionless, when the other characters were described with such precision albeit disdainfully. He “changes their lives” because the plot said so. One last thing: this book was published in 2009, before discourse on mental health became more widespread. Words such as “anorexic”, “autistic”, and “retarded” are used a couple of times as adjectives, usually in derogatory contexts, which will date the book. 

Man. I really wanted to like it.

Somewhat related recommendations: 

“Pure Heroines”, an essay included in Jia Tolentino’s bestselling collection “Trick Mirror”. The essay explores the tropes performed by female literary characters, i.e. as children, they’re exceedingly crafty and prematurely disillusioned by their environment, and the plot hinges on how gloriously they can rewire themselves to escape it all; as teens, like Paloma, they’re angsty and hot and intellectual; and as grown women, they become casualties of certain institutions, such as religion, marriage, or what have you, and eventually kill themselves. Paloma, in this case, is a suicidal teenager. Interesting. 

“The Dictionary of Animal Languages” by Heidi Sopinka. Also set in Paris. Also about an art-loving woman. Language is also somewhat florid but oftentimes delectable. Is a plotty book but doesn’t read as plotty, because it’s configured so diaristically. A sweet-smelling collection of painterly phrases. 

[lanadelreyfiles-blog]

Lana Del Rey covers Paris Match's May 2017 Issue. Photographed by Sebastien Micke. Lana Del Rey lounges on the divan. She hasn’t left her false eyelashes, but she has gotten rid of her sadness. After two years of absence, the diva of ‘sad pop’ comes back with a ‘Rage de Vivre’ translation of ‘Lust for Life’ her fifth album which comes out July 21st and “Love” her single, which has already passed 50 million views on YouTube. Same hypnotic voice, same poetic universe for a woman who now has a certain taste for happiness. Since her debut in 2012, on the internet, with ‘Born to Die’ which made her one of the biggest stars in music, Lana tells us in mind-blowing songs and beautiful music videos of her fragile life as a young girl haunted by death and failure. Today, she says that she has overcome these demons and her toxic relationships. Single, maybe, but a little more light-hearted. For her, it’s already history. At 17 years old, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant wrote her own songs and made her own music videos: ‘I took a lot of photos. Then I started to record myself, to use my image.’ After seven hellish years of singing in Brooklyn bars, her music video ‘Video Games,’ posted in 2011 and has since been viewed 155 million times, which thrusted in a few minutes, the young American into an unforeseen notoriety. She evolved into Lana Del Rey, Lolita 2.0, fan of the sixties who over the course of her songs tells a sometimes indecent and provocative story but always sensual. ‘I am connected to the future and the past at the same time… That’s why I have few friends…’ Today, she sings ‘I’m young and in love’. But confides that she has found happiness… since she is no longer dating. ‘I’ve never been lucky in choosing boyfriends’. She always loved putting on a show: ‘As a child, I loved making my life a work of art. - My passion for beautiful films might explain my aesthetic’ says the woman who would have loved living in the Flower Power of the hippy years.

From our colleague in Los Angeles Karelle Fitoussi. — We knew you as somber and melancholic, singing your stories about tormented love. You’ve come back with two songs that exude a lack of worry and a lust for life. What happened? Lana Del Rey: I haven’t been dating for a year and a half. Apparently, that has done me a lot of good. [She laughs] I learned how to say no and to listen to the little voice in my head that tells me to do one thing or another. — You have ‘Trust no one’ tattooed on your index… Have you often been betrayed? LDR: Yes. I’ve never been good at chosing friends. But now it’s better, I know how to go about it. I’ve learned one thing, and that’s that people show you really quickly who they really are. You have to listen to them, and pay attention to the signs. In the past, sometimes I’ve had lovers who’ve told me strange things, things I should have found unacceptable, but I closed my eyes. That doesn’t happen to me anymore. At the smallest indication of something strange, I get out. A love story that doesn’t do you any good is toxic. I finally understand that. — Are you not afraid that your newfound happiness will ruin your inspiration? LDR: No. When I was writing Born to Die, I was living in London, and I met a lot of new people, I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I was full of hope. I saw myself evolving into this type of avant-garde artist and this excitement made creating simple and easy. When the critics starting being really harsh, when things started becoming more violent, that’s when that magic left me. So happiness is obviously a good thing. I’m not afraid. — The New York Times said that you were a ‘nightmarish reflection of cynicism and of American fakeness.’ LDR: An interesting start to someone’s career, isn’t it? [She laughs] It was horrible, completely horrible. I really must have loved music to have continued after that. But I should’ve stopped. Thankfully, things have changed. I won’t ever change myself to make myself more popular or to make someone else happy. — People have really have shamed you for your heavily constructed public image. Some people even said that you’re a puppet. LDR: For a longtime, I didn’t understand these reactions. Of course, I paid attention to my look. I had long styled hair, but I was too preoccupied by the music to understand why they talked about me like that. I was waiting for people to figure out for themselves that I was smart… I really had to question myself, to ask why people reacted to me like that. A question of energy, maybe. With a bit of space, even if I find [what they’re saying] ridiculous, I can understand. — If, with a wave of a magic wand, you could start all over, what would you change? LDR: Everything! I don’t even know where to start! — You wouldn’t be a singer? LDR: I love music, there were times where it saved me from my own demons, but it’s a double-edged sword. If I had the opportunity to take a simpler path, I would do it, without hesitation. — When you were younger, you dreamed of being a writer… LDR: Yes, but after having tried from a young age, I knew that I didn’t have the writer’s soul. I tried to write short stories, but they were terrible. So, I tried to do poetry… but it still wasn’t for me! That’s how I decided to write music. [She laughs]. The next step would have been Haikus! — Between two records and two tours, what do you do? LDR: I go to the beach. I swim once per week, I work out with my sister who shares my house with me. I take advantage of the sun and the wonderful Californian nature: with my girlfriends, we go to Big Sur or to Carmel… I never get over seeing the bright light from 7:30 in the morning. For a New Yorker like me, every time it’s still enchanting. Yes, I am that girl you can constantly talk about the time and the weather! But above all what I love the most in Los Angeles, is that there are so many musicians. Every band from London to New York have moved here! Artic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets, Father John Misty… They’re all here in L.A.! — Have you finally found the community of artists you’ve always dreamed of being a part of? LDR: Yes. And when I go on tour, after four months on the road, they’re like me. They want to pick up where we left off. My friends who don’t do music, they’re lives have moved on. — How do you deal with living in the constant view of the paparazzi? LDR: I wrote a song called, 13 beaches which talks about how I do it, last summer, I had to go to 13 different beaches before I could find one without paparazzi, where I laid down with a book. But we can get used to anything. And then maybe it’s worth it. What I can’t get used to, is systematically finding my songs on the internet before they’re supposed to come out. It takes so much time to make a record… a year and a half! When leaving the studio, I always have to hope that they’re secure. — Why do you impose this cycle of every two years for an album? LDR: It’s the time needed for reflection and contemplation. My records are like love letters to myself. — And will you have kids? LDR: When I have kids… I’ll take them on the road with me. Muse’s or Chris Martin’s boys do it well! I have the feeling it’ll workout, whatever I decide to do. It’ll be a nice surprise. Yeah, I would love to have a family. — Is it on your agenda? LDR: [She laughs]. It’ll happen one day. Without a doubt within the next five years. Kids. Friends, all that’s a bonus. My dream is simply to be happy. Which I am right now.

[fly-like-a-grayson]

do all of the ask questions lolol

lmao okay since I did this to you. I apologise for that lmaoooo

1. Are looks important in a relationship? 

No, but they’re a plus

2. Are relationships ever worth it?

In certain situations, yes

3. Are you a virgin

ye

4. Are you in a relationship?

No

5. Are you in love?

Yes, platonically 

6. Are you single this year?

So far, yes 

7. Can you commit to one person?

Of course!

8. Describe your crush

Yo so I did an ask like this and I’m just going to copy and paste. My crush is the best person in the world and let me explain why. I’ve had times where I’ve wanted to be friends with people and they’ve brushed me off and it made me feel like crap. From the first time I messaged her, she was kind and accepting to me, which I appreciate even to this day. She always makes me feel good if I’m feeling the slightest bit down. She’s more beautiful than I could possibly express. When I first saw her, my breath was literally taken away. I was shocked that someone could be so gorgeous! She has this wonderful personality. She is kind to everyone. When we talk, she makes me feel happy and bubbly. When she compliments me, I blush like a mad woman. I never feel awkward talking to her, anymore. I feel content and calm. I don’t think that she feels the feelings as strongly as me and I’m okay with that. All I want to do is show her just how much I love her. I can’t find a single flaw in her. She’s perfect in every way, shape, or form. I just can’t tell you how much I love her. I just, I love her.  

9. Describe your perfect mate

lmao just like how my crush is 

10. Do you believe in love at first sight?

I think you can be in love with someone’s appearance but not them 

11. Do you ever want to get married?

Yes

12. Do you forgive betrayal?

Depends on who by, but usually no

13. Do you get jealous easily?

Depends on the person but mostly yes 

14. Do you have a crush on anyone?

Ye

15. Do you have any piercings?

I used to, but they closed up

16. Do you have any tattoos?

No

17. Do you like kissing in public?

Eh, no

20. Do you shower every day?

No, I used to but it was drying my hair out 

21. Do you think someone has feelings for you?

No

22. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?

Yeah, I like just got a text sooo

23. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat?

Yes

24. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years?

No

25. Do you want to be in a relationship this year?

Eh, maybe 

26. Has anyone told you they don’t want to ever lose you?

Yes

27. Has someone ever written a song or poem for you?

My friend Mika wrote me a haiku once 

28. Have you ever been cheated on?

No

29. Have you ever cheated on someone?

No

30. Have you ever considered plastic surgery? If so, what would you change about your body?

No

31. Have you ever cried over a guy/girl?

Yes

32. Have you ever experienced unrequited love?

Yes

33. Have you ever had sex with a man?

No

34. Have you ever had sex with a woman?

No

35. Have you ever kissed someone older than you?

Never kissed anyone 

36. Have you ever liked one of your best friends?

Yes

37. Have you ever liked someone who your friends hated?

In a friend way 

38. Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to?

Yes

39. Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have?

Yes but not because they were in another relationship or something 

40. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone?

Yes

41. Have you had sex so far this year?

No

42. How long can you just kiss until your hands start to wander?

Dunno, never kissed anyone

43. How long was your longest relationship?

Never had one 

44. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had?

045. How many people did you kiss in 2011?

046. How many times did you have sex last year?

047. How old are you?

15

48. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say?

That I hope they’re happy but not in a rude way. I genuinely mean it 

49. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her?

Don’t 

50. If your first true love knocked on your door with apology and presents, would you accept?

Yes

51. Is there a boy/girl who you would do absolutely everything for?

Yes

52. Is there anyone you’ve given up on? Why?

Yes, because they just weren’t the person they used to be 

53. Is there someone mad because you’re dating/talking to the person you are?

No

54. Is there someone you will never forget?

Yes

55. Share a relationship story.

I liked this gut for 3 years and the entire time he liked me back. He asked me if I liked some other guy and I said yes because I was scared. Like a year later he said he liked me but then he moved away the next day 

56. State 8 facts about your body

I have glasses, I have three freckles that make a triangle, I have a large freckle over one of my ears, I have green eyes, I have cubby thighs, I have sprained my wrist really badly, I have wide feet

57. Things you want to say to an ex

Never had one, got nothing to say 

58. What are five ways to win your heart?

Listening to me ramble, Listening to music with me, Just being a nice person, respecting mine and other opinions, being funny 

59. What do you look like? (Post a picture!)

already got a ton of those up 

60. What is the biggest age difference between you and any of your partners?

N/A

61. What is the first thing you notice in someone?

Eyes 

62. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you?

do my laundry lmao

63. What is your definition of “having sex”?

don’t feel comfortable 

64. What is your definition of cheating?

don’t feel comfortable

65. What is your favourite foreplay routine?

don’t feel comfortable

66. What is your favourite roleplay?

don’t feel comfortable

67. What is your idea of the perfect date?

Going to an art museum then having ice cream 

68. What is your sexual orientation?

Bisexual 

69. What turns you off?

rude people 

70. What turns you on?

Funny people 

71. What was your kinkiest wet dream?

don’t feel comfortable

72. What words do you like to hear during sex?

don’t feel comfortable

73. What’s something sweet you’d like someone to do for you?

Watch my favroite movie because I asked, listen to my favroite album. things like that 

74. What’s the most superficial characteristic you look for?

Smile

75. What’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for you?

TBH anytime someone compliments my writing 

76. What’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for someone?

I drew small pictures for the dude I liked that reminded me of him 

77. What’s your opinion on age differences in relationships?

As long as they’re both over 18 and it’s consenting and formed for love not lust, then it’s not my place to say otheriwse 

78. What’s your dirtiest secret?

Um, idk

79. When was the last time you felt jealous? Why?

a while ago and I don’t know why I was

80. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?

I told Jen I loved her last night 

81. Who are five people you find attractive?

Jen, Gal Gadot, Ben Platt, Margot Robbie, Dick Grayson

82. Who is the last person you hugged?

My uncle 

83. Who was your first kiss with?

no one 

84. Why did your last relationship fail?

never had one

85. Would you ever date someone off of the Internet? 

depends on the circumstances 

[survivor-guyana]

Episode 10 - "If the votes aren't Unan1mous, I'm going to die." - Maynor

what the fuck kind of alliance votes out two of my closest allies two rounds in a row, and doesn't even tell me their concerned or trusts me with their opinion.

alyssa and jess. jsyk.

Well, being completely blindsided doesn't feel good. I just want to make sure that I'm safe moving forward, and I'm feeling very upset about how this just went over. I'm so pissed at Jess and Alyssa for not saying anything. And even Aidan. Fucking Aidan said nothing. I need to look at this situation positively, but I honestly don't know what to do right now.

I guess I need to find a way to strike against Jess/Alyssa/Devon because they are the power trio right now... I just hate doing it because I love all three of them, but if I want any chance of winning at all, I kind of need to do that.

I probably need to start by making sure I have Aidan and Dani with me. Chelsea being on the wrong side and talking with me helps, and then I need to solidify my relationship with Jones and Maynor.

Maybe with all of those combined, I have a chance.

So tonight I fucked up harder than I EVER HAVE FUCKED UP IN A GAME BEFORE (and that's saying something). I've been going through a rough patch the last week and have probably gotten a total of 15 hours of sleep since Friday???? When I was on call with Devon/Alyssa I read something out loud Jones sent me and it mentioned the whole alliance with Alyssa/Jones. I'm hoping I fucking mumbled but Alyssa understood me so DEVON KNOWS. I attempted to play it off but I DON'T know. I just don't fucking know. I'm dumb. I feel dumb.

I'm just trying to build trust with people at this point. I feel like my game fell apart fucking HARD this round. I cracked at final 10. FINAL FUCKING 10. I'm not trying to get DOWN on myself but low-key this is probably why I don't win games lmfao.

I told Alyssa about the idol so I'm hoping this is a sign of trust. I don't know how I 1000% feel about telling her but here goes nothing I guess?

I was in a pretty decent position going into this round and then....until I literally set fire to the rain and fucked shit up.

My relationship with TJ took a hit. That's not going to be good in the future. My relationship with Maynor took a hit. That's not going to be good in the future. My relationship with Chelsea is fucked (but did we ever have any type of working relationship, not really). My relationship with Devon probably took a hit because of my own stupidity. My relationship with Alyssa took a hit when I was sipping on dumb bitch juice. My relationship with Jones is still a major question mark? My relationship with JD is as stable as I am currently and that's saying SOMETHING?

THAT'S LITERALLY ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE FUCKING GAME WHO HAS SOME SORT OF ISSUE WITH ME?

Literally the only two people I didn't piss off or give reason to hate me is Dani/Aidan... and that's.... just fucking sad.

I destroyed my game and that's on me.

Time to pick up these pieces somehow and make them FIT.

Here is a Haiku about my game:

My game is a mess. I messed it up real bad. Jumping of a bridge.

okay so,,, I talked to Alyssa and Jess,,,,,,, and I understand,,,,,, like 80% where they're coming from? Jess told me she and Alyssa flipped because they didn't realize TJ and I came to them and said JD said Jess' name?? Jess went to JD and she said that Tim was the one who threw Jess' name out,,,,, and like,, they couldn't take my word for it when I said I trusted Tim, WHICH I UNDERSTAND that they didn't trust tim, but the fact that I told them how i felt and they just didn't listen to me bothers me.

like,, imagine this scenario,, would you take the testimony of someone who's in your alliance (albeit with some ulterior motives, but still in the alliance) and told their alliance (95% of) the truth,,, or someone who is never online and had been stirring up chaos and drama and was spewing shit this entire day just too keep their self safe? just answer that in the comments below thank you xoxo

so now that Alyssa and Jess know what happened on my end, and I know what happened on their end, we're both in agreement that JD has to FUCKING GO!!!! Tim was fucking robbed, i'm so espresso depresso you have no idea i'm so sad that Tim's gone. what a king,,, the creator of Jones' angels,,,,, robbedt,,,,,

we're rebranded as Tim's Angels btw jsyk <3

but ummm this fucking Unan1mous thing???? more like fucking BOOnan1mus amirite ladies hahahahahah ha h hah ah  um,,, hmm that joke sucked i'm so sorry. SO okay yeah,, Alyssa/Jess/TJ/Maynor agreed they'd vote for JD, and that they'd try to get the rest of the numbers to work for JD, BUT the problem is that if ANY ONE PERSON DOESN'T VOTE UNAN1MOUSLY,,,, they're safe. so we gotta get /everyone/ on board with this. hopefully Chelsea won't want to have like,,, revenge against Alyssa/Jess/Devon or anything sksksks

but ummmm let's hope for the best? I gotta get to school at 6:00 am and it's 2:00 am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it's snoozeville for me. catch you on the flipside :p

I hashed things out with Devon last night because I was so pissed off about the vote, but I still have a lot of trust to rebuild. When i mentioned my name going around, Devon, Alyssa, and Jess knew that my name wasn't out there and still didn't let me in on the Tim vote. I was completely alone and had to make an alliance with the others out of desperation and tbh, i think I look like an idiot. But anyway, i think Devon and i are on good terms and I hope we can rekindle our old team that i was loyal and comfotable with since the beginning.

This might be a long one Johnny. I am so sad that Tim went home. I was shocked. I thought i was able to trust Jess, Alyssa, Devon but they all lied and now to me personally are dead to me. Like im still going to work with them until i have an opporunity to strike against them. Like Alyssa she’s great but now has to leaving sooner than later. Devon final 2 is dead, i would gladly vote you out but have to time it really well. Dani m Aidan dead even more but seems like they are worried about Alyssa Jess and Devon so might use them to take out Alyssa. But yeah last night was rough. I had this ‘thing’ happened to be that was triggered by this game and my class lab. It wasnt good. There was a dark low moment were i got a negative thought that I should just tell them to vote me out for unanimous week. My friend texted me and told me to think it thru and Im glad i didnt day anything. I still want to play and try to make it to the end. Only person i trust 100% with out a doubt is Jonesy. ❤️ Everyone else can leave. Except i also like TJ amd Jess.

I'm not sure where my vote will land tonight. If I vote JD, I lose a shield in this game. At the same time, if JD goes tonight in a 9-1, we start to build trust among those we previously blindsided.

If I make it an 8-2 or 8-1-1, then I'm worried that people will use the process of elimination to find out I flipped....

Another random note about tonight. If JD stays due to me, the next target becomes Chelsea.

Essentially, I am deciding between playing with Chelsea or JD....

Everyone is saying JD’s name like lets do this. But now everyone is afaid of an idol and i swear if the votes aren’t unanimous, im going to die.

If I get idol'd out in this format I AM FUCKING SUING.

I CAN'T GO OUT ON MY FIRST TUMBLR ORG IN A ROUND BASED ON A ZWOOPER GAME.

HOW FUCKING IRONIC WOULD THAT BE?

YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM MY LAWYER!

In all honesty I'm struggling hard this round. Idol's are so dangerous this fucking round. SO FUCKING DANGEROUS.

The mental gymnastics happening this round is insane.

I'm honestly having PTSD about this god damn format. The ONLY time I've ever cried because of a game was IN THIS FORMAT (thanks JOHNNY).

Today all I've done is try and repair relationships. I've worked harder than a hooker on a Tuesday today. I am exhausted. If I go this has been fun-ish.

I feel fuckig awful i worked too hard in this game to potentially get idoled out and that breaks my heart that that could happen tonight. apparently JD is writing down my name because she thinks i'm "Stubborn" and she wants to save me???? like if you wanna save me then like maybe don't vote for me?????? like i get the intent behind it with like,,,, the idea to save me but this is fuckin wit hme to my c ore . .Jess thinks JD's ly ing ad that she's voting for Jess, I just,,, fuck i really wanna die right noww yk i think i might be getting out there's like a 60% chance JD doensn't have an idol, and if she's comfortable enough then she wont play it. but there's a good chance I'll be going home. fukfalkdsfajsdads don't be surprised if i cry i'm just so upsetti/uncomfortable with the idea of going hope i tried too hard but um yeah

Wellp I’m really close with Aidan and so far I feel like we are doing really good. I feel bad because I lied straight to JDs face about voting jonesy. Instead I voted for her.

I'M DEFINITELY NOT CRYING OR ANYTHIGN FUCK

[fixthedisconnect]

The Beginning

tl;dr

Trying to improve myself

In haiku form, son!

This is me. Lying on a couch. Down and out. Well maybe not out but definitely not in and very much down. If life were a game, I’m currently AFK. Discouraged. Disheartened. An argument could be made for “broken”. Certainly more than Hercules level of despair 

It's difficult to describe. I'm unsure if my problems qualify as legitimate (as opposed to un-legit) Unsure if I'm just perceiving them to be bigger or worse than they actually are? I really don't want to complain. We all know that person who is… “A little ray of sunshine” shall we say. Nothing is EVER good enough. They hate puppies and rainbows. They could be be unhappy at Disneyland. No one likes being around those people. They’re probably also communists.

*Side note, was there a scientific study published in a reputable peer reviewed journal with statistically significant data showing a clear correlation that led the researchers to fail to reject the null hypothesis, or whatever, and ultimately declare Mouse land “The Happiest Place on Earth”?... If not, Disney is MIGHTY sure of themselves. The HAPPIEST? Of ALL other places? I mean, have they even heard of the Great British Baking Show? Do you even bake, bruh? Don't get me wrong, Disneyland is up there but if I had to pick between the two, I'm more than fairly sure I'd have to go with the tasting tent in the middle of an English countryside, eating Puff pastries listening to Paul's thick liverpudlian accent. Okay less his accent, it's more of an excuse to say liverpudlian. Try it. It's fun. I think that gives the Peter pan ride a run for its money at least.

But I digress, back to me ;)

I was saying I don’t wish to be the aforementioned type of person so I try not to complain (some of y’all who know me personally are stifling scoffs I’m sure) and I realize there are many, MANY people who have it MUCH worse than me. I am also BEYOND grateful for the good things I do have in my life. 

BUT!

… at the same time, the stuff I’m dealing with really does seem like a bit to me.

I have an injured tailbone that’s been a source of constant pain for about 3 years now. I used to be able to sit in a certain position or on a specific chair without it hurting but now it’s pretty much 24/7. Yet x-rays, MRIs, trigger point and nerve blocking injections and several different meds have not helped at all.

I’m in my 30s now which apparently means your ribs pop out of place while you sleep. I get them cracked back into place at the Chiropractor and they're out again the next morning. Basically it hurts to breathe and I can feel my back muscles scraping over my ribs.

My house is ALSO falling apart and I can’t afford to fix it. My backyard is a dirt pile and I feel SUPER awesome that my kids don’t have grass to run around in. Our plumbing, electrical, and roof all need to be replaced because the house was built before electricity was a thing. Well... 1950. Which is basically the same. And every time I look around at everything that’s broken I feel worse because I’m reminded that I don’t have the means to fix it. Why don’t I have the the funds? Welp...

I’ve been laid off 3 times in the last 4 years and since graduating college 6 years ago have yet to be at one job longer than a year. I pretty much live in fear that every day I go into work will be my last and live in constant stress of how I’m going to provide for my family. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a marketable skill but I majored in German Literature (long story for another day) and sadly not too many people are looking to hire me to read books to them in German and write sub-par research papers about the motivations of the protagonists...

Why don’t you just learn a new skill, you might ask? That’s a great question. I’ll tell you. In SONG form

No? Monty Python? Anyone? Bueller? NM...

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for about 2 years (which remarkably coincides with how old our youngest child is) and am effectively a zombie now living off cold pizza & diet mtn dew. That’s what zombies eat, right? Low energy, difficult to focus, seconds away from weeping most days. Which means I have had a beast of a time trying to find the time, motivation and energy to learn to code or be a graphic/ web designer or whatever skill will guarantee that I don’t have a heart attack every time someone says, “Hey, you got a sec?”

So, as a zombie dad, most days I wake up late, trying to get every last second of “sleep” that I can, roll out of bed, shove some “food” in my face and rush off to work (usually without showering, shaving, brushing teeth or any thing resembling self care or hygiene). Gross, I know. And believe me, I’m not boasting here. I live in a state of constant embarrassment of myself. But may I remind you... zombie.

Then I sit in pain for 8 hrs at a job I don’t care for (but am beyond grateful for) and am afraid to lose, hop in my almost broken vehicle & head home to eat a delicious meal made by my beautiful, loving wife. Try not to take the disappointment in my children’s eyes to heart when I tell them I can’t play with them because I’m too tired and in too much pain. Get them down to bed and instead of using the remaining hour or so to do something productive, I fall asleep while watching Parks & Rec through for the 100th time because it’s funny and I need as much levity and release as I can get. Then I’m on the night shift (usually up 2 or 3 times a night getting bottles, changing diapers, rocking back to sleep, etc) and doing it again the next day. Worn out. Run Down. Scraping by, dragging my broken down body through the motions of a “life.”

I feel like this:

Not like a cool zombie

Geez... He makes it look so EASY and fun...

Now, you’re not gonna believe me, but I SWEAR I’m not complaining. Seriously. Just explaining where I’m at these days. Setting the stage, painting the backdrop, giving you some context. I REALLY do try not to complain because as I said, I know it could be way worse and I really am grateful for the good things I DO have and if this is the price for those things and people, I’ll do it again and again. 

But do you see what I mean? Some might say, you don’t shower every day? You don’t brush your teeth regularly? But in my mind and body, I’m just too tired and don’t have time. Last year I broke two back molars in half chewing on gum. Yup, gum. And I lived with that for 6 months because I couldn’t get them fixed because I didn’t have insurance because I didn’t have a job. Seems like a legitimate reason versus a lame excuse.

But I know other people who are going to school full time, while working 2 jobs who seldom see their family let alone get time to play with them. Making do with less and seemingly more put-together than I am. So am I just making excuses then? I mean, have you SEEN this kid?!

Now, I know I shouldn’t compare myself to others. I know everyone’s got their own challenges and I should only compare myself to the best version of myself. But that’s just the thing. I AM comparing myself to myself. And I’m not even CLOSE. 

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with life. It’s not that I just want more money (though that couldn’t hurt) or a bigger house or power or fame. I really only want enough to care for my family and some extra to help others out. It’s more of a discontent with who I am as a person. I’m not as nice as I’d like to be. I’m not as skilled as I’d like to be. I’m not as humble as I’d like to be. The list goes on... Literally. I have a list. A back log of ideas I want to try, things I want to learn, skills I want to have and put to use, people I want to help.

Basically, I have bad health, bad financial situation, no career, super awesome self esteem, fragile mental health, and not much of a social life.

Sooooo... So so SO!

I’m changing. This WAS me. 

I’m on a journey to finally achieve everything I’ve been putting off and become the best version of me. And I hope you’ll join me on the trip because I hope to learn from all this and I hope that someone somewhere can learn something as well. Even if that’s what NOT to do (Hey man, if it helps SOMEbody, I consider it a success and worth any effort).

So, follow along. I’ll share what I can along the way. And make sure to let me know how I can help you achieve YOUR goals too! Until later!

[royalblurryfacedbastard]

Today was nice!

I woke up at 7 am and had breakfast around 8:30 and a bit after 9 I got picked up for school.

Writing class went well, I was a bit insecure about my poems yet again but when I actually read them PM and LO liked them a lot along with the other two students (MO and EO). PM said he liked what I did with one of them bc I forced the reader to see some graphic images with how I wrote a part of it. I basically used pretty common metaphors and made them very real and concrete. He also said my last poem involving five haikus was a little different to how I usually write and that it seemed like someone older wrote it. He told EO abt that cuz she comments on young people a lot and that was just kinda funny.

Anyway, by the end of the class we got our assignments for the break and PM actually got the idea from one of my poems which made it so he gave us individual assignments. Basically we’re supposed to write using themes we don’t usually touch and he gave me hatred as a topic though I’m not sure why bc I have written about hatred before I believe. Idk. I gave it some thought and I’m fairly sure he wants to see how dark I can go in my writing and I’ve also written more positive poems lately so I guess that’s why maybe? I’m fairly sure he came up with my specific assignment when I showed them my poem about drowning in someone’s eyes which was kinda corny. I might have to ask him why he gave me the topic later.

After that BE came by and she and I discussed the website and our Facebook page with PM and I also found out the meeting w the new communications lady is cancelled cuz PM is gonna have a meeting with her by himself then. Either way I would’ve missed it probably since I’ve got a doctor’s appointment on Thursday. The meeting went p well though and PM suggested that I could maybe become the school’s journalist or something similar and go and gather information about all our courses so we have material for Facebook.

Before getting a ride home from BE we had our usual Tuesday meeting but this time we discussed the lil solo thing I’m gonna be working on and also that I wanna quit theatre. We basically just discussed the ideas I had about it and then the janitor lady derailed the discussion a couple of times but that was fine. I feel like it was a good meeting tbh, I got a lot of inspiration for the script I’m gonna write and it was nice to just talk.

So! Now I’m home and because my new meds have been giving me heart palpitations and also a weird feeling in my chest I’m probably gonna rest and take it easy for the rest of the day.

[mahouproject-one]

swallow every doubt, cast temptation out | Miyu | MM Trial (re: Accusations; ATTN: Outa, Shino, all)

Miyu didn’t like being called a detective. She hadn’t liked it when Joon called her that, and if she knew Outa was thinking it she wouldn’t like that either. It put that much more weight on the consequences of her words and actions. Which was an extraordinary amount of pressure, given the history of mistakes behind her.

She let Takako break the ice in her own terrible way. She let Holy make the first serious accusation. She let Outa make a defense – his first defense, considering that this hadn’t stopped Kris from pushing back. Speaking of that, she listened carefully to the music box, and…

“…I don’t quite recognize it. Or… no, it sounds like something Otohiko may have hummed once? But my point is, I don’t believe that is Nine Lives, at least not the version I know; Akiyama-san played that for me recently.”

Miyu looked up at her projected memory of herself in the crossroads, staring at the shadowy creatures around her. Woodland animals. Bears, wolves, foxes, owls, coyotes, hawks, weasels, skunks, snakes, cougars, and so forth, in addition to the cats.

She squinted.

“…I think some of the smaller mammals are technically omnivores? Otohiko didn’t correct us when we called them all carnivores, and in fact did correct us when we mistakenly called them herbivores. I think the important point here is, they are all predators. Creatures that eat meat, and most of them nothing but meat.

So, now that we have names out here, I’m going to ask again: What animals attacked everyone in Akiyama-san’s golden labyrinth?”

“Currently, I feel I’m left with two primary suspects.”

For a moment, Miyu nearly lost her nerve. She didn’t want to be near Genbu right now. She wanted to go grab Mi-ke and drag them over to the Byakko section, where at least they knew they could trust everyone there.

But Miyu was needed here. She needed to stay here, standing right next to Outa and a few paces away from Holy.

“…Of course, we can’t be too quick to eliminate any other possibilities. I’ve been suspicious of other artists for a while; Ueno is also a musician with some cat affinities. But I don’t see him as a good fit to the rest of profile. Until more evidence comes to light, I see two people who best fit the information.”

Speaking of bringing up new intel, Shino seemed to be referring to… that. And if he wasn’t, Miyu still felt comfortable enough giving him a sign. She had assumed someone would have already updated him on the situation.

“...Shirashi-san. If you’re referring to what we spoke about when we last met, that object has been found. It is safe, I have researched the limitations of its usage – it does not seem to be as dangerous as we first believed, nor do I think it harms the people we are now – and I would love to discuss it openly… but for the time being I will defer to whoever is hiding it right now, in case they intend to use it as their ace card. If the mastermind truly wants some form of us, any form of us, to be happy, then I think we may be able to come to an agreement, yes?”

What were they planning? Miyu could only hope they were at least willing to consider it, preferably soon.

And then… she needed to address Outa. She certainly noticed the way he glanced at her after Holy said his piece. He knew what her angle had been earlier. She was sure Morgan had just figured it out, too. Miyu would have to assume she had just lost any support either of them could have given her – unless it was support against Holy or some other suspect.

“I’m not defending what Sasamoto did. I still haven’t entirely forgiven them for misleading us, for trying to turn us against Morgan-san, and for lying to cover Joon. And I’m not defending Shirashi-san and whatever train of logic he was on when he harassed Zhen-san.

But they aren’t the ones on trial right now. Give me the name of another suspect, and then tell me why it could be them.”

Miyu had a long history of being so dead-set on a suspect that she blinded herself to all other possibilities. Tsukuyomi in the first trial. Mitsuo in the fourth. Clove and Shino in the fifth. After the many disasters she had been a part of, she didn’t want to bring herself yet again trying to drag out a confession that might not ever happen.

So that meant she was going to dial this back and put some neutral information down. Relatively neutral, at least: It would be clear to everyone why Miyu had thought to ask about this in the first place.

“Akiyama-san went on a date in the art gallery. However, when I asked Morgan-san about that, I also asked him about the previous motive’s effects. Specifically, I asked if the motive’s effects ever ended early against him, and he indicated that they did not. There are a number of ways that could be interpreted… but getting into that would be going down a pit of ‘what ifs’.

Instead, I would like to revisit the haikus.”

Reaching into her pensieve, she projected her memories of two of them:

'From the deep darkness A soft light guided the way And lit up my heart'

'A winter forest Swiftly, quick, a rabbit runs No tracks left behind'

“Akiyama-san claimed authorship of these two, and I believe him. The handwriting matches notes he’s left on the Genbu bulletin board. There is nothing suggesting these are actual evidence, however, unless we want to get back on that ‘loved one’ talking point.

A third haiku in different handwriting has appeared. The content of this one is a lot more worrying.”

A new memory went up:

‘A young man looks out Happy animals frolic This land is home now’

“I’ve interpreted that to mean that the ‘young man’ in the haiku, comforted in part by the animals around him, does not want to leave ‘this land’… That would be quite on-the-nose given our current evidence, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps too on-the-nose. In keeping an open mind, I can’t rule out the possibility of a red herring. Someone switching their handwriting.” A look at Outa. “Or someone trying to frame the other top suspect.” A look at Holy. “Maybe even someone who’s not even male, trying to throw us off their trail.” She didn’t have a suspect for this, but you can bet she would’ve looked at them too.

Miyu flipped through her sketchbook, searching for notes kept safely between pages. And she held up several scraps of paper: Replications of the writing left on the walls.

For the first time in six years, she was proud to be a forger.

“Come get these if you want to compare this to any other handwriting. I’ve even got a sketchbook with me if you want to write down an example of your own.”