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souvenirsofsurgery · 3 years ago

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monty’s horror movie list

no one follows me for this but i’m back in my horror movie obsession era so here we go. some of them are good, some of them are bad (but I love them), and some of them are kind of unacceptable, like, morally tbh, I’m sorry

anyway, in no particular order:

mother!: I just watched this one today so it’s on my mind. get ready to be stressed out by deeply uncomfortable social situations for like, the first hour and a half and then genuinely disturbed for the last twenty minutes. i finished this and then sat in my room mouthing “what the fuck, what the fuck”. v good, 10/10

Orphan: What if you adopted a kid but they sucked?

Absentia: I was really impressed, cause this was like a low-budget, crowd funded movie but it’s so so good. This one is about a woman whose husband went missing years ago, a creepy tunnel, and family relationships. V quiet and sad

Possum: Not very much happens in this movie for a long time but the atmosphere is so good, and it’s genuinely creepy. The ending also made me so uncomfortable I almost couldn’t watch it, so there’s that

The Wolf House: Incredible unsettling stop-motion animation, and I’m a sucker for good animation. Makes more sense if you know a little Chilean history, but it’s interesting even without that context

Amityville: It’s About Time: Jumping right from that foreign arthouse film into cheesy schlock, what if a clock made people evil and fucked up?

Hell House LLC: More! Schlock! This is a fake documentary/found footage movie about people trying to make a haunted house in an old hotel... but what if it was haunted for real??

Host (the 2020 shudder original): Unfriended if it was good

Hereditary: Made me sad :( This was one of the first movies to genuinely scare me in a while, and my sister-in-law won’t even let anyone talk to her about it. The story about a family dealing with grief and complicated relationships is also just so interesting to me, this one’s in my top 10

Anything for Jackson: Reverse possession movie: they try to put a spirit IN someone! Hell yeah. So many good, weird ghosts in here, I love some good, weird ghosts

13 Ghosts: (the early 2000s remake) Speaking of good weird ghosts. What if your estranged uncle died and left you a house but there was a ghost jail in the basement? I just rewatched this movie with my little brother and remembered how much I love it. Very schlocky, Matthew Lillard’s acting is off the fucking walls and I love it, why does he act like that??

Kindred: One of the only “is it in her head, or is it real?” movies where I actually really wasn’t sure. It’s about a woman whose husband dies right before she’s about to give birth, so she ends up staying with his family and slowly starts to question their motives

Parents: What if you were just a little kid and you started to suspect your parents were eating people?

Basket Case: I’m not crying over a B movie, I’m not crying over a B movie. In this one, two conjoined twins are surgically separated against their wills, with one of them getting thrown in the trash. As adults, they start hunting down the doctors who did it to them

The Poughkeepsie Tapes: Very depressing fake documentary about a serial killer. Just fucked up and sad

The Taking of Deborah Logan: One of the few found footage movies that I think is actually good. A small documentary crew goes to film a woman and her aging mother who’s suffering from dementia, but they start to think that... huh, maybe this is something a little worse than dementia...

Ju-On: The Grudge (the original Japanese one): this movie just freaks me out, I don’t like how Kayako moves around, I don’t like the sounds she makes, and I don’t like her weird little son

The Ring (the American remake): I saw this movie when I was like 8 bc someone recorded it over the Willy Wonka VHS I’d gotten from the thrift store, and I’ve been fucked up ever since. In it, a woman sees a cursed tape that will make you die in seven days, and has to try and figure out how to save herself before then. GREAT atmosphere, very creepy

Sadako Vs Kayako: What if the girl from the Grudge and the girl from the Ring fought each other? Hell yeah. Plus, love that a ghost hunter comes to help with the situation and he’s got a random mean little girl with him. People are like “why is she here?” and he’s just like “she’s my associate” okay?? Where did she come from??? I’m obsessed with this movie

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A classic. Rancid, nasty atmosphere, just feels gross, 10/10

Society: Rich people suck so so bad and are very fucked up

House of 1000 Corpses: I love this movie and I’m sorry, its just some disgusting, campy fun. Like, what if your car broke down the night before halloween and ended up in a house with some terrible (but very entertaining) people?

Oculus: The idea of being a little kid, stuck in the house while your parents are slowly losing it, or potentially being possessed by something evil, is really scary to me. This movie does it so well. It moves back and forth from the main characters going through that in their childhoods, to them as adults, back in the house where it happened, and it’s so so good

Hellraiser: You tell me it’s about the blurry line between pleasure and pain and I watch it. The designs for the cenobites are so good. I like this first one a lot, but I also really enjoy the second one bc the torture dimension looks like MC Escher designed it and it’s sick as hell

The Others: This is one of my favorite, like, classic haunted house kind of movie. A mother keeps her kids inside an old mansion, with all the curtains drawn, because they have an illness that means they can’t go in the sunlight. Very, very creepy

The Blair Witch Project: This one just feels so real, I’ve never seen another found footage movie that reached this level. The actors knocked it out of the park, how am I so freaked out just by a couple of people wandering around the woods? It’s the blueprint, honestly

A Nightmare on Elm Street: You guys know this one, he gets you in your dreams! Probably my favorite of the classic slashers, I love some good old practical effects. my brother actually just bought me the WHOLE box set for my birthday so I’m gonna start working though the ones I haven’t seen yet

Jennifer’s Body: What if your best friend, who you have a very homoerotic relationship with, started eating dudes? Iconic. No, but seriously, this movie has a lot more going on than you might think

House of Wax (the 2000s remake): Bad, but so good. It’s really got that uncanny valley thing going on, love that fucked up wax museum

Ichi the Killer: Pretty unacceptable, I can’t in good conscience tell you to watch this movie, but it’s definitely an experience. Very very very violent, like super violent, but in the wildest fucking ways. Basically, what if you were a masochistic Yakuza member with a weird joker mouth and you just wanted a sadistic vigilante to beat the absolute shit out of you? Anyway, I think there’s something wrong with Takashi Miike and probably also me

Black Christmas: This is one of the og og slashers. It’s about girls getting killed in a sorority house, but surprisingly it’s like, not really an exploitation film, and I really like the characters. Good, unsettling killer, too

The Baby: WEIRD. Weird and uncomfortable. I’m not trying to kink shame anyone when I say this, but it’s probably definitely a fetish thing. In it, a social worker takes on the case of a family with an adult son who they’re claiming has the mind of a baby. This one’s probably kind of unacceptable too, to be honest with you

#horror #horror movies #horror movie recs

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jackambrosemodeling · 3 years ago

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Boy Talk || Jack & Brandon

When: May 2, 2021

Where: Jack’s apartment, Santa Monica, California

Featuring: Brandon Kelly (dialogue provided by Katie @itsbrandonkelly)

Triggers: Allusion to alcoholism

After firing off a You’d better be home. text to Jack, he realised that he really should have checked first to save him from waiting outside their apartment but that’s why there were so many saying about hindsight. Still, he knocked to let his presence be known instead of texting again, hoping he’d timed his visit well.

Jack was coincidentally home when they received Brandon's text. They got out of the shower when they saw the message. After texting him back with a 'bitch I might be', Jack unlocked their door as well as the entrance door to the apartment building. They followed up with a 'door's open' text and went to go find clothes to put on before Brandon came inside.

He huffed out in amusement at the first response he got and then knocked again at the second before letting himself in. “Who leaves their door open? This is the start to every horror film ever, then again just letting yourself into someone’s home is also how they start.” He called out, heading to the kitchen instead of looking for Jack. He figured they would have answered the door if they weren’t occupied with something else and so they’d join him when they were done. When he found glasses, he settled himself on the couch and shrugged off his jacket.

"I do when I know someone's coming over!" they yelled from behind their closed bedroom door. If someone had actually broken into their apartment for nefarious purposes, Jack was more than prepared to deal with the situation. Once they were presentable, they looked around until they found Brandon in the living room. "Comfy there?" they teased. "You know I love seeing you, but a little more of a heads up would've been nice. I could've still been in the shower. I could've been actively having sex!"

“Who’s supposed to be coming over? I can’t believe you were inviting people to chill and I wasn’t one of them?” Brandon had taken out his phone to sit on the couch with him and had even gotten as far as pouring them both a drink before Jack had come to meet him. “Yep. I made myself at home.” He gave Jack his best smile, even fluttering his eyelashes for good measure. “If you loved seeing me that much you would invite me over to do those things with you. Besides, it’s not much of a surprise visit if I tell you about it, is it?”

“You! I opened the door for you, silly!” Jack looked at the two glasses, then back to Brandon. “Oh shit, the wine that Nyle sent as a moving present! I forgot I had that.” They didn’t want to be rude and throw it out, and figured it would be good to have in case of guests, so they hid it. The fact that they managed to not drink any of it themself was a miracle. “Yeah, I’m not sure how Viv would feel about that... speaking of which. Fun update in my life. I’m kind of seeing someone? Still figuring out labels and whatnot.” Though there were rumors floating around the gossip sphere, Brandon was the first person they confirmed the rumor to.

“Then the door wouldn’t be open so it wouldn’t matter if you were showering or fucking, would it?” Jack’s comment had Brandon looking at the bottle again and picking up the glass closest to it. “Mine is alcoholic. I brought you some appley juice recommended by the best palate I know.” He patted the space beside him before his eyebrows raised in surprise. “You settled before you boned me? Disgusting. Unacceptable.” Despite his words, he started grinning. “I’m so happy for you, babe. That’s cute.”

“Brandon, stop making good points,” they huffed, sitting down on the couch next to Brandon. “Oh, thanks.” While Jack had never explicitly told Brandon why they quit drinking, it appeared that he had gotten the hint. “I’m sorry. It turns out I have a SIMP gene that was activated by me moving to Santa Monica. Who would’ve thunk it?” they joked, knowing damn well that they’ve simped over every person they’ve ever dated.

“I can’t help that I’m brilliant. Sorry buddy; you just gotta live with that I’m afraid.” He hummed quietly in amusement. Brandon simply offered them a smile at their thanks. They never joined in whenever B was drinking and he was nothing if not attentive. Sometimes, at least. “Literally no one because the simp gene has always been in you and always been active but I’ll keep that to myself if it really makes you feel better.”

"All my friends are hot and smart, but I'm just hot. Story of my life." Jack sighed, taking a sip of the juice that was so graciously provided to them. "Excuse me?!" Jack exclaimed overdramatically. "Are you calling me a simp? In the comfort of my own apartment?! I don't know what I did to deserve this treatment. I don't know how I'll go on!" They busted into laughter, unable to keep the act up.

“You’re hot and smart. What the fuck are you talking about? Be nice to my friend or I’ll kick your ass.” He reached his foot out to nudge Jack with, an amused smile on his face. “Plus, you’re also super hot, own it. And yes. I’m calling you a simp. You’re the themperor of simpington. Population... Uh, I don’t know how many people are in Santa Monica but that’s the population.”

“Brandon, I was a straight-C student in high school and have the common sense of a bag of potato chips. I know my strengths and weaknesses.” Jack knew they weren’t book smart and it didn’t bother them. “Excuse me, I am not Themperor Simpington. That title belongs to Sunwoo Seong. Have you met them? But they did skip town a while back... shit. I didn’t ask for this title. I need to find a new non-binary friend to bestow this title on. I just need more enby friends in general.”

“You don’t have the common sense of a bag of potato chips, Jesus Christ Jack.” Brandon laughed as he slapped Jack’s arm. “You’ve survived this long in this industry, babe. That’s not down to potato chip brain, even I nearly crashed out a couple of years in.” He raised an eyebrow, head tilted as he fixed them a look of disapproval. “You are Themperor Simpington. The queen has spoken. I met Sunwoo once and obviously offered to climb that tree but they left and Joonie was sad so I’m no longer a fan of tall, hot and dimpled. If it makes you feel any better, I’m a huge simp for my sweet boy.”

“Hey, I’m funny. Fuck you,” they retorted, chuckling. “I’ve been told that I’m charismatic, and that’s helped me out in the industry. I’m still not that famous though.” While Jack was relatively well-known in queer circles, heterosexual circles were a whole other ballpark. Being friends with Brandon and recently befriending Vanessa did help their social standing though. “Themperor Simpington my butt,” they grumbled. “Wait, when you say ‘my sweet boy,’ do you mean Minjoon or do you have another boo I should know about?”

“Bitch, I been trying to get you to for so long now. I was starting to think you needed glasses.” Bee broke into a laugh before he even finished his sentence, nudging Jack’s arm in his giggling. “Yeah, you have to have a look and you have to be charming to start work in this industry but to survive in it? You have to be smart. About that though, I know I keep promising you a space on my next project and it’s had a few.. speed bumps I guess? Not really speed bumps but personal delays? Either way, I know enough now to be able to tell you that Queen B’s.. that I’m releasing a trial perfume.. fragrance line. Five scents to start, each will have its own colour have theme shots with, each will have its own model to associate with and I want you, if you’re interested?” Their mumbling made Brandon grin, coughing as a terrible fake attempt at covering up the ‘Simp.’ he titled them with again. “Minjoon is my sweet boy. I don’t have another boo, not even a little bit but if you hear simp alarms going off whenever I like the instas of a very beautiful friend of mine then mind ya business.”

"Oh my god. Brandooooon!" Though Jack had quite a few friends with benefits in their days, whenever the thought of doing anything with Brandon crossed their mind, they thought about the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed seventeen-year-old they met all those years ago. Jack's eyes lit up when he started talking about his fragrance line project. "Oh hell yeah I'm interested. Just remember, my favorite colors are purple and pink." They winked at Brandon. Aside from one photoshoot in L.A. that they did after fashion weeks, their work schedule was dryer than a desert. Of course they wouldn't tell him that though. They didn't want to sound desperate. Jack would've taken this job even if they weren't in need of work. "B, you're gonna have to be a little more specific than that. I know you. You don't befriend ugly people."

The laugh that left him this time was more of a giggle and he scrunched his nose up, shaking his head. “I tease but honestly, you’re practically family. Did you know that my parents ask after you? They know as much about you as I do but.. Well, they’re embarrassing. Eh, mom’s okay. Dad’s embarrassing so you’ll probably never meet them but yeah.. They get told about the important people in my life and you’ve been in it longer than Joonie.” Brandon groaned, setting his glass down. “Can’t believe I’m being gross and emotional already. Moving on..” He said, a little louder. “Purple would be fantastic for you. It’s a very royal colour and I’m going to do the obvious and lean into that a little but silk, not velvet. Pink was going to have a sweet-candy-lace vibe to it but if you want pink I can give you pink.” Brandon rolled his eyes, despite the heat he could feel spreading up his neck. “I have a... friend called Kian and he’s... There hasn’t been a word invented yet for how beautiful he is and it’s ridiculous and gross because I don’t lose my mind over pretty boys but he’s.. He makes me blush, Jack. I don’t blush.”

"Brandooooooooon! Stop, you're gonna make me blush. I'd love to meet your parents. Parents love me. Well, actually, I just love milfs and dilfs," Jack cackled at their own dumb joke. "But in all seriousness, let me know when they come to town!" As much as they wanted to meet Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, they didn't want to go to the Kelly home to do so. Jack knew that they shared a home state with Brandon, and didn't want to reenter North Carolina at the risk of running into their family. "Ooh, purple and silk? Now you're speaking my language!" Jack wiggled their eyebrows when Brandon mentioned Kian by name. "A yes, the cute delivery boy. You've mentioned him before. We're Instagram mutuals!"

“Do it! Blush, you coward!” Brandon laughed, leaning against Jack’s arm to nudge them. “Oh my god. I can’t believe I have to say this but if you’re gonna fuck my parents, please don’t date them and wait until I’m out of the room if you’re going to flirt, I don’t need to see that. They really would love to meet you though, they’ve been waiting for permission to come to town.” Brandon grinned at Jack at their approval, giving a small nod. “I’ll get some things drawn up for you. I do have a few already as rough drafts but now I know you’re taking it, I can design something a little more tailored to you.” The warmth spreading across his cheeks and colouring his face a darker shade of pink only grew worse as Jack wiggled their brows at him. “Yeah.. Well.. He’s almost perfect. The only thing I’d change about him is his last name.” His reaction to himself was instant, throwing himself against the cushions to yell out a laugh. “And I keep saying dumb cheesy shit like that! I’m a bumbling mess around him. Like.. Like I start off all smooth and collected and then he smiles and I’m just.. fucking applying to be hired by hallmark. It’s.. It’s so cringe and gross and... I’m happy.”

"Brandon, I'll become your new step-parent and ground you, don't tempt me," Jack joked, cackling. "Well give it to them! Don't deprive me of your loving parents!" Jack didn't have loving parents of their own, so if Brandon's parents were anything like Brandon, Jack was going to latch to them like nobody's business. "Oh my goooooooooooood, that was so coooooorrrrnnnnnyyyyy! Damn, and you call me a simp! I'm not out here reciting poetry on main about my crush. And if you bring up the fact that we have keys to each others' apartments, mind your business." Jack knew they were simping hard over Vivian, but now it was Brandon's turn to be in the hot seat. "So have you considered, you know, talking to him?"

“Their ex girlfriend actually tried that once. Oh my god, it was kind of funny though. You’ll have to treat me better when our guests arrive and do as you’re told or I’ll have you cut off until you learn some damn respect.” He mimicked in a too high voice, rolling his eyes afterwards. “Like.. Honey, I’ve only just noticed you’re not the last guy they were dating and that’s only because you started pterodactyl screeching.” Despite his playful tone, Brandon could feel warmth spreading across his face. “Yeah, okay. I’ll.. I’ll invite them up to meet you.” Having made peace with the fact that he‘d made himself into a product, his parents were off limits when it came to the people in his life, knowing how fickle and superficial a lot of his relationships with people were. It was different with Jack though, Jack really was his friend. “Honestly, I’ve been an absolute mess. I pulled the whole ‘My friends call me B, you can call me any time.’ Thing on him when we met and now I just blush all the time and feel nauseous over butterflies.” He waved his hand quickly at Jack’s news, shaking his head. “NUH uh.. We are not going to just gloss over that? Oh my god? Keys? You’re entering domesticity. Like.. Me and Joonie levels of domesticity and my parents are the founders of the BranJoon wedding fan club. Like.. You’re getting into that territory..” There was a small pause before a smile spread across his face. “I’m happy for you, babe. Honestly. You deserve this.” He couldn’t help but sigh at the question, sinking into his seat a little with a pout on his features and a small shrug. “I’ve been so obvious about it. Short of getting a neon sign to carry around, I don’t know how much more obvious I could be and sometimes it feels like he’s being obvious back? Like.. It feels like it’s not just one sided? And then I start having a gay panic and do something dumb because he’s way out of my league which is a new thing for me. I do want to though. Should I?”

"Hold up, hold up. I said that as a joke. You're telling me that your parents are actually non-monogamous?! And you didn't tell me until now?! I came out as polyam like, 2-3 years ago! And now I'm in a monogamous set-up again. I missed my shot. I'm hurt." Jack put their hands over their chest and sniffled, but almost immediately returned to their usual cheerful demeanor. "I'm kidding, I'm not gonna become your step-daddy, or... I don't know what a gender-neutral equivalent would be besides 'parent,' and that doesn't roll of the tongue as well." This wasn't something they had to think about right away. It wasn't like they were going to wake up tomorrow with a child. "Ah yes, your infamous pick-up line." Jack's face turned pink when Brandon acknowledged the keys. "Okay, I actually do have an explanation! I initially gave her my spare key because I asked her to water my plants when I was away for Fashion Week. Granted, she didn't do a good job and managed to kill both plants, but that's an aside. But yeah, I just never asked for the spare key back." Jack gave Brandon a shoulder pat. They really didn't know Kian, so couldn't tell what the full situation was. "What I've learned from my many years of dating men is that men are dumb and sometimes you literally need to spell things out for them."

“As momma dearest says, monogamy is for the weak. Anyway, they were already in a relationship when you came out. Also? I don’t want to be hooking my parents up with my hotties?” Brandon pulled a face at Jack, nose scrunched up in disapproval. “To be fair though, you and Viv wouldn’t even be the first couple they’ve dated. You’d be the first I’d... somewhat approve of but..” He shrugged before laughing. “Oh my god. There are a couple.. Zaza or zeze instead of dada and mama but given the chance I’d mash up dad and mom and just refer to you as my dom to make everyone in the room uncomfortable.” He shook his head, laughing quietly. “I hate this so much, Jack please.” “I think it’s funny, definitely in my top 3 introductions.” He found himself sitting up straighter when he noticed the blush on Jack’s cheeks, a grin forming on his own features. “Oh my god. She killed your plants and you let her keep your key? Say it with me, babe. Simp. You’re cute though. I’m totally 100% on board with the two of you. She was one of my heroes.” When the conversation turned back to him, Brandon tilted his head as he weighed his options. “Not Kiki but... You’re right, I guess. He’s probably so used to everyone being in love with him that my flirting is just baseline niceties. Okay, yeah. I’ll.. I’ll tell him that I’m crazy about him. Or I’ll just text him that aggressive meme about wanting to hold hands.”

"Aaaaah, your parents are so cool! I wish my parents were cool like that. Mine are just homophobic." There was a lot more to Sofia and Tony Corleone than just that, but very few people knew about them. This was very much intentional. They made a face at 'zaza' and 'zeze.' "Yeah, not really digging those ones... Wait. Dom?!" Jack paused to laugh. "Fucking hell. Yes. That's definitely what my future kids are gonna call me." Jack never brought up the topic of kids to Vivian. They were still very early in their relationship and Jack was afraid they were too old to be a parent. It was still a nice thought though. "Yeah. I got back from Paris and she was having a bad day, so I ordered a pizza and we just... talked. Had a real heart-to-heart. I ended up staying the night, and we've basically had an open-door policy with each other ever since. And then the next day I went back into my apartment and found out about the plants." Jack grabbed a pillow from the couch and lightly smacked Brandon's arm with it. "I know, I know! I'm a big sappy simpy mush. I'm a Cancer, I don't know what you expect from me." It took Jack a long time to accept their emotional side, but now they openly embraced it. "Or he might not know how to recognize flirting. I've met many people like that. Like the cute DJ at that bar where Minjoon used to work. Or Minjoon himself!”

“My parents have a big bank balance and even bigger hearts. That’s why I don’t approve of a lot of their partners but yeah.. As much as I give them shit for being lame, they’re the coolest. I mean, they’re the only reason I’m even.. y’know... Around.” Brandon let out an unattractive snort and sat forward to retrieve his glass, pouting when he realised it was empty but simply sat back instead of refilling it. “Please, I am begging you, think carefully as to why I’d find calling you my dom funny before you commit to that decision.” He pressed his lips together to fight his laugh before he let out a soft hum. “Do you think that’s where you’re headed with her? Is she someone you can see yourself having kids with?” He asked softly, his whole demeanour changing from playful now that they had ventured into serious topics. “You don’t have to say yes and you don’t have to have an answer right now. Things are still new with you both and y’know... Take it from the adopted, some people don’t want kids and some do.” He shrugged a little.

“Ew. You talked to each other over pizza because one of you had a bad day? That’s disgusting.” When hit with the pillow, Brandon grabbed it to tug it away from Jack so they couldn’t attack him again and he hugged it to his chest, propping his chin on it. “I live for that kind of domesticity.” He sighed wistfully. “You are a big simpy mush and I love that about you. It’s gross and honest and just very sweet. I’m really glad you have someone who makes you feel that way, babe.” Brandon rolled his eyes and gave the pillow a small squeeze. “Vito really doesn’t recognise flirting? The dude wants to be an actor! With a face like that a lot of his roles are probably going to have it. I wanted to ask if he wanted any help getting into it because he was good to Joonie when they worked together and I always appreciate people taking care of the babie but I also feel like I don’t know him well enough to just give him a shout about a job. Eh. Maybe I’ll get Joonie to text him about this perfume thing and actually see what skills he has. Joonbug doesn’t count for the whole flirting thing though, attraction isn’t really his thing.”

"I gotcha," Jack stated, nodding. They had a similar problem when they first started modeling. They loved to spoil their loved ones-- and still do-- and people often took advantage of their generosity. As Jack grew older, they learned how to weed out the moochers. Of course Brandon was never a moocher; he wasn't the type to take without giving, plus he had plenty of his own money. Jack watched for Brandon's reaction, then chuckled in response to his face. "Babe, I know. I was joking. Could you imagine?!" They shrugged at Brandon's question. "Honestly, I have no idea. I think it's too soon to talk about that kinda stuff. I thought I was never gonna become a parent because Sage didn't want kids, but, you know, they're not my fiancé anymore." Sage not wanting kids wasn't the main reason the engagement was broken off, but it was a bone of contention in the relationship.

"Oh hush. One day you'll have a heart-to-heart over pizza too. Well, maybe not because of the whole gluten thing, but some food that you enjoy." They stuck their tongue out at Brandon. "Ohh, that's his name! At least he didn't recognize me flirting with him. Could just be that he wasn't into me because he's straight, but I'm hot so that's dumb." Jack didn't want to have sex with straight dudes anyways, so they didn't consider it a major loss. "Attraction isn't his thing? Is he asexual or something?" they asked curiously. "Wait a minute, you're deflecting!"

#self para #Brandon Kelly

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years ago

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Humans are Weird “Aliens Explaining Emotions”

From a discussion I had with my friend from some days ago. it was a fun and challenging exercise, and I hope you all like it :)

A lot of my academic counterparts had been asking me about the scope of human emotional range. This may seem like a confusing question to humans seeing as that emotion is an every second part of their lives, but there are many species in the galaxy who are only limited to a restrictive subset of emotions including fear, contentment, anger, happiness and interest. I, and other scientists have taken the liberty of studying human emotion, as well as human studies on the matter, and come up with 29 emotions on the human emotion spectrum. I took the liberty of asking a human to describe just what these things feel like, and when they occur and will try to explain it as well as I can.

Admiration = The human categorized this as a subset of awe but ONLY for people. This involves being impressed, and the desire to BE more like another person, or the desire to be closer to that other person. I’d consider this some function of social integration for humans an instinctive way of modeling proper behavior. Admiration is usually towards a figure in authority or position of power a parent, friend, icon, or celebrity.

Adoration = Not to be confused with admiration, adoration does not necessarily involved the desire to become like that other person, but it does involve the desire to be around them, to make them happy. Anything the target person does, no matter what, is seen as exciting, cute or admirable in whatever combination. Humans will generally do anything for someone they adore. Adoration can be for animals, small children, a mate, or someone famous.

Amusement = I have learned to personally experience this one myself. It is an extreme requirement if you are to spend any time with humans as it is the single most important emotion for social bonding. I would say it is similar to happiness, but much more physical. It is almost a cognitive joy taken from a specific phrase or situation that manifests as a bubbling in the stomach and chest. It is a pleasant feeling.

Anxiety = Just imagine feeling like a boulder will drop out of the sky to crush you at any moment, or the impending feeling of knowing the world is going to end, but you don’t know when. I would consider this a subset of fear, but less intense, more chronic and physically catastrophic.

Awe = awe is an extreme emotion which manifests with the widening of the eyes, and the mouth. This is a response to unbelievable or amazing situation. Humans describe it as a feeling of the chest expanding, may include tingling or the piloerection of hair on the skin. This emotion can be completely overwhelming and may manifest when the human understanding is stretched to capacity, and the brain is having trouble comprehending what it saw.

Awkwardness = is a motion manifested when something socially inappropriate happens. Awkwardness is a way of letting others know that something socially unacceptable just happened. This may include saying something insensitive at the wrong time, like asking a fat woman if she’s pregnant only to realise she isn’t. The modern use of the word Cringe is a subset of awkwardness that is more intense and usually involves a person or situation being EXTREMELY awkward so much so that it causes a person to cringe. Includes a tightening in the stomach and chest manifesting in a human making their body smaller and curling towards the center like someone is about to hit them. The awkwardness is so bad it is physically painful.

Boredom = when a human is lacking in cognitive stimulation. The brain will try to find something to interest itself and may lead to frustration or anxiety as the brain gets frustrated over the lack of stimuli. May also manifest as a flat affect or staring off into space.

Calmness / Contentment = a limbo emotion suspended between all other emotions. It is not happy, it is not sad, it is the closest emotion to the state of just existing in which my species spend most of their time. Humans do not often spend time here.

Confusion = An emotion that is common in many species, when cognition cannot figure out what is happening. It often manifests in humans with head tilting, frowning and looking around to gather more information.

Craving = This is a want, but to an extreme. A craving turns a want into a need to the point where the human finds it hard to pay attention to anything else. It is very common when it comes to food, but can also involve a craving for attention, company or other emotions.

Disgust = An emotion you do not want to be on the side of. Disgust is being repulsed by something, can be a smell, sight, or even a person. Disgust is a strange expression that involves turning the head away and the upturn of one corner of the mouth. It can be directed towards a specific behavior, but it is mostly used to determine that a human does not like something. I would argue that having a human disgusted with you is worse than having a human angry at you. Anger and respect can go hand in hand, but disgust and respect are mutually exclusive.

Empathetic pain = an emotion that seems almost entirely human. This involves a human’s ability to watch another person and feel their pain. For instance human males describe watching another man be kicked in sensitive areas and experiencing the contraction of muscles or even a tingling sensation in the area in which the other human was hurt, females can also experience the same sensation despite never having actually felt that sort of pain.

Entrancement = Sort of like adoration but involves less cognitive processing. A human isn’t likely to be thinking very clearly if they are entranced with something. I would describe it almost as a hypnotic state.

Envy = When a human wants something that another person has. It can include an object a situation or an attribute they wish they had. In short it is the desire to have what someone else has an a resentment towards the person who has it instead of them.

Excitement = The most adorable human emotion. Excitement is joy but more aggressive, generally used situationally for an event, or for seeing someone they have not seen in a long time. Excitement can be in the moment or anticipatory. Humans like making lots of noise when they are excited weather it be screaming or talking, they may jump up and down or cavort around in other ways. Humans are very active when they are excited.

Fear = Self explanatory, we all know fear. The imminent worry that you are going to die, be bodily injury or experience something else unpleasant. Humans have the ability to fear on behalf of others.

Frustration = This is a stepping stone to anger that involves the desire to do something but the inability to do it. Frustration happens when things are not going your way, and you cannot change it.

Hatred = the scariest of human emotions. I would argue it is an amalgamation of anger and disgust and may manifest in the desire to avoid, destroy or terminate whatever is the target of this emotion. Hatred, and maybe envy, are the wo greatest emotions that lead to murder. Once a human hates you, there is no coming back. Humans may use the word lightly to describe a mild dislike, but rarely do humans hate pickles they may dislike them but not hate them. Hatred is the desire to destroy, or obliterate whatever it is. If a human hates something, they wish them dead, desire to make them dead themselves, or desire for them something worse than death. Humans will use the word lightly, so make sure you examine body language when discussing this word with a human.

Horror = horror is a mixture of disgust and fear. This is a human’s response to seeing something so terrible that the brain can hardly comprehend what it is. It is almost like an equal but negative version of awe. It can be in response to horrible accidents, terrible situations or incomprehensible actions or atrocities committed by other humans.

Happiness = Contentment turned up. It is almost described as a warmth through the body, and an inability to stop smiling. Happiness is the emotional manifestation of feeling the sun on one’s skin after a dark night.

Interest / curiosity = a common emotion we understand as the desire to want to know more about a specific subject..

Joy = happiness turned to 11. This is happiness so intense the body cannot hold the emotion. Humans may scream, cry, laugh or many other physical actions in order to allow the release of this emotion. Joy is not a quite or unnoticeable emotion.

Love = This is the best emotion to be the target of. Humans have many versions of it, but in essence if a human loves someone, their only desire or goal for that person is to see them happy. A human would do anything for someone they love, and that includes die for them , not just die for them but walk over fields of glass, through fire, thousands of miles. Humans have been known to survive past all odds and hold onto life in order to see someone they love one last time. If you are lucky enough to have a human who has any sort of love towards you, you can rest assured that they will do whatever it is possible to keep you safe and happy.

Nostalgia = a strange human emotion that involves the desire for the past, or a fondness for the past. Playing a human a song that they may have heard often in their childhood may have them experiencing nostalgia.

Romance = This is a love specifically between two partnered humans. Think love as mentioned earlier but with a physical or sexual component.

Sadness = This is the opposite of happiness, and is often described as a heavy feeling. Increase that feeling and you get something called sorrow which is the opposite of joy. This generally happens during unfortunate events like the death of a family member. This is generally associated with the loss of something, another human, a pet, innocence, a situation, or a better period of time. Sadness should be curbed quickly, for it is not good for humans over a long period of time. It is theorized that the feeling of sadness is evolutionary designed to get other human’s attention looking for comfort.

Satisfaction = this is an internal feeling of pride usually experienced when a human does something and it works out. I would call this the opposite of frustration. Humans experience this when they believe they have done a good job with something.

Sympathy = this is like empathetic pain accept can include emotion or situational. A human does not have to have experienced the pain or situation someone else is going through to feel sympathy for them. It is almost the feeling of proxy sadness and the desire that another person’s situation get better. This is why humans are so good at understanding other species. A human who sympathizes with you might take your situation, imagine something similar and determine how they would feel if they were you, then they can experience a shadow of what you are feeling and thus sympathize. Is extremely important in a social society.

Triumph = A mixture of satisfaction and joy. This happens when a human has gone through a very difficult project, or experience and come out victorious. Triumph is experienced in war, beating a terrible illness, receiving what one has worked really hard for after years and years of dedication.

Some humans may tell you that they have not felt some of these emotions. and , unless they have a mental illness, or some other rare reason) that makes them physically incapable, than they are absolute lairs. They may not KNOW they experienced that emotion, or may not have the understanding to explain it, but deep down they know exactly what it means. If a human claims they don’t experience emotion that way, tell them to stop being an edge-lord and that the inability to experience emotions is neither a good thing, something to be proud of, or even a possibility if you are a human.

Im looking at you there human, the one who read this and was totally like, yeah but i've never felt that before. Stop trying to be special, you're human you know what all these feel like. You cannot be human without them.

Just a reminder that this was designed as being written by an alien, so if it doesn't seem entirely accurate, than that is okay :) This list was written with the idea of vast humanity ( and not acceptations ) if you find yourself an acceptation that is okay, but the list will remain unchanged. I myself am technically an acceptation in one aspect, but I didn’t want to confuse the issue.

#humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #humans are spaceoddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #humans are weird

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

Link

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 22, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

I had gotten half-way through a post tonight about what seems to me a looming split in the Republican Party, when it hit me that four years ago today I responded to my inclusion on the brand-new “Professor Watchlist.”

I will never forget standing in my dark kitchen in my pajamas, at the counter, reading my laptop in shock as I found out that some young grifter named Charlie Kirk had found my name online and put it onto his new website as a danger to students (send money to resist left-wing professors like Richardson!). As I stood there, watching in horror, messages came in from all over the country telling me people had my back. And then I wrote a post to reassure my friends that I was used to this sort of harassment and it would be okay, and then that post went viral, and I came off the list within days.

We have lived a lifetime in the last four years, and god knows far, far worse things have happened to others than happened to me, but I am still angry about this. And yet, my inclusion on the Professor Watchlist did its job, although perhaps not the job Kirk intended. I had been a fairly quiet academic, but once I knew I was a marked woman, I resolved to fight these vile, unAmerican grifters to the end.

Four years ago, I knew how bad things could get over the course of Trump’s term. What I could not have imagined was how many wonderful people would join forces to restore America. It’s a movement I’m proud to be part of.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

November 22, 2016

So, yes, I have the dubious honor of being on the "Professor Watchlist," a list published recently by a young alt-right provocateur who knew that such a list would get media traction because of Senator McCarthy's attacks on academics during the Red Scare. I made the list not because of complaints about my teaching, but because of my public writing about politics.

It is ironic that this list would label me "leftist." In fact, in my public life, I do not identify with a political party, and I work with politicians on both sides of the aisle. I also teach the history of American conservative beliefs, as well as those of liberalism. I believe that the nation needs both the Democratic and the Republican parties to be strong and healthy.

It is even more ironic that the list would label me "anti-American." In fact, I do what I do-- all the teaching, writing, speeches, and media-- because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination, and have come to believe that American democracy is the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. This nation is not perfect-- far from it-- but when it is at its best, it has more potential for people of all genders, races, and ethnicities to create their own destinies than any other governmental system. I work to teach people about that system, its great triumphs... and also its hideous failures. We must learn from the past because the miracle of America is that it is always reinventing itself, giving us the potential to remake it, better, every day.

I am dangerous not to America but to the people soon to be in charge of it, people like the youngster who wrote this list. I teach that the American government only works when it is based on the principle that every single American is equal before the law. Since 1997, I have argued in print and in public that, throughout history, ideologically-driven politicians have undermined that fundamental principle in order to shift the economy and the power structures of this country in their own favor. For the last several years, as I took on a more and more public role, I have focused on the present, hammering on the idea that the ideologically-driven Movement Conservatives who have taken over the nation through the Republican Party are not real Republicans; they are a cabal concentrating wealth and power into a ruling class that is crushing the rest of us. I truly believe that most Americans want not this extraordinary upward redistribution of wealth and power, but rather the same sort of government known in the 1950s as the "liberal consensus," established by FDR and Eisenhower, that regulates business, maintains national infrastructure, and provides a basic social safety net, while still leaving ample room for private enterprise and the innovation it sparks.

That the only way Movement Conservatives have managed to stay in power is to game the system through gerrymandering and voter suppression, hatred, and now the intimidation of people like me says to me that even they know they are in danger of losing control of the country. As a friend of mine says, a dying mule kicks the hardest.

People have asked what they can do in this moment. Across the political spectrum, I would urge everyone who believes in this nation to focus on the mechanics of government and constantly to call out official actions that you would find unacceptable if they happened to "your" side, especially if it's "your" side doing them. Call attention to law-breaking that is actionable at a state or national level, rather than focusing on individual outrages (that Russia interfered in the 2016 election is important; a keyed car is not). Do not believe or share any sensationalist stories until you have confirmed them through a site like Snopes.com, and call out those who make assertions without factual evidence. Do not mistake legal practices like peaceful protests or government petitions for wrongdoing. If you see something illegal, document it with photos and witnesses and take it to police even if you suspect they will ignore it: continue to demand that the system operate properly. Call your representatives constantly to register your opinions (it matters-- most get fewer than a dozen calls about issues at hand).

And try to stop demonizing political opponents who fall within the normal political spectrum so we can all stand together against those who are trashing our institutions and our legal system. There are both Republicans and Democrats in my FB feed and you have far more in common than you are different, I promise you. What no one on my FB feeds wants, though, is for this nation to commit suicide, and if those of us who believe in America turn against each other, we will permit precisely that.

I have been touched and overwhelmed by all of your messages of concern and support over my inclusion on the Professor Watchlist. And for those of you who worried: no, I will not shut up. America is still worth fighting for.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #election 2020 #political #corrupt GOP

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dlkardenal · 4 years ago

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Tooth and claw - Aspects and execution of werewolf myths

Hey there, travelers!

As we promised last week, today I shall take over the post to come to the defense of the whole werewolf thing. If we go back to last weeks debate about the Underworld factions, I always sided with the werewolves (and only partially because the vampires were jerks in comparison). Why? Well, I think the myth has a large selection of really cool qualities that could serve as the backbone of a story, be it as an overall theme or a specific crux.

1. The savagery

Okay, I think we can all agree wolves are scary as shit. The earliest appearances in fiction were almost entirely horror stories and the iconic werewolf adversary in any spooky medium still gives us the creeps. In my understanding, this is because their savage and predatory nature. They have an instinct to hunt, to claim territory and devour anything that sets foot inside. Although modern zoology tends to show these noble beasts in a much friendlier light, older horror fiction kept to the juicy bits. They were portrayed as soulless beasts with no regrets, no thought and no emotions, only an unquenchable thirst for blood. You can spot these werewolves nowadays in titles such as The Witcher, Skyrim, Harry Potter or a number of indie horror novels and I love it.

The whole concept of an uncontrollable monster living under the skin of a regular old human being is really fascinating. There are several ways the character’s human side can relate to their occasional disemboweling of innocent creatures. If they shun it, like for example Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter series, it breeds conflict within the character itself, giving way to a whole armada of possible reactions. A werewolf can be suicidal, introverted, melancholic because of the heavy burden—or the exact opposite. Sometimes loosing control and thus being unaccountable for ones deeds means freedom, a refreshing escape from mundanity and that could behave like the most severe drugs (like in the case of Aela from Skyrim’s Companions’ Guild).

2. The power

Oh, yes, muscles larger than a greek god and claws shredding titanium, who wouldn’t want that feeling of invincibility? In some cases, the characters stricken with lycanthropy (especially when they’re largely in control of it) view it as a tool, a power one should utilize to achieve their ends. If you think about the Underworld movies, the second generation of lycans used their powers to defend against the vampires’ crusade and free themselves from servitude. My favourite installation of this trope is the case of Vincent Meis, a minor character in The Witcher 1 Chapter III. This guard captain in Vizima is a lycanthrope who acts as a kind of vigilante superhero. When it’s time for his transformation, he uses the feral beast’s agility and tracking skills to hunt down the city’s most wanted criminals, saving the lives of ordinary folk.

If you ask me how could one further this aspect, I’d say account for weaknesses as well. As with every power, it can make a character overly confident or even bold, and when a stray silver bullet comes their way and shatters their ego, it can really hurt. And hurt means character development, something every author tries to integrate into their stories. Let your werewolves run wild and shred people to pieces, then shoot them chock full with silver and see them grow as a person ~

3. The pack

Sailing onto more recent topics, we all now there’s no such thing as a lone wolf. No matter how much Geralt insinst on being one, wolves are pack animals, and so are werewolves—in some cases. You needn’t look further than Twilight to figure out the appeal of a pack, a gathering of like-minded people who will fight and die for each other. If you’re unsure why a society is important, we’ve already talked about it here, but to sum it up: from the times for our ancestors, being alone meant being destined to die, so our human psyche favors groups to lonesomeness. Werewolf packs are like the Lamborghini of groups, because they have more common traits then any other. First, they all experienced something nobody else has (turning into a wolf or wolf-man). Second, since most titles still establishes lycanthropy as socially unacceptable, they have a common secret. Something they should keep among themselves, something they can refer to and that differentiates them from common folk, pushing them even closer together. The third, and here’s the kicker—they can’t choose else. Many of these stories include that werewolves have a pack instinct, an inner calling that makes them crave each other’s company and thus they know they’ll stick together no matter what. This last aspect is ripe for abuse and I’ve read (reviews of) horrible paranormal romances that did just that. Please, for the love of Romulus, don’t use this instinctual belonging as a reason to keep a verbally, mentally and physically abused character coming back to the pact, because that’s not relatable, that’s just sad.

4. (Now we’re getting weird) The mates

Okay, now we arrive at Imprinting and similar things. The idea of having a pre-destined, fated mate is an exciting topic (at first): the alpha werewolf having an omega nobody as his fated mate, the one he HAS to choose no matter what. This simple position breeds (no pun intended) conflict, and that is the driving force of stories. BUT! You can so easily mock this up. Nowadays market is flooded with these alpha werewolf stories, partially because of the alpha’s character (another throwback about why that’s alluring is around here), partially because the fated mates trope. How can this be bad? Like with so many other tropes, by sticking to the tried and tired formula and not changing a thing. The best in show prize of a male falling in love with a grey, insignificant nobody snuck its way through every possible genre, from YA school romances, crime stories, historical fiction, and now paranormal romances. Mix it up! You can’t really change the alpha (although you can play with genders a bit), but the mate doesn’t have to be nearly incompetent. What if he/she is a total badass, just not in a way that befits an alpha’s mate? What if they are already taken and the conflict tears apart the pack? What if it’s not love that bonds them but an everlasting rivalry? This could be a really good enemies to lovers trope if executed well.

I’ll be honest, I’m not one for paranormal romances, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, there is no correct way of writing a story, these are just the two cents of a story junkie. Howl away, friend! May Hircine take you.

Dar

#dissecting literature #paranormal #werewolves #werewolf #writing #writeblr #writersblr #bookblr

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darkpoisonouslove · 5 years ago

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“Life at The Ancestral Manor” Trivia

I just wrote “Life at The Ancestral Manor” and there were things that I wanted to lay out here since they didn’t make it in the fic or weren’t given all the details.

- The Ancestral Manor is called that way as it is passed down from father to son ever since it was built centuries ago. Tradition dictates that every man in the family needs to marry a woman with at least the same or higher social status who also has golden eyes as that is a rare genetic mutation believed to be a sign of the person being chosen by the Great Dragon. The woman then becomes the Mistress of the Ancestral Manor and takes care of everything that needs to be handled around the mansion while her husband runs the family diamond company until their son marries and both the Manor and the company find themselves under new management. Marriages are often arranged.

- The rumors mentioned in the story are true. Belladonna and her sisters did not have golden eyes but had a surgery to make their irises golden which left them blind and dependent on expensive technology to see. All the funds were provided by Argulus Darkar’s father - the previous Lord Darkar, in exchange for lower prices on the diamonds once the sisters made their way into the Manor. Even he didn’t know where they came from, though, as they covered their tracks carefully and that album Lysslis has saved is the only proof of their past and their deception.

- Belladonna married to become the Mistress of the Ancestral Manor. Lysslis and Tharma lived with her in the manor. Lysslis was married briefly herself. Not because she wanted to be, but because she didn’t want people saying that she couldn’t find a husband. She made him file for a divorce within a week of their wedding, though, as being a wife wasn’t what she’d planned on doing with her life and people remained saying that she’d chased him away with how much of a hellbeast she was which didn’t bother her since it was true. Tharma didn’t marry at all. She didn’t feel it necessary and, unlike Lysslis, she didn’t care what people would say and didn’t have the patience to play through the whole charade so she decided to save herself the trouble.

- Valtor is biologically the son of Belladonna and her husband who she killed by staging a car accident. After she got away with it, she also murdered Valtor’s grandmother by pushing her off the balcony in broad daylight but no one managed to prove it was anything but an accident when Lysslis and Tharma were having all of the servants out in the backyard and they all saw the woman fall but no one suspected Belladonna since she was allegedly out with Valtor and no one saw her sneaking in and out of the mansion. All of that happened when Valtor was too little to even remember his father and grandmother and Lysslis and Tharma got to share their sister’s title of Mistresses of the Ancestral Manor and also his mothers.

- Fast forward some years and Valtor met Griffin when he was at a party Argulus was throwing. Griffin was there because Bloom dragged her along with her and she went despite not approving of her relationship with Argulus who was twice her age (she’d just graduated high school (all of that is explained in the fic)). She thought that it was better to go with her and watch out for her than let her go alone. After Marion and Oritel’s death, Bloom and Daphne were raised by Mike and Vanessa with Griffin and Faragonda being around all the time since they felt responsible for the girls even if both were very young and had just graduated high school themselves. So they grew close with the girls and Bloom took to Griffin, referring to her as “aunt” but she was more of a best friend. So she asked her to go with her and inadvertently brought Griffin and Valtor together.

- It didn’t take Valtor’s mothers long to discover that he was seeing someone and that it was serious. They tried to break them up when they learned Griffin was a middle class high school teacher as that was unacceptable and Valtor was already in love. They brought in exes of both of them and tried to play their insecurities against them but Griffin and Valtor persisted until they finally gave up. It changed the way they behaved and they agreed to let her join the family if she took a DNA test and the results confirmed that her genes would combine well with Valtor’s to make for a strong child. It sounded like something that came straight out of a horror movie but Griffin went through with it because she was deeply in love and was sure that Valtor was the one for her and they quickly had a date for the wedding.

- That was as big of a nightmare as could have been expected. It was literally on the coldest day of the year as picked by Belladonna. It was far bigger and more expensive than Griffin had wanted it to be. There were too many guests almost all of which were rich friends of Belladonna and her sisters and Griffin could barely stand it. Especially when the few people on her side were shoved in the back since they were less important to her future mothers-in-law. Also, it was most certainly done so that “the common folk” wouldn’t embarrass them in front of their snobby friends. She was sick of it. And that didn’t even include the fiasco with the dress when they dragged her through different stores when she’d wanted to have Stella make it for her as the girl was a talented designer. They insisted that her wedding dress couldn’t be by a nameless designer and proceeded to try to stuff her into the most hideous cuts she’d ever seen. In the end she told them that she was putting on the dress she liked and if they tried to peel it off of her, she’d go to her wedding with their blood staining the white of her dress. She’d had it with them especially after the way they’d offended her mother (and father despite the fact that he was dead for a few years now) of being cheap and not caring enough for her daughter to give her a beautiful wedding aka an expensive one.

- The following conversation took place at Griffin and Valtor’s wedding and you’re getting it because I thought it up and there was nowhere to put it in the fic:

Tharma: And what do we do about that wife of his, sisters?

Belladonna: Griffin is too in love with him but other than that she has the makings of a Mistress of the Ancestral Manor. She’s water just waiting to turn into ice.

Lysslis: And she will. Once we’ve shown her the warped reflection of her already being as cold as us that we’ve created, she’ll quickly make it truer than we ever could.

- So, as might have become clear from the point above, Tharma does not like Griffin at all. She has a sharp tongue and quick wit which clash with Tharma’s ideas of a prefect daughter-in-law (who would be someone docile and quiet). Lysslis does not like Griffin either but she likes who she thinks she can make her be and that is a copy of herself. Belladonna is the only one who actually likes Griffin the way she is which may sound confusing after that line about water waiting to turn into ice but it is true. Water does naturally turn into ice and Belladonna is convinced that once Griffin has been slapped in the face enough times by what it means to be the Mistress of the Ancestral Manor, she will harden. In her own sick way Belladonna empathizes with Griffin and even sees her as an equal since she is the one she’s passing her title down on to and even if Lysslis and Tharma got the title for themselves, too, it was never truly and officially theirs.

- Belladonna refers to Griffin by name and occasionally as “the Mistress of the Ancestral Manor”. Lysslis uses all the pet names she can think of to make sure that Griffin wouldn’t want Valtor to use them for her. Tharma only uses her name when she addresses her directly and she is “Valtor’s wife” (previously “Valtor’s girlfriend” and “Valtor’s fiance” respectively) in all other instances.

- (The fic covers what happened between the points above and below.)

- Griffin does end up having the daughter that she wanted despite the whole family tree being made up of male heirs. It was a bit of an accident when she forgot to take her pills one night and she panicked when she learned she was pregnant because she was scared of what her mothers-in-law would do to her daughter and if they wouldn’t try to kill her while she was pregnant. She never got to find out as the three old witches were killed when the mansion was attacked one night when she and Valtor were having dinner with Argulus and Bloom. A dinner that Griffin had been very opposed to and wasn’t quite sure if she was glad she went to even after the murder of her mothers-in-law. Which coincidentally was just shortly after Bloom dug deeper into the murder of her own parents and discovered that it was Belladonna and her sisters who were behind it which Griffin told her was certain even if the evidence was circumstantial and not enough to get them convicted. The murders of Belladonna and her sisters were never solved and Valtor demolished the entire mansion and rebuilt it since he had grounds for that on account of murder taking place in the building and making it too traumatic to live in it the way it was and Darcy got to have the normal life her father was deprived of.

#winx club #ancestral witches #winx griffin #winx valtor #winx bloom #winx darkar #griffin x valtor #bloom x darkar #i know i know #winx belladonna #winx lysslis #winx tharma #trivia #trivia tuesday

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florablume · 5 years ago

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Character Development Questions

Part 1: The Basics

What is your full name? Flora Elizabeth Blume

Where and when were you born? San Francisco, California on April 4th 1978

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.) My mother is Joanne Blume, a retired teacher who isn’t ever afraid to say exactly what she thinks. She has little to no filter, which has made for many an awkward conversation in the past. My father is Richard Blume, a retired accountant. He’s proud, probably too proud sometimes, and occasionally outspoken. Apparently I’m the most like him out of his three daughters.

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like? I have two younger sisters - Pippa and Sam. I get on with Pippa the most, probably because our personalities don’t clash so much. We’ve always been able to open up to each other about a lot of things. Sam and I butt heads a lot and we always have done. I’ve always just assumed it’s because I’m the oldest and she’s the youngest, but who knows.

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people. I live on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City, with Henry and our son Finley. Henry and I have been through a lot together - we’re not married but we act like we are. The apartment is Henry’s and we’ve lived there as a family for about a year almost.

What is your occupation? I’m a Nurse Practitioner

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye colour, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks. I’m about five foot one, so not exactly blessed with height. I don’t make a habit of weighing myself, but I’d say I’m about average for a woman of my height. I’m caucasian with brown hair and brown eyes, and a few freckles all over my skin. I enjoy a floral print, and I’m probably more comfortable in dresses and skirts than trousers, although at work I don’t have much of a choice. No tattoos, but I do have a couple of piercings - ears and my naval (don’t ask). I have a small scar in my right eyebrow, and a couple of marks on my back from past scrapes.

To which social class do you belong? If you’d asked me this a year ago, I would’ve said working to middle class, but I’m not too sure any more.

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses? No allergies as far as I’m aware. No diseases or physical weaknesses - I’m in (near) perfect shape.

Are you right- or left-handed? Right-handed

What does your voice sound like? Like my voice? I don’t really know how to describe it. (Cue Henry shouting “whiny” in the distance)

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently? Too many terms of endearment probably. I use them a lot at work and that’s bled into my home life. I probably roll my eyes way too much as well.

What do you have in your pockets? Nothing because I don’t have any. You can thank the manufacturers of women’s clothing for that.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics? As far as I’m aware, no. You’re probably better asking Henry or Fin this question, although I dread what that answer would be.

Part 2: Growing Up

How would you describe your childhood in general? Wonderful. I had a really happy childhood and I know how lucky I was to have two very loving parents. They couldn’t have done any more for us than they did.

What is your earliest memory? The day Sam was born. I remember us going to visit my mom in the hospital, and my dad left me in charge of Pip while he went to get my mom some flowers. I remember feeling so grown up being an older sister a second time.

How much schooling have you had? All of it - all the way to undergrad at college at least anyway.

Did you enjoy school? Yeah, I liked it. I enjoyed learning a lot when I was a kid, and I still do.

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities? Through working. Studying nursing is one thing, but it’s a whole different ball game once you start on the job. You learn things that can’t be taught in a classroom.

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them. Probably my dad. He was always so hardworking and I knew I wanted to be like that when I grew up. Sometimes I thought he put a little too much into his work, and he could’ve spent more time with us, but I suppose all he wanted to do was provide for his family and I respect that.

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family? I got on pretty well with most of my family. Sam was the only one I really butted heads with. We’re just like polar opposites in some ways, but then we’re both really stubborn too. She thinks I boss her around too much, and I think she needs to take more responsibility for herself. We’re still like this with each other now.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I honestly can’t remember. Probably a teacher because my mom was one, and it was the only job I’d ever really come into contact with.

As a child, what were your favourite activities? I played with dolls a lot, and me and my sisters would always make up games together. Embarrassingly, we’d sometimes make up dance routines to show my parents. Thank god there’s no video evidence of that.

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display? Bossiness was the main one, which I dispute to this day, but everyone tells me I’m wrong. I was also pretty protective of my sisters too, always helping them whenever they fell over or got into any kind of scrape. I didn’t like seeing them hurt.

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like? Not really, no. I had a few close friends when I was a kid, but I think Pip was definitely the popular one out of the three of us. The friends I had lasted all the way through to high school though - Lillian, Maggie and Kathryn. I still see them every now and again.

When and with whom was your first kiss? I think I was about thirteen or something. It was with some guy at school that I thought I liked. It was awful, just like a first kiss is meant to be because neither of you has a clue what you’re doing.

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity? No. I don’t remember a lot about my first time if I’m completely honest. I was at college and I just wanted to get it out of the way so I was pretty drunk when it actually happened. I don’t even remember the guy’s name...

Part 3: Past Influences

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far? Giving birth to Finley.

Who has had the most influence on you? Probably Henry and Fin, both for very different reasons. I changed a lot after I first met Henry, and becoming a mom has probably changed me the most throughout my whole life.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Raising Finley in a safe and stable home, and being able to watch him grow up.

What is your greatest regret? Not telling Henry how much I loved him before he left all those years ago. If I could change one thing in my life, that would be it.

What is the most evil thing you have ever done? I don’t think I’ve ever done anything evil. Does elbowing Henry in the balls to get out of watching a horror film count? If so, then that.

Do you have a criminal record of any kind? A small one, from stupid behaviour in my twenties.

When was the time you were the most frightened? When they first took me into the House. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life.

What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? I can think of a million embarrassing things that have happened to me - most involving Henry.

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why? Borrowing money from a loan shark while I was in college was a very stupid thing to do. But then, if I hadn’t done that stupid thing I might never have met Henry, so I probably wouldn’t change that. I’d change the moment when I decided not to tell him that I loved him.

What is your best memory? I have two - the first time I ever held Fin, and the year that Henry decided to spend Christmas in Florida instead of with his family.

What is your worst memory? There are way too many to recall from living in the House. We’d be here all day.

Part 4: Beliefs And Opinions

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? Optimist.

What is your greatest fear? Losing Henry or Fin.

What are your religious views? I’m Christian, but non-practicing.

What are your political views? Liberal.

What are your views on sex? It’s great?

Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable? My gut response is no, but if someone put anyone I care about in danger then that answer would quickly change to yes. I wouldn’t ever say it’s acceptable, but I’d do anything to protect the people I love.

In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do? I mean, murder is the obvious answer.

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? Sort of, I think. I believe in love and I think that’s enough to believe in.

What do you believe makes a successful life? Honesty, loyalty and having a strong and loving family around you, whether you come from one or you have to build your own from scratch.

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)? I’ve been told that I’m a bad liar, so I’d say I’m pretty honest about most things.

Do you have any biases or prejudices? Not any more, I don’t think so. Well. Maybe a little. Some rich people are still snooty and up their own asses, the Dunnes excluded.

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it? I can think of one thing that I keep refusing to do, but I might be slowly coming around to it. I don’t know. I can’t decide. GAH.

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)? Henry and Fin, without question.

Part 5: Relationships With Others

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how? I’d like to think I treat everyone politely. I wouldn’t ever want to make anyone feel uncomfortable (unless your name is Jen Breslin).

Who is the most important person in your life, and why? Finley, because he’s my son. Henry and I have to put him first all the time.

Who is the person you respect the most, and why? My mom. She’s put up with my dad for over forty years and she probably deserves a medal for that. She’s also so easy-going about everything and I don’t know how she does it.

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people. I still keep in touch with my old school friends. We don’t see each other as often as we’d like because we all live in different states now, but we try. I have a few friends at work who I’ll sometimes socialise with, but I wouldn’t say I have a ‘best’ friend.

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person. I do, Henry - very attractive and mostly very annoying but I love him a lot. We spend most of our lives bickering over stupid things but that’s kind of our thing now. I wouldn’t change what we have for anything else.

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened. Already in love and it’s going pretty well.

What do you look for in a potential lover? I have no idea how to answer this question without me just describing Henry.

How close are you to your family? Pretty close. I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like to because we live at opposite ends of the country, but we see each other as much as we can.

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not? Yeah, it’s just me, Henry and Fin at the moment. Not that we’re planning to expand any more.

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help? I’m the idiot who chooses not to turn to anyone because she’s stubborn and thinks she can handle it. I would probably turn to Henry though.

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why? Henry. He’s done it in the past and I’ve never had a reason not to trust him.

If you died or went missing, who would miss you? My whole family, I hope.

Who is the person you despise the most, and why? I don’t despise anyone. Jen Breslin.

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict? I’ll be honest, I tend to argue. I’m not always very good at avoiding conflict because I like to make my opinion known. Because, let’s be honest, I’m usually right.

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations? That depends. I won’t dub myself leader if I have no idea what I’m doing. Surprisingly I’m good at taking orders sometimes.

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not? Depends on the people. I’ll do it if I have to, and I’ll always be polite, but I don’t like having to stand and listen to someone drone on about something I’m not interested in (which is what most of Henry’s mom’s dinner parties have involved...) If it’s family then I’m happy to be in a big group of them.

Do you care what others think of you? Unfortunately, yeah, I do. I know I shouldn’t care.

Part 6: Likes And Dislikes

What is/are your favourite hobbies and pastimes? I like gardening, although I don’t have anywhere to do that in New York. I also like reading, going for walks, watching movies, dancing badly to whatever’s on the radio.

What is your most treasured possession? A necklace my mom gave me when I was sixteen that had belonged to my grandma. I don’t really wear it much because I’m so scared of losing it or breaking it.

What is your favourite colour? Pink

What is your favourite food? Lemon cheesecake

What, if anything, do you like to read? I like thriller novels, and I love a good romance one too.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit? Don’t smoke, occasionally drink, and I’ve never taken drugs. I’ve never been interested in smoking or drugs, and I can definitely say that I never will be.

How do you spend a typical Saturday night? Sprawled out on top of Henry, forcing him to watch Dirty Dancing for the hundredth time. If Finley is out then we’d probably spend all night having sex, I’m not gonna lie.

What makes you laugh? Stupid things like people falling over - as long as they don’t actually get hurt. Successfully winding Henry up makes me laugh to.

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself? I’d probably be boring and just read a book or do a puzzle or something.

How do you deal with stress? I’d like to think I deal with it pretty well. My job is quite stress-filled, but I try to stay as calm as possible. Freaking out isn’t going to do anyone any good.

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan? A bit of both. I like to be organised in life, but I don’t want to plan every second of every day out. I need some spontaneity for life to be exciting.

What are your pet peeves? Anything unhygienic is a no-no for me. Like people who don’t wash their hands? Gross.

Part 7: Self Images And Etc.

What is your greatest strength as a person? I like to think I’m quite resilient and adaptable.

What is your greatest weakness? Always putting everyone else before myself.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? To be a little less argumentative and stubborn.

Are you generally introverted or extroverted? I actually think I’m a healthy mix of both. Maybe a tad more extroverted.

Are you generally organised or messy? Always organised.

Do you like yourself? Mostly, yeah.

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime? I’ve sort of already achieved my main goal in life. I always wanted to have a family of my own and I have that. If it got a little bigger then I wouldn’t mind that, but I’m not sure if that will happen.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Dealing with a terrible teenager.

If you could choose, how would you want to die? Peacefully, in my sleep, when I’m very very old.

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? Being a good mom. Helping people as much as I could. Drinking way too much coffee.

What three words best describe your personality? Affectionate, protective, intelligent.

What three words would others probably use to describe you? Stubborn, dramatic, smothering.

#cd #𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕣𝕜𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕚𝕤𝕞𝕤 [ headcanons ]#now i sleep

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rachelthompsonauthor · 5 years ago

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Every year I pick a power word as a way to guide my goals and progress each year, and this year my word is boundaries. Not a fan of resolutions, I find having one word gives me the laser focus I need not only in my personal life but also in business and writing.

Establishing healthy boundaries is a critical part of our everyday lives, regardless of whether we are survivors of abuse or not. However, due to the myriad of different ways abuse survivors develop survival skills, we may not even realize we allow people to push our boundaries because we’ve not thought about what these boundaries are.

For this article, I’m discussing boundaries we can set in ‘safe’ life situations, not abusive situations.

If you are currently in a dangerous or abusive situation, where setting a boundary with a partner can cause you physical harm, please get help. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline – their advocates are available 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) in more than 200 languages. All calls are free and confidential.

What Are Boundaries?

Boundaries can be demonstrated in five ways: body, thinking, feeling, behavioral, and now, digital. Let’s define this further:

Boundaries represent physical and emotional limits that you don’t want other people to cross. They help define your sense of self by separating your needs, desires, thoughts, and feelings from those of others’. Boundaries are the dividing lines between you and everyone else and they help make you an individual from the group.

Boundaries also help you know your limits about how much “baggage” you can take on from other people. When you set strong and appropriate boundaries, you will help other people know how to treat you. You will essentially be teaching them what is ok and what is not ok to do and say around you. Boundaries also give measure to the amount of time, money, emotional resources, or energy you can afford to give. (Source: Therapy in Philadephia.)

I love this definition because it so clearly states what boundaries are and how they work. In my work on #SexAbuseChat (every Tuesday 6 pm pst/9 pm est), as well as one-on-one discussions, many adult survivors find this definition terrifying. Why? Many reasons, of course; the most common is defying the authority figure (usually a parent) who is still involved in their lives, whether or not that person abused them.

In my case, an adult neighbor dad abused me at age eleven. Despite serving a less than two-year sentence, my family and his continued to live next door to one another. Once I moved away for college, I only saw him or his family when I returned home to visit my folks (quite often, since my uni was in the same city), and had no interaction with them, other than their glares at me.

Like any child who grows into an adult, I experienced the need to separate from my own parents. See the world. Be independent. Live life on my own. Visiting them less frequently helped me move away from seeing my abuser as well.

Setting a Foundation

Why is this my power word now, thirty years later, now that I’m in my mid-fifties? So much of my life has come full-circle. I moved to another coast alone in my late twenties to escape the town where my neighbor abused me, pursued a corporate career, married for love, had two children, divorced after two decades, started my own business, wrote six books (so far), and more. Now I’m back living in a quiet suburb of the same area where I grew up.

My parents moved from that house (thankfully), and I now live with my own family about a mile away from my folks. I absolutely had to set boundaries when I moved back here. Like what?

No popping over unannounced.

No spending every holiday, birthday, and minor Jewish holidays nobody’s ever heard of together.

No getting up in each other’s business.

This foundation has helped quite a bit, though it’s not always been entirely successful (she chuckles ruefully to herself). My older sister and her husband also moved back to this area around the same time I did. Same rules apply. We do the best we can.

Setting boundaries in real life or our online lives helps us decide what behaviors we will accept from others, and even ourselves. If the way someone treats us is unacceptable, we need to realize it’s okay, and perfectly acceptable, to say no to spending time with that person because we are adults now.

What may have been out of our control when we were children now is up to us to decide.

Ways to Set Boundaries

If setting boundaries is a goal for you, here are the tips I use and am currently working on:

Don’t Worry What Others Think

Just as I coach writers to #WriteWhatScaresYou, and to not worry if someone is upset with our truths, the same rule applies here. If others aren’t accepting of my boundaries, that’s not my issue. I’m an adult woman, and I’m allowed to make my own decisions. Sometimes, when people come at me unhappy with a boundary I’ve stated, it’s difficult. I am human, after all. It does affect me, however, I have to do what’s right for me and my own mental health.

Self-care isn’t selfish.

Example: After my divorce, things got tense, as these things often do. Due to abusive actions by my ex, I cut off all contact with him, with the exception of email, so we could still discuss any custody specifics (drop-offs, pick-ups, etc.). Other than that, I’ve blocked him on text, social media…basically, everywhere. His issues are no longer my issues.

This forced him to comply with my boundaries. It’s also empowering!

Maintain Communications If Necessary

In my example above, I set a boundary yet still maintained a form of necessary communication on my terms. With loved ones still in your life, it’s often helpful to set boundaries up front. With survivors, this doesn’t always happen due to our past experiences and the lack of the realization that we need established boundaries.

Working with survivors, many express they simply cannot tell significant others or family members, “No,” out of a fear of rejection, abusive behavior, or other fears of retribution (often valid). How do we go about setting boundaries around these fears? This is trickier, yet not impossible.

In my case, I didn’t set that boundary with my ex right away. For years, he would leave me constant texts about what I posted on social media and how that somehow was a dig at him. At one point, he attempted to use my memoirs, Broken Pieces and Broken Places, as examples in court of ‘how much she ‘hates men,’ to which my lawyer responded, ‘you realize she lives with a man, right?’ (Hilarious, but whatever).

Point is, regardless of this ridiculous back and forth, I couldn’t cut off communications completely, however much I wanted to.

Breathe and Remain Calm

Telling someone you are unavailable to do whatever it is they desire can make our hearts race as if we are running an obstacle course of trip-wires and poison-dipped arrows waiting to pierce us. Why? Because we cannot predict the reaction we’ll get and also we anticipate a confrontation about it when there may not be one at all. It’s often easier to do whatever it is someone wants us to rather than assert our free will, which then leaves us deflated and filled with self-loathing.

Not fun. Not healthy. Not what we need.

Breathe, my lovelies.

Next time someone wants you to do something you don’t want to do, tell them no. I promise you, the world will not come to an end. If saying, “No,” feels too abrupt, instead say, “I have a conflict,” which is an easy out. Another is, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Panic is not your friend here. Remain calm by knowing in advance what your boundaries are beforehand.

Know Your Comfort Level

As survivors, we are often hit with triggers that come out of nowhere. Sometimes we know exactly what sets us off; other times, we don’t. Life, eh? Welcome to our lives.

When triggers slam into us, we face discomfort, horror, fear. We’re brought right back into that abuse headspace. We have no choice – just as we had no choice when our abusers abused us. We learn by walking through the fire exactly what we’re okay with and what we’re decidedly not. Triggers give us that, in a warped kind of ethereal gift from the universe.

Yet, I’m not talking only about triggers here. Actively working out how far we’re willing to push ourselves into a situation (or out of one) is critical to understanding our boundaries. This can be as simple as becoming comfortable with blocking trolls on Twitter to letting clients know you’re unavailable after 6 pm.

Whatever it is, create a list of your boundaries. Then you’ll know how to stick to them, and which may be negotiable.

Change Your Paradigm

A man challenged me (shocker) on Twitter about ‘saying no,’ and boundaries, explaining 🙄 we are depriving ourselves of adventures and experiences, so instead we should say ‘yes’ to everything. I won’t go into the whole discussion about how men and women experience the world differently (duh), or defend the entire concept of the well-documented mental health value of creating boundaries for ourselves, or that survivors and non-survivors experience the world in wildly different ways.

Pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones is one thing. A blanket statement explaining how “we need to say yes to everything” is uninformed.

I will say, however, there’s no shame in working through boundary and trust issues as survivors of sexual abuse. We absolutely deserve the right to receive love and support in these choices. Doesn’t mean people will give it, yet we also cannot control that.

Final Thoughts

Boundaries are important because they help us feel safe in a variety of circumstances. That said, it’s a fluid process. Once we’re comfortable telling people “no” in one situation, it will become easier in others. We may also become more comfortable saying yes once we’ve conquered a certain fear or time has passed.

Remember: This is your journey. You’re an adult. Don’t ever feel bad because you’ve set a boundary.

This is my power word for 2020, so you’ll see many blog posts, quotes, and articles in my social media feeds on the topic. I’m working on boundary issues in my own relationships with family and friends, and I’ll be sharing those experiences with you as I traverse these paths as well.

I’d love to know what your power word is for 2020. Please share, along with any comments or thoughts, below!

***

Read more about Rachel’s experiences in the award-winning book, Broken Pieces.

She goes into more detail about living with PTSD and realizing the effects of how being a survivor affected her life in

Broken Places, available in print everywhere!

The post This is Why “Boundaries” is My 2020 Power Word appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

via Rachel Thompson

#IFTTT #Rachel Thompson

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lakinda5654 · 5 years ago

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~~~~A Girl and A God~~~~ Chapter 6- Welcome

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A Girl and A God is a RATED M Loki Fanfic with an original character, Alexa, who is taken in by Tony Stark after the revelation of abilities of her own. There’s sex, romance, heartbreak, action, fluff, angst, all that good stuff. Full description in blog, and a jump-to-chapter list if you just want the smut or the cuteness bits. Enjoy <3

Chapter Summary: Alexa regains her strength, and discovers her new home...

Contains: mostly plot development/ character growth

Word Count: 1,835

~Previous Chapter~~Next Chapter~

~~Beginning of Story~~

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As she walked she saw Thor standing aside Loki, who had just been put into shackles. What had he done? She almost asked but felt too shy to utter a word.

Loki didn’t look back at her. He didn’t want to see her face looking at him in restraints, the thoughts that must be going through her mind.

Why did he care? He didn’t, he told himself. She’s just another freak to add to the mix of heroic Avengers that held him prisoner. She was no different from the rest. When she saw how he was to be treated, she’d undoubtedly join the others to fit in like the mindless sheep that mortals are.

They reached the meeting room, and the projection of her cell was quickly turned off, even though it was clear she already knew she had been watched. Everyone turned to look as they entered. Tony introduced everyone to Alexa and her to each of them. She shyly uttered greetings and nodded as they spoke to her. Tony then sat in some lounge chairs in the corner across the room next to the floor to ceiling windows. He patted the seat next to him. Alexa took small but quick steps over to him and sat. Everyone else in the room continued talking to one another, trying to act as if all eyes weren’t on her.

She looked out the window. The view was gorgeous from here, you could see all of New York. It was only then that she comprehended that she was in Avengers tower. She looked to him as he clearly had something to say to her.

“So you’re not here to hurt anyone. We’ve gathered that. Your story checks out with everything we know, but we have no idea how to figure out what happened to you when you were 6. I think the best thing for you to do is stay here while we try to make sense of everything you said. On full moons, we can keep you in a special cell where you and everyone else is safe. Sound good?” He spoke so fast but Alexa took it all in and nodded quickly.

“Great. So yeah we all live here, there’s plenty of rooms. Down to floor 8 and down either hall.” He said, pointing to the elevator.

“If there’s no name tag on it it’s up for grabs,” he said.

“Why do you all live here? I mean you all have different homes and families and all that, right?” She asked.

“ We used to,” Stark replied, “ We all came to live here with our families to be able to communicate better, protect our families, and not lose anyone or become unable to contact them. The press and all that has been bugging a couple of us as well, so it just worked out better for us to all be here for a bit”

“Okay…” Alexa replied. She looked back at the room. “Where’s…” she had to think to remember the name for a moment. “Loki?”

“He sleeps in a cell sort of like yours but with some extra additional security tech” Stark started promptly. “He was the nut-job who released that alien army on NYC a while ago. He’s really not one to trust”

She remembered seeing the horror of that event on the news. How could someone with a soul like that so such a thing? She had seen he was broken, but not evil.

“Wasn’t that months ago?” She asked with the tone of pity for him.

Tony looked at her and said, “ he deserves prison for life Alexa, or worse” Tony said sharply, and suddenly she felt guilty and foolish for mentioning it.

After she saw others leaving the room, she made her way down the hall as well.

She walked down the hall, eyeing the doors with the plaques to the right of each. Seeing their names, the names of the heroes she saw on the news, made things feel a little more real and less like a strange dream/ nightmare. She went to the end of the hall and picked a door with 2 adjacent empty rooms.

The door opened silently and Alexa took in the luxury of her suite. Her shoes slipped off her feet and they slowly stepped across the dark wood floors. She took a seat in a soft chair by the fireplace, and ran her hands over the velvet armrest, and took a moment to admire the fireplace. It was shiny and white, with a glass barrier between herself and the fake wood within. She found a remote on the side table next to her and learned she could control not only the tv, but the fireplace, lights, and even music. She also opened the fridge and found numerous snacks and drinks, so she picked out some yogurt and explored the rest of the suite. She would have liked to eat everything in the fridge, but she knew she should take it slow to avoid getting sick.

Her bathroom was luxury as well, everything was white and gold. There was a vase with a purple orchid standing tall on the counter. She took a quick shower and dried off with an unnaturally soft white towel.

This entire suite screamed of money. She supposed that it shouldn’t surprise her with it being owned by Mr. Stark.

It felt so good to be out of that cell. She had been going insane in there and hadn’t cared. Partially delirious from grief and shock, that had to explain why she felt suicidal and hopeless. She felt saner now and didn’t want to think about how desperate and foolish she’d acted by forcing them to find her someone like her. They probably thought she was awkward and weird, desperate.

Embarrassment overwhelmed Alexa and she went to her bed. She wanted to sleep. She hadn’t been in the moonlight for 3 days, so it was about time. She just wanted to not exist in this reality, just for a moment. To not be conscious in a world where she obliterated her family and home and made a fool of herself afterward.

When she woke up, it was dark. She turned her head to the glass clock next to her bed.

2:48 AM. Pulling the silky purple sheets off her body, she made her way to her balcony. Pushing the sliding door open allowed the cool night breeze to flood her room, and pull her hair from the sides of her face. The moonlight felt so good. It had been a long while since she’d been without it. Eyes closed and head tilted back, Alexa outstretched her arms. The moonlight seeped through her skin and her veins flowed with energy. The whole process was completely silent and peaceful. The only sounds she could hear were the breeze and the hum of city life below.

Once she had her energy back, Alexa found that the night was the perfect time to explore the tower. No one would question her or her intentions. If they did, she was sure she’d feel guilty of something even if she wasn’t, her family always managed to do that. She wandered down the dark hall whose lights faded on with her presence. She came to the elevator. Tony’s words echoed in her mind. He sleeps in a cell like yours. She tried to remember the floor that was. Maybe Loki was awake. She tried 13. She knew it was something around there.

She guessed right. Stepping off the elevator, she saw the hallway with the cell she had been kept in to the right, and the door to the observation room in front of her. The hall was undecorated and bleak. She looked over and saw light pouring through one of the walls. She had been right about the cell. One wall of each has some kind of one way sight on it. Alexa could see Loki inside, but he couldn’t see her.

Once again, his soul was so beautiful she couldn’t help but stop to look at it, and take in all the complexity. Loki was stirring around on his mattress that was far to small for how tall he was. She went to turn the doorknob and realized it was locked with a code and keypad.

Alexa knew by now that the moon changed phases every 3 to 4 days. She should be phasing into the last quarter by now. She would have her powers of heat. She might be able to melt the metal to get in.

No. That is the dumbest idea you’ve ever come up with. The door is probably alarmed, and even if it wasn’t… what would Loki think? You barging into his cell in the middle of the night without warning… Alexa thought to herself. What’s gotten into her? Why would she even consider that was a good idea. And yet, looking at him struggling to sleep, she considered it again. No.

Instead of immediately doing something socially unacceptable, she decided to continue to wander the tower. Re-entering the elevator, she pressed the one labeled H. The elevator pulled her upwards, and when the doors opened she quickly realized this would be her favorite floor. The wind overwhelmed her as it rushed into the elevator. She was looking over a wide, flat expanse of smooth pavement. The helicopter pad. It was immense, and she loved the amount of free space she had to herself. All of it was outside, and so high up she could see the entire city with all its scattered messy glow. The wind from this high was almost deafening. She looked across the river and saw a plane taking off in the distance. She loved the city. Especially from above. She’d never understood people who were afraid of heights. How could one be afraid of something so removed from the world, yet able to see all of it? It was gorgeously peaceful.

Alexa walked to the railing and took off her shoes. Sitting down, she rested her arms and head on the cold railing that was glowing from the reflection of her silver veins. Her feet dangled over the edge of the tower, and the cool breeze tangled between her toes.

She felt truly at peace for the first time since she arrived here. It was remarkably fast that she felt so at home… but why? This place was as far from home as she could be. No woods, just skyscrapers. Hardly any stars through the city glow. No family.

No. She did have a family. She realized at that moment why she felt so comfortable… she was relieved. She was in a city where she would be accepted, and she didn’t have to hide her power anymore. She could openly charge in the moonlight. She was in a place where many other people with amazing abilities congregated to solve problems of the world. And hopefully, those people would come to be her family.

#Loki #lokilove #lokioc #loki fanfiction #lokifanfiction #loki feels #lokicute #A Girl and A God #Fanfiction #fanfic #loki fanfic #loki x oc

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allisonilluminated · 7 years ago

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The Seven Sins of Fanfiction

Hey all,

This blog is primarily focused on helping newer writers (and maybe some older ones) improve their fanfiction and increase their views. Since that’s the case, it’s important to understand exactly what not to do when you’re writing.

These are the worst things you can do while you’re writing. I can guarantee everyone reading this post has done at least three of them, and probably all in some shape of form. This is the sort of thing that makes you want to click away immediately, that you cringe at when it’s in the first paragraph or laugh at how bad it is. These things that make you stop reading other stories, just think about it for a moment. What if fewer people are reading your own work because you’re making the same mistakes?

Yeah. If you want to improve, you gotta know what you’re doing wrong. Number Seven is the least worst, then the list descends to Number One, the worst thing you can do in fanfiction.

Note: This is a subjective list. There are people who disagree with some of these points (especially the non-grammar ones), so it’s important to remember that these are the things I find most degrading to the quality of the story being written. As a writer, you have the creative liberty to write whatever you want.

#7 – Bad Romance

“Wo-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o, o-o-ah, caught in a bad romance fanfiction but it’s the only 100k fic for my OTP so I’m like contractually obligated to read it.” - Lady Gaga, mostly

We’ve all been here. You know that moment when two characters meet, then suddenly decide to kiss, and the next thing you know they’re screwing on the patio with some kinky ass BDSM shit. What about those cringe fics where suddenly Harry is spouting some creepy possessive stuff like “my only” or “softest light of my life” to twelve year old Ginny. You know what I’m talking about.

Good romance is an art. It’s about flawed characters (later) coming together in a beautifully intimate way (later) to make something even more beautiful. There is so much bad romance on FFN and AO3 that it just blows my mind.

Giving tips would take an entire post, so here’s a good article on the absolute basics you need to write a good romance: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/romance-writing-mistakes/

#6 – Bad Dialogue Tags

“No!” he howled.

“Yes,” she growled angrily.

She retorted snarkily, “Well, screw you.”

“Fuck you too,” he scowled sadly, before gratingly mumbling “I still love you though.”

Alternatively:

“No!” “Yes.” “Well, screw you.” “Fuck you too. I still love you though.”

There’s a glorious word in this social construct we call English, and it’s “said.” Use it.

You don’t need a fancy word for every tag. You don’t need a fancy word for almost all tags. Eighty percent of your tags should be said, exclaimed, and asked, and more of said than the others. Maybe a whispered or a yelled for some flavor.

Adverbs are your enemies. I struggle with this, but you should use them extremely sparingly.

On the flipside, if your reader doesn’t know who’s talking, your dialogue is meaningless to them. Also, use line breaks every time there is a new speaker.

The trick is finding some happy medium between the two examples. A handful of fancy tags, a lot of said, and if there are two people talking back and forth you don’t even need to tag every sentence.

#5 – Bad Messaging

I don’t want to put down an example for this one, because I think writers feel liberated to write some really awful shit in fanfiction because it’s “not a serious medium” or “it’s the internet, I have free speech.” Let me say this right now:

Stories that make rape a positive thing are not okay. Stories that portray suicide in a glorified light are not okay. Stories that show slavery, or torture, or all of the other horrendous things human beings do to each other in a romanticized or glorified manner are not okay.

I don’t care if it’s your fetish. I don’t care, it’s just not okay to write about these things in a positive light. The only reason this is so high on this list is because these stories aren’t as common as the rest, and are mostly marked M/Explicit so you can avoid them.

#4 – Overdescription

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). [[I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow – My Immortal

Oh boy.

Writers, let me introduce you to this wonderful thing called your profile. Assuming you aren’t drowning in copypastas, this is the perfect place for your character descriptions. Alternatively, have you heard of Tumblr? Literally, stick them anywhere except the middle of your story, and I can guarantee you the readers that actually care will find them if you mention them in your A/N.

Show, don’t tell is one of the fundamental principles of writing. When you’re describing a character, you probably don’t need more than three adjectives and a one sentence description of their outfit. Yes, that applies even if your character has a special non canon outfit. If we must know, work the details into the story. Info-dumping description is telling, and is one of the worst world building and characterization mistakes you can make. Period.

#3 – Epithets

The blond girl walked to the door, and started as a burly man opened it. “May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m here to get a consultation,” the graying businessman said as he ran a hand through his oily hair.

The youthful therapist nodded as she shut the door behind him. Rummaging on her desk, she asked, “Why are you here?”

“Well,” said the jaded economist to the buxom woman. “This author thinks they’re being clever by not giving out names, but they’re ruining this story.”

The best way to get someone to leave your story is epithets.

Epithets do not create mystery. Epithets are not a good substitute for proper nouns. Epithets will not make a clever opening, or add variety to your dialogue.

Epithets will ruin your story, and should not be used.

They come in varying degrees of horror.

The noun. You might be able to get away with saying just “the woman” or “the child” under certain circumstances. This is almost an excusable offence.

The noun with one adjective. This is already unacceptable. If you though you were going to solve Sin #4 by doing this, you’re digging yourself an even deeper hole.

The noun with one modified adjective. Because they can’t just be sexy, they have to be shockingly sexy.

The noun with multiple adjectives. This is automatically overdescription on top of being a horrible thing to subject another person to.

The noun followed by a relative clause. Because there’s always a way to make it worse. “The girl who was now holding his hand” is absolutely disgusting, and so is “The girl that was sitting across from her” or especially “the girl she knew had a chocolate bar somewhere in her pocket.

The noun followed by a relative clause with adjectives. Put it together and what have you got?

Compound Epithets. Oh. My. God. This deserves its own sin. Even if your character has blue hair, you should never ever ever call them a bluenette. Ever. Ever ever ever. AAAAAAAAH!

The author has made her point.

#2 – Bad Grammar

I find bad grammar extremely agitating, mostly because there are a lot of great tools and easy fixes to solve the problems. Most word processors have a built in spell checker, and a lot of them check for grammar as well. If you need an alternative, grammarly.com has a good free version that’ll catch a lot of mistakes. Of course, proofreading your work before posting is always a great idea. Here’s a quick list of some of the most common grammar issues you should be on the lookout for:

A new paragraph for a new idea.

A new paragraph for a new speaker.

Dialogue formatting

Periods

Commas

Run on sentences

Using line breaks

Spelling

Capitalizing starts of sentences

Capitalizing proper nouns

Choosing CONSISTENT capitalization for canon terms (Pokemon vs pokemon, for example)

Repeated words.

Sentence fragments

Tense

#1 – Bad Characterization

“What?” you’re probably asking yourself right now. “How is bad characterization possibly worse than poor grammar? Than epithets?”

Allow me to explain.

When an author writes a story, a good story, they are creating characters who act like people. They have wants, needs, hates, motives, and a concept of who they are, even if they’re only fictional. The author gives them life, spirit, a spark that keeps you reading and wanting to learn more about them.

That sense of identity is what makes them real to us. Why you binge a show on Netflix, or read a novel in one night. Reading is a connection with these characters on a deeper level than you might realize, and this connection brings them to life.

Take that away, and your story is dead.

Your gray OOC Gary Stu overpowered Ravenclaw Harry who grew up with Snape and has a goblin half brother AU is not a story about Harry Potter. It’s a story about an OC named Harry Potter, and Harry loses any integrity he had as a character in Rowling’s books.

That’s why there are fics with horrible grammar and massive following, alongside fics with incredible grammar and sentence construction but no followings. Unless you maintain a basic level of your character’s identity, the essence of what makes them empathetic, you’re not writing about that character. This is the worst sin, because even with all of the others in play, if there is good characterization you can still create an incredible story.

Just by fixing these seven problems, your fic can instantly jump from bad/meh to incredible in the way people perceive it. Hopefully this list can help you determine things to either go back and revise or work on for future chapters. When have you committed one of the seven sins? What other sins do people make all the time in their writings?

Thank you to all of the amazing people who have followed, Allie

Support Me: Fanfiction.net - Archives of our Own

#fanfic #fanfiction #seven sins #writing

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years ago

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Winning at Social Media Politics

SJ STONE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

·READING TIME: 8 MINUTES

Over the years, and especially in this toxic sort of online environment rife with trolls and angry bickering, we've seen friends and family (and even ourselves) engage in more and more political arguments online, most all of which we can agree are a momentous waste of time to the point that it's been making the rounds for years now that you can't win a political argument online and there's no point in trying. Instead, what so many have done is to shut off the flow of negativity by taking oneself out of the equation, either by avoiding confrontation on social media and/or by muting (unfollowing) social media "friends" or unfriending them altogether. One would say that this is not productive, and yet the peace of mind that comes with it is lovely. So, what's the solution when one way is toxic and the other so limiting?

I bumped into a few different ideas lately that have helped me change my own approach, and so I thought I would discuss that here - how we can make simple changes to our own "rules of engagement" and continue to interact and sway opinions online.

I do this (engage online) and talk about this here because now more than ever it is critical, in my opinion, that we must engage - continually, with purpose and clarity, and with the understanding that sitting the political "war of ideas" out is just as unproductive and dangerously apathetic as not voting. Those who have chosen to just sit quietly at home with their cats and their shows rather than contribute to the political process in the United States of America are betraying themselves and everyone else - sorry, but everything happening around you is political and is important because of the horrors that we are confronted with. Only politics will solve them, and we each have a responsibility as a citizen and human being to contribute to a better world.

So, back to the main thrust here - as I've already mentioned that we should all be involved and engaged. And you CAN contribute to the solutions through your interactions on social media, and do so in a positive and productive way, even in dealing with the endless trolls and other assholes out there, if you are careful in your approach. Here are my 3 easy rules to getting there, going from easiest to hardest:

1. Do not go on any friend's social media page and shit on their political views. That is their space. Leave it to them. If you want to agree with them or offer a perspective and add to the conversation, go for it. You know them. Engage, but don't show up and tell them they are dumb.

2. When you venture out to comment on a news site's post, where you will encounter the entire planet, don't attack there either. It's not worth your time, and if you do, you're just becoming another internet troll that makes engagement, interaction and problem solving impossible. Make your own comment and let people come to you.

Now, you might think, "Well, that's where I'm fucked, and someone's going to roll up and be an asshole no matter what I say." Yes and no.

Because there's a 'yes' option, let's address it.

I get lots of trolls because I make a lot of comments. I take two approaches - I engage if I feel like bothering, and when I do engage with that person, I stick to the points I made. I do not attack back. If the person is a dick, I first go to their profile and see if they seem to be an actual person or not, and if they are clearly a troll, I just call them out as a troll in my reply and let it go. If they are really nasty, I may engage by congratulating them on the truly awful things they've just said; that shuts every asshole down every time. "Wow, bud, that was the most amazing totally dick thing I've ever heard anyone say. 5 stars! You should get a trophy for that. You can put it on your mantle and show your family and friends." Yep, you'll never hear from that person again, and if anyone else is interacting, they will love what you said and probably hammer that asshole. That's a win. Otherwise, I don't engage because I said what I wanted to say in my comment, and that's enough for me. I'm there to express myself, not be a punching bag or make friends.

There's also a 'no' option here, and if no one rolls up and trolls you, then no worries. Or, if people comment and discuss in a kindly manner, engage or not. It's up to you.

3. And this is where I talk about the approach I think you should make to avoid a lot of trolls and to contribute to the conversation in a way that isn't divisive and could contribute to more people being engaged. I get tons of likes with this approach and very few trolls, and you can, too.

a. Again, don't attack. Starting your comment off with "Trump is a dick" is not going to get you anywhere, even if it feels good to do it. It does, and sometimes it's difficult to not say that. Instead, consider the point you are trying to make and focus on that and engage any readers by asking a question to wrap it up. And avoid, above all, whataboutism. No one wants to hear how Obama would or wouldn't have done that, or Reagan did it, too. Call out the misbehavior, or the good behavior, on its own merits and focus on the principles.

One of the biggest things out there is whataboutism, and people will say "but XYZ did it, too" or "what about ABC?" Well, I say, if it's wrong now, it was wrong then. Can you agree it's wrong? That usually shuts all the "whataboutism" people the fuck up. They didn't want to discuss the issue, just shit on someone. But either way, talk about the issue at hand as much as you can, not the people doing it so much.

If we're talking about whistleblowers, no matter what the issue is, focus on the value of whistleblowers in a neutral way to remind people of all the good things they do and why they are so important: they help prevent cheating, fraud, cover-ups, lawbreaking, etc., and they are valuable to every organization because they protect workers, shareholders, investors, and especially taxpayers, and they save everyone money and resources that would otherwise we stolen by the corrupt people exposed. Whistleblowers are acting honorably and with integrity - aren't these traits that we need more of in our society? Whistleblowers get nothing out of exposing corruption; if anything, they put themselves in danger and demonstrate courage, another trait that we need to see more of. Whistleblowers are everyday Americans, not affiliated with a political party or a race, color or creed. They are just people trying to do the right thing, so they should be respected and protected and appreciated.

b. Talk about concepts, traits and characteristics as they apply to the topic at hand. I find myself talking more and more about the value of honesty, integrity, compassion, courage as well as the blight of cowardice, dishonesty, fraud, and corruption. Talk about the principles and values that all Americans share and honor when you're pointing out this or that. Talk about how your were brought up, or link it to values in religion or the values of the Founding Fathers. Give examples.

When Trump says something shitty about a Black person or a woman, don't just say he's an asshole - we all know he's an asshole and he doesn't give a fuck about anyone. Don't even mention Trump; just talk about how the person being disparaged is an American citizen, a taxpayer, a human being, someone that should be respected as a person in our society, a person that did this or that. That person is someone's friend, brother, sister, mother, daughter, father, best bud, roommate, your son's teacher, a fireman. Remind folks that people are people, not just things or numbers or statistics. (Sadly, I think a lot of people need to be reminded of this.) Disparaging them is shitty, maybe racist or misogynistic or both, depending on what's happening. Talk about how this sort of behavior is not honorable or worthy of the office of the President, the person who represents the United States, or a sitting Senator or a television host. Note that you would be appalled by that behavior if your son or daughter or father or mother acted that way. Remind people what our societal norms are and what kind of behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. You don't have to mention Trump at all. Ask people to remember what it means to be kind. It’s refreshing to read about, talk about the value of kindness, the clarity of honesty, the security of trust. Hand out those good vibes and let everyone bask for a moment in that good feeling of better times.

I think you'll find that people will respond mostly positively to what you say if you don't make yourself a target (by being shitty) and if you espouse ideas that most everyone can agree with. For those people who have slowly, surely allowed themselves and their principles to be corrupted by Trumpism, this approach, IMHO, offers a way back to the principles that they didn't realize they were no longer supporting, and you are helping them remember what trust and compassion are. All you're doing is talking about those ideals that supposedly we all hold/held dear as people, as Americans, as taxpayers, as human beings. Some of us out there have lost our way, and I think that if we engage in a non-threatening way and espouse that positive traits of a cohesive, compassionate society, we can pull some people out of the flames of hate and also encourage and embolden some of the quiet people to speak up and become part of the movement.

So, no, you cannot win a political argument on social media, so stop arguing. There are better ways to do this.

#politics #social media #arguing #trolls #leadership #debate

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movietvtechgeeks · 7 years ago

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/chloe-sevigny-talks-lizzie-borden-kristen-stewart-sticking-passion-projects/

Chloe Sevigny talks 'Lizzie' Borden, Kristen Stewart and sticking with passion projects

Even if you don't know Chloe Sevigny from Larry Clark (Kids) and Harmony Korine's (Gummo) indie films of the 1990's, you more than likely have seen her on television in shows like Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story: Asylum or HBO's Big Love

Most film greeks were introduced to the versatile actress in her stunning (and shocking) debut as an HIV-infected teen in Larry Clark’s button-pushing drama Kids in 1995. Sevigny has portrayed nearly every type of character imaginable. The versatile actress/fashion icon has depicted the Midwestern girlfriend of a trans man in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, the dowdiest sister-wife of a polygamist on HBO’s series Big Love, a scheming Jane Austen social climber in 2016’s Love & Friendship, and even a legless nymphomaniac in FX’s American Horror Story.

Now she’s found a starring role to really sink her teeth, actually an ax into. In the heroine slaying the patriarchy film Lizzie (premiering in the U.S. Drama Competition), Sevigny takes on ax-wielding anti-heroine Lizzie Borden. Known to most as the parent-chopping up young woman from the famous rhyme, Borden allegedly murdered her father and step-mother at their home in Bedford Falls, Massachusetts in 1892, resulting in what was described as the “trial of the century” and eventually her acquittal.

Proving that passion projects are called 'passion' for a reason, this a role and film that Sevigny has shepherded to the screen after a decade in development. The payoff is huge as she delivers one of her most gripping performances that will likely have audiences on the edge of their seats.

Critics are already giving the film kudos, and it was our 'must see' choice at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Here's what Sevigny had to say about making the film, Kristen Stewart and the ten-year road for Lizzie. You’ve been attached to play Lizzie Borden for a decade as the project underwent various incarnations. Can you talk about the long journey to make this story into a feature film? Oh God, it’s so long and involved. [Laughs] It began the first time I visited the bed and breakfast in Fall River [the house where the murders took place is now a bed-and-breakfast/museum]. I was driving through Massachusetts with my boyfriend at the time, we were going to stay at the house and then go to Salem, for a spooky Halloween/romantic weekend getaway. As soon as I walked into that house, it was a moment that crystallized, and I knew I had to play this person. I felt so empathetic to her plight. Her story is so fascinating, because there are so many different theories and it’s still unsolved. The world has been fascinated by her for more than a hundred years now. She still inspires so many books, films, operas, and so many other things. She’s iconic as this misfit heroine. That was the moment that I realized I needed to do this. This is obviously a passion project. How did you begin the process of turning it into a movie? I was living with my friend Bryce Kass in Los Angeles as roommates. He was a struggling writer so I asked him to write it. He wrote an outline, and there was so much exposition, and we learned so many things––such as the police were at a picnic so many miles away. There were so many amazing details we could put in this story that it was hard to figure out how we wanted to do it. I was on Big Love at the time and very close to Peter Friedlander [a producer on the HBO series], so I took it to him, and he said we should pitch it to HBO. At that time—this was 10 years ago—they’d have given us more money and exposure and more people would see it on HBO than if it we made it as an indie film. That made more sense to me, you know? We pitched it, and it was there for a while. They held onto the material for a very long time. Bryce had to rewrite it as a miniseries. It was at various times a two-part miniseries and a three-part miniseries. Then they put us on the backburner over there and then picked us up again and had so many directors attached. In the end it just didn’t work out for us. We couldn’t pitch it to other networks for a variety of reasons that I had no idea about because I was so green to this whole process. The next time I’m going to have a lawyer that holds my hand through every step because it’s totally insane. But your endurance eventually paid off. Eventually, we had to reconceive it back to a feature and try to produce it independently ourselves. We set up a lot of meetings and sent it out to a lot of directors. I was attached and Kristen [Stewart] was kind of attached, so it’s hard to go to visionary directors who are working on their own projects when you already have actors attached. We watched Craig Macneill’s films and had conversations with him. He was actually from a place very near Fall River and had a very personal connection to Lizzie, so we decided to go with him. We found some independent financiers and set up some foreign sales and put it together. It came together really quickly. You were born in Massachusetts, which is Lizzie Borden country. When did you first become aware of her? I first became aware of her with the rhyme in probably junior high, or maybe I was younger. I didn’t know much about her. I was out one night for Halloween in the city, and one of my best friends was dressed as her for Halloween, so I delved into it. What was the appeal of her story for you? First of all, she was so misunderstood and didn’t have any real outlet. I was very empathetic to that. I wouldn’t say she’s crazy in any way, shape, or form. I just think she was disturbed. Playing a subtly disturbed person was something I’d never done before, and that interested me as an actor. What research did you do? I stayed at the house in Fall River several times. I went once on my own, once with Bryce, and once with the friend who had dressed up as Lizzie for Halloween. [Laughs] We went to her final resting place in Fall River and walked around Bedford. I went back with Craig and our cinematographer and art director to do more research at the Fall River Historical Society. It was very helpful in creating a fully realized version of her. We saw her objects, and they gave us permission to use a photo of her mother in the locket. I’ve read almost every book about her, and there are a lot. I actually read about different women at that time—even Emily Dickinson. There’s a great bio about her life and being imprisoned in her house, which gave me insight into what life was like in that period. My research was pretty extensive. You really exhibited palpable rage when you were swinging the ax. How do you prepare psychologically to play a scene like that? I’d prepared for that for 10 years now. I was naked in that scene, and now I’m sleepless every night. [Laughs] I’m 43 years old, and I can’t believe I did that. It’s not that I regret it because I wanted it to be very carnal and shocking, but now I feel pretty vulnerable, in all honesty. It’s my opinion and the writers’ that she did it and there are a lot of people who argue that she didn’t. There’s a theory that she went into an epileptic state of shock. Lizzie has a romantic relationship with Bridget, the live-in maid, played by Kristen Stewart. How fact-based is this? That’s not very fact-based. There are a lot of accounts of her having affairs with other women, especially Nance O’Neill, who was an actress. There are theories that that’s why she and Emma, her sister, didn’t speak to each other for the last years of their lives. We took liberty with that. There is evidence that Bridget was in cahoots and had to have been in the house [when the murders occurred]. Maybe those ladies did have one of the friendships that some women during that time period had, that were more intimate because they didn’t have anyone else. I think that after spending time in the house, we determined there was no way Bridget couldn’t have been in cahoots. It’s a film that’s time has come in more than one way. Both Lizzie and Bridget were abused by a man in the film. How do you think the film will resonate in today’s climate when the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are calling out unacceptable behavior by men? Since all of this has happened recently, well, I mean I’ve always thought of this film as a smack in the face of the patriarchy. It’s extreme, and it’s violent and it smashes the face of the patriarchy. That was how I pitched it 10 years ago. Putting more women in power is the only way to protect young girls. I think men will always abuse them and the more they’re called out and held accountable the less likely they’ll be to act untowardly to women––so women need to be in more positions of power. That’s the only way to shift the dynamics. There’s more of a weight and importance to films now. Even like Beatriz at Dinner [her film which premiered at Sundance in 2017], which is about so many different things now. I’m really lucky to be a part of films that reflect what’s happening in today’s society. There’s been a call for Hollywood to hire more female directors. You’ve directed a couple of shorts. Do you plan to direct a feature eventually? I hope to. I’m making another short in April, which is about women and their relationship to the power. I’d like to direct a feature if I find the right material. It’s all about having the right material and being impassioned about what you want to say and what you want to do. I’ve worked with strong female directors like Kimberly Peirce on Boys Don’t Cry and Mary Harron on American Psycho. Whenever you have a project that you’ve just got to get out, it always elevates it. It enters into the zeitgeist and becomes something even bigger.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

#Chloe Sevigny #Featured #Gummo #Interviews #Kids #Lizzie #Sundance Film Festival

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tehstripe · 7 years ago

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2. Dear _______, - Dave/Rose Newspaper Columnist AU

I finally finished the second fic for my challenge! The prompt was “newspaper advice columnists who passive-aggressively diss one another in their advice au,” found in this AU list. Also this thing is a small monster that I will probably cross-post to AO3 after... a bit of editing and coding.

(Also keep an eye out I have a second fic to post tonight.)

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

Recently, my boyfriend has been acting strangely. He keeps asking about my schedule and when I'll be home. At first I assumed he was just asking so that he could work on planning dates, but whenever I ask him about his schedule, he gets very cagey and won't tell me exactly what he's doing. If I ever demand what he is doing, he tells me he is hanging out with "friends."

Is he cheating on me, or am I just reading into things? I want to confront him, but I don't want to ruin the relationship over something silly...

Sincerely, Am I Just Paranoid?

Dear Mx. Paranoid?

There are one of three options here.

The first is, naturally, the most boring. He is cheating on you. His so-called "friends" are in fact a short-hand for his elicit lover.

For your sake, I hope this is not the case, though I am sure it would be gratifying to know that your suspicions were at least somewhat justified. I would recommend actually talking to some of his friends in order to confirm the story that he is telling you. Is he truly hanging out with them, or is he just using them as a convenient excuse to ditch you?

A few caveats. First, even if his friends back up his story, they may be lying. You can test this by asking a few of them what they were up to and seeing if their stories match. If possible, I would recommend talking to some of their significant others, who will more likely be sympathetic to your cause.

If you do not know enough of his friends in order to ask them what they were up to on June 6th at 11:00 PM, consider that you may not be deep enough into this relationship to be too concerned about ruining it. Cut your losses and run. Even if he is not cheating on you, I cannot think of much good that will come from having a boyfriend who, early in the relationship, demands to know where you will be without properly reciprocating.

Naturally, if you do discover that your man is cheating on him, there is only one possible solution. You must sacrifice his body to Zathog the Great Old One. If he is pleased with your sacrifice, then he may grant you the ability to travel through both time and space, which is undeniably a much better thing to be in possession of than a cheating boyfriend.

Ah! But we must not overlook the other possibilities. You may also be in a situation pulled straight from a "Romantic Comedy," as the lay people refer to them, where you are led to believe your beau is cheating on you, when in truth, he is attempting to set up a beautiful surprise for you that only shows how much he loves you. Perhaps there is even a big diamond ring in your future?

Ah, but Miss Therapist, you may proclaim. However will I know whether or not I have found myself within the confines of a "Romantic Comedy"? The answer is simple. Look around you, at the people you surround yourself with. Do you have a gay best friend who gladly accepts the lofty title of "sassy"? Do you have a well-meaning girl friend (who you, mistakenly, call a "girlfriend" despite the fact that the two of you are straight) who is hapless, cute (but not as cute as you), and pursuing her own relationship off to the periphery of your existence? Are there any older women in your life who give you expressions that imply they have seen it all?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then congratulations! You are most likely a fictional character within a film that will be affectionately dubbed a "Chick Flick." On the bright side, you are undoubtedly being played by an attractive celebrity, so that is one important consolation prize to the unfortunate fact that you are not actually real.

You can also check this with his friends, of course.

The final, and frankly, most likely option is that he is planning his own ritualistic sacrifice to Zathog. He is most likely planning to sacrifice you. Get the jump on him. Forgo love and earthly attachments and become the space-and-time travelling god you were always destined to be.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely, The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

I'm trying to think of what I should get my girlfriend for our two-year anniversary. She's honestly the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I want to make it special for her. Any ideas?

-- Two Years of Devotion

dear 2y devotion

okay my dude my buddy my pal

listen to this thing that you are asking me. really listen to it. take the page you are reading right now and hold it up to your ear all gentle like and let it whisper into your ear.

"i want to do something special" cool thats great thats a general thing that everybody who is not a douche wants to do for their significant other but think about this for a sec.

you went to an advice column for this shit. and dont get me wrong my advice column is unequivocally the best advice column cause unlike some columnists im not gonna suggest you throw your girlfriend to sh'blugh the tentacle horror from beyond the veil but

you gave me nothing to go on man

how do i make that special

like give me some details to go off of

you love this girl right tell me something about her

or i guess since its too late to tell me about her because this is a delayed conversation that gets publicly written and published in a magazine think about the kind of shit that she likes

like you probably already know the kind of shit that she likes if youre really as into her as you say

does your girl like flowers? get her some flowers does your girl like horses? get her a horse does your girl like sports? get her a sport

and like that goes for activities too if youve decided to date an adrenaline junkie take her to an amusement park or go skydiving or something

or even just crack open a bottle of fancy wine or whatever

shit is special if you make it special dude and if i tell you exactly what to do that ruins the whole idea of it being special

anyway good luck hope you dont bomb it

-- dj strider

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

I'm a mother of a beautiful girl who is currently in the second grade. She constantly comes home complaining of a boy bothering her in class. I have gone to her teacher to try and figure out what we can do to make her feel more comfortable at school, but the teacher simply said that the boy probably had a crush and told me that this was a normal peer interaction among children their age.

While I understand that many children do not know how to properly express their emotions or their feelings, I can't help but feel suspicious of this determination. My daughter has said that this boy has pulled her hair and pushed her down on the playground. I don't care what the teacher says - that is NOT the behavior of somebody with a crush.

Sincerely, Concerned Mother

Dear Miss Concerned,

You have every right to be concerned. However, the teacher is right. That boy almost certainly does have a crush.

You see, Miss Concerned, in all my years of giving advice and viewing the world from my lofty place above it, I have come to the conclusion that a man in love becomes the stupidist and most brute-ish thing imaginable. This starts from a very young age, and though the man may be able to temper his natural instincts upon growing older and even produce the occasional bouquet of flowers, this is natural. Why, even at my decidedly unspecified age, I sometimes encounter men who show their undying affection for me by "vagueing" me, as I understand is the modern parlance, in their own personal advice columns.

(By the by, Mr. Strider, everybody knows that my column has more regular readers than yours does.)

That said, this behavior is unacceptable. Were this a fully grown man, of course, I would say that you should toss him to the Old One of your choice as an offering of appeasement for not destroying our planet eons ago, but this is still just a second grade boy. Foolish and brutish as he may be, I will never condone child sacrifice. Instead, focus on the teacher.

Tell her that you don't care if this boy has a crush - it is unacceptable that your daughter is being made to feel unsafe and unhappy in a place of learning, which should be open to her. Children do not learn or grow well in environments they are uncomfortable in. If this boy is making her uncomfortable then, whatever his reasons for doing that may be, he needs to be talked to and he needs to be stopped. That is the long and short of it. If the teacher seems unwilling to help, take it to the principal. If the principal is equally reluctant, then pitch a fit and give some of your fellow parents a reason to outrage. Make the local news. Cause a national movement for little boys to stop pulling little girl's hair in an attempt to flirt. Eventually, the teacher will have to give in. Or at the very least, pressure from social media will get her fired for showing such painful neglect at her job.

Once that happens, naturally, you may sacrifice her to the Old One of your choosing.

I hope that these words bring you comfort and wisdom. You sound like you are a good and caring mother.

-- The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

I have a crush on a guy, but I don't know how to get his attention. What can I do to get him to notice me?

-- Crushing in California

dear crushinator

well first off let me tell you what NOT to do

the thing that you definitely dont do is call this guy out for vagueing you on your very public advice column especially if youre going to pretend that youre a cool dark mistress of the night who ritually sacrifices people to the tentacled gods of your nightmares i mean okay i guess i should specify that you will definitely get noticed but not in the way that you want despite that saying there is such a thing as bad attention especially when youre attempting to woo a guy

anyways i guess it really depends on the kind of guy youre looking at what do you know about this dude is he into video games?? go take a picture of yourself with a controller in your mouth and accidentally send it to him then hell know for sure that youre a gamer gurl and hell ask to play some fresh games with you and then you have an in (make sure youre actually okay at video games though maybe)

is he into sports??? go dress yourself as a ball

or wear a jersey with his favorite team on it or something

just get a conversation started honestly or if youre already in the conversation zone you can start dropping mad innuendos left and right maybe put on some nice clothes or bat your eyelashes a bit you know just do something special

and again dont call him out on "vagueing" you or hell just continue to talk smack about you to his huge avid fanbase and then youll just be sad and embarrassed

hope that helps

-- dj strider

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

I'm a high school student and there's a few people who keep bothering me on social media. They aren't bullying me or anything, but they keep mentioning me in posts and responding to all of my statuses. It's getting kind of annoying. What should I do?

Sincerely, I just want some peace and quiet on my FB Feed!

Dear FB Feeder,

Truly, now you understand the trials and tribulations that I myself face on a near daily basis. I do not know you or your body of work, but clearly within the realm of your school, you must be somewhat famous.

Now, I do not know the gender or sexual orientation of these bothering people you mention, but I would hazard a guess that at least one or two of them are interested in pursuing you romantically, but due to having the emotional maturity of a teenager, they do not know how to pursue you in a way that is not hugely annoying.

I am sure you would like to hear that this behavior will naturally fade over time as said teenagers grow and mature into proper young adults, but I am saddened to inform you that often this is not the case. Why, one can even become a semi-professional advice columnist and yet still resort to calling out their crushes in a public space. Therefore, you will need to take some actions in order to ease your own annoyance at the situation.

The easiest option would, of course, be to block them, but I do not claim to be an expert on the delicate social balance of your high school. Perhaps blocking these individuals would be a social faux pas from which you could never recover. In that case, many websites (and I suspect this mysterious "FB" is among them) have a way to block people from showing up on your feed. This may not solve the problem, but may fix some of the annoyance.

You could also try talking to them. Tell them that their constant attention is annoying and unflattering. If they are trying to impress you, then they will back off. If they are trying to get to you, then they are bullying you, and you can report them to the adult of your choice.

Naturally there is always the option of throwing them to the Beasts Below, who quite enjoy annoying human souls.

I hope this helps.

-- The Tentacled Therapist

Dear Disc Jockey Strider,

I have a quandary. You see, there is a particular rival of me who seems to, as of late, decided to take it upon himself to mention me in nearly every single public answer he grants to his purported legion of devoted fans. I am beginning to think that perhaps there is something more to his constant mentions of me. Is this a cry for help? Could it be that the adviser, in this case, should become the advisee?

Sincerely, An Anonymous, but Concerned, Reader

dear anonymous tentacle therapist,

yeah haha nice try

--- dj strider

dear tentacle mistress of the night,

hey so i have this problem and that problem is primarily the fact that theres this creepy advice columnist whos constantly up in my grill and i think shes gotta be in love with me

i mean i also have a problem in that im just drowning in so many fans that i cant barely see straight but thats one hundred percent beside the point

whats my plan of action here do i let her down gently or what

sincerely, a super cool dude with a better advice column than this

Dear Your Advice Column Is Not Better,

It certainly sounds like you have quite the conundrum but I must wonder. Is it her that is in love with you? Or might you be projecting somewhat? After all, it seems to me that you might have been the one who started it. If her responses, as you claim, indicate that she is clearly in love with you, then I am afraid that by your same logic you must simply be head over heels.

In that case, I would not recommend letting her down gently. Not because of her feelings - oh no. I doubt that she has feelings one way or the other about whether or not you actually get the guts to ask her out. No, I would highly recommend that you not let her down gently because, based on what I have inferred from you in this very anonymous and mysterious question, I worry for the implications on your psyche should you make the decision to try and turn this girl down before you have ever confessed your feelings.

No, my professional recommendation is that you suck it up and you go to her and you ask her out. She will likely turn you down, of course. I understand that she has high standards. But if you continue to keep your feelings pent up, it will only hurt you and those around you. Besides, if you do not give it a shot, then you will never know what could come from it. You never know. You might just be surprised by what she says, if you go about it the right way.

Also, I do know for a fact that you have her number.

Your move, Strider.

-- The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

I was wondering, what's your advice for what to do on a first date? I just met this really pretty girl and we've been flirting a lot, and she agreed to go out with me. But now I have to actually think of a good date idea! What should I do?

Also, since it is a first date, I don't know THAT much about her, since I know that's usually what you tell people who come to you for relationship advice. I mean, that's what the first date is for, right?

Sincerely, Nervous First Timer

dear nervous,

okay yeah for once you got a situation in which im not gonna come over and sit your ass down about actually knowing your girlfriends interests because hey news flash shes not your girlfriend

yet

dont worry my man i will come up with a plan to fully woo this girl and you will then have a girlfriend and then maybe even a wife

just send me a wedding invite okay

actually this goes for everyone if i ever land you a wife or a husband or a gender non specific spouse send me a fuckin wedding invite i probably wont go but i might and i give you permission to advertise to all of your friends and family that you might have a minor local celebrity attending your big special day

but yeah first dates

first off you probably want to do something with a specific end time or else youre gonna end up trapped in a moment of like is it time to end this? do i wanna be the one who has to say i have to go? if nothing else give yourself an excuse to leave at a specific time like you gotta meet a friend or catch a bus

the other thing is that you gotta make sure you leave time to actually you know. talk.

i know seeing a movie seems really tempting and yeah movie dates can be fun but consider what youre actually doing on that date

youre staring at a screen while sitting next to somebody who is a borderline stranger and maybe enjoying a baller flick but are you really advancing that relationship at all?

nah

so yeah generally something like a lunch or a dinner can be pretty good but it can be tricky and awkward if you dont know what youre gonna talk about like what if you start talking and realize you got nothing in common that you actually care about

so thats either good for a second date or if youre like an awesome conversationalist who is always confident that youre able to keep a conversation going no matter who youre talking to

so its usually a good idea to do something thats a little more focused

if you do know anything about her then you can bring her to an event you know she might like

maybe a museum or something? aquarium? zoo? i guess a sport game could work but as i understand it there are drones that come around and demand that you kiss for the crowd so maybe thats not the best idea

anyways just make sure its something for you guys to talk about other than your own awkward burgeoning romance

anyways in the end the important thing is just be yourself dude

i can say from recent personal experience that being yourself works wonders and if it doesnt work wonders then that probably means that the relationship wasnt gonna work well anyways

just make sure you dont dump all your biggest darkest secrets on the first date though or else you dont give your nosy date anything to come back for the next time

but actually that maybe only works if your date is trying to pretend she is a therapist

anyways good luck dude hopefully that gave you some good ideas

-- dj strider

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

I'm in a kind of new relationship and it is going great! This guy is great and I could really see it going places. We've been going steady for about a month and a half now, but he's seemed really hesitant about telling other people about us. He won't list himself as being in a relationship on social media, and though some of our mutual friends obviously know, I don't know how vocal he's been about it with the other people in his life.

Now, we are gay, but he's also really openly gay to everybody that he knows, so I don't think that's a big part of it. Everybody knows he likes guys, so the fact that he's dating me shouldn't be that big of a deal. So what's going on? Does he just really value his privacy or is he planning to dump me soon? What signs should I be looking out for. (I need to know when it is appropriate to plan my tentacled sacrifice after all. :P)

Sincerely, Are We Dating Or What?

Dear Schrodinger's Boyfriend,

I'm afraid that going public with a relationship is always a tricky thing, regardless of whether or not the status of your sexuality is broadcast to the entire world. There are many, many reasons that your boyfriend may not want to go public with you. I will, of course, get the obvious out of the way. He may be possessed by one of the Old Ones, in which case, they are notoriously shy about their relationships. They have lived for millenia, so they feel no reason to rush through things. Be patient with them, and it will pay off in a major way.

Now, there is the (admittedly slim) chance that your beau is but a normal human man, with all of the normal lovable foibles of human men. If this is the case, I can see a few options.

The first is the one that I think you are the most scared of - he's Just Not That Into You. Either he is cheating on you (or perhaps you are the one he is cheating with?) or he has plans to end the relationship soon. I cannot predict which of these it is, but if you have mutual friends who know, it may not be a bad idea to ask one of them for their input on the situation. Naturally, if either of these is the case, offer his body up for possession by an Old One. You will have the same problem, but rest assured that the Old One will be faithful and loyal to you up until the point it decides to use your flesh organs as part of an important summoning ritual.

The second option is simply that he is shy or cautious. Maybe, despite being openly gay, he is still somewhat embarrassed by a relationship. Perhaps he has relatives who would harass you if they knew who you were.

Or perhaps he has been burned by rushing into a public relationship in the past.

Perhaps he was, once upon a time, with another boy who he went public with too soon. Perhaps the pressure of the relationship made him feel like he had to perform that relationship to an extent that felt unnatural to him. Perhaps he didn't like how it felt, having something so new, personal, and delicate being handed out to the world at large.

I don't know the type of people who might like to look at your boyfriend's life, but it is also entirely possible that he would not want them to know of any relationship of his, simply because they will find a way to butt their noses in and ruin it. An overbearing mother, perhaps? Nosy friends? A needy ex, who will proceed to harass you as soon as your name is out there as being his "Facebook Official" beau.

Needless to say, there are many reasons that he could want to refrain from making your relationship public that actually have very little to do with your relationship. In fact, it could even be a sign that he values your relationship. He values what you have so much that he doesn't want to share what you have with the rest of the world and thus risk losing it.

Though, of course, he could be cheating. It is possible that I am injecting some of my own thought processes too heavily into this answer. I do not truly know your boyfriend, so I cannot say for sure what his thoughts are. The best thing I can really advise you do is... ask.

Good luck.

-- The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

I think that two of my friends have hooked up, but I'm not sure. They used to be really annoying to each other, and our other friends and I always joked that they were flirting, but I at least never actually meant it. But now they don't bother each other as much and they're just kind of... calm together. And there are a lot of times that the two of them are pretty obviously missing from group get togethers.

So... were they actually flirting?? Are they dating now?? What if they break up? That will just make them even more annoying!

Sincerely, Kind of Grossed Out

dear kind of

yeah your friends are definitely banging now and yeah they probably were always actually flirting but they might not have been aware of it

see sometimes if you are an asshole you dont know how to express affection apart from acting like an extra asshole to the people that you like and usually this is a self correcting feature since like youll drive away all of the people you like so they dont have to put your extra asshole-ness the real kicker comes when you end up crushing on somebody who can actually match your punches and act like an equally big asshole in return

its a very delicate dance honestly and you should just be glad that you got to view it in its natural habitat if only youd caught it on camera you could have sold that shit to discovery channel and got richard attenborough to dub over it with his cool nature documentary voice and here we see the assholes in their elaborate mating ritual though it may look like a fight to outsiders they are actually both getting really turned on by it and are gonna fuck vigorously in a month or two

anyways yeah its gonna suck if they break up but honestly what break up doesnt suck

i dont think the way that the flirting process happens really dictates how much a break up process is going to suck and from personal experience probably theyd be less annoying broken up than theyd be together since theyd just avoid each other which is a whole other kinda stress but yeah

i guess what im trying to say is yes your friends are definitely boning down embrace it and congratulate them or something also make sure that none of them are in charge of any advice columns

-- dj strider

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

Hello, I Am A Long Time Reader, First Time Writer

I Was Simply Wondering How One Would Hypothetically Go About Wooing An Advice Columnist That They Thought Was Very Clever And Humorous

This Is A Hypothetical Scenario Of Course I Was Just Wondering

Sincerely, A Fan

Dear Cooling Unit,

Honestly, I stared at this letter for quite a while, wondering how to answer it. I would have guessed that this was written by DJ Strider, in fact, if I didn't know for a fact that he would never put enough effort into writing something to press the shift button that often.

Regardless, I am sure that now is about the point where I am supposed to tell you how to woo me. This is where you expect me to say that the worst way to woo me is to slyly reference me in your public column for the whole world to see. Honestly, that is a technique that I would not have expected to work on paper, but it must have its merits.

At any rate, I suspect that technique would not work on most advice columnists, so I suppose I will simply continue under the assumption that this is the Very General And Hypothetical Advice that you assured me you were asking for.

My simple advice is thus: treat wooing them like you would any other person. If you do not know them in real life or do not have an easy way to contact them other than through their advice column, then pursuing a relationship is inadvisable. They will treat you as yet another fan, and I can say from personal experience that I am not terribly interested in dating fans.

"Fans," you see, tend to put you up on a pedestal. They take a look at you and think that you have hung the moon, which means that the only way for their opinion of you to go is down. Having a healthy, normal outlook on your strengths and weaknesses as a partner is down-grading their image of you, which means that no matter what, you will become a disappointment to them. The moment you mess up in front of somebody who idolizes you, it will feel like a betrayal to them, because you don't match the perfect image they have built in their head.

No, I would be far more interested in pursuing somebody who is my equal, through and through, and I suspect the same is true of most other hypothetical advice columnists. If you do find one who is excited by the fact you are a fan, they are undoubtedly an egotistical narcissist who wants to hear about how they hung the moon. While I do not deny that hearing of my moon-hanging exploits is quite the enjoyable experience for me, it is not a solid foundation for a relationship. If you find such a columnist who wants to build a relationship on that, might I recommend putting a sample of their blood into a summoning circle to bring about a personal curse on their house and home?

At any rate, any advice that is seeking out this particular advice columnist's interest will, sadly, be too little too late. Against all odds, I happen to be taken with somebody else.

-- The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

I kind of pissed my girlfriend off. How do I get back on her good side?

Sincerely, In the Dog House

dear i hope thats not a petplay reference holy shit,

okay see this is why people need to provide me more details about their problems like look at me i write long and heartfelt messages to all of you

like i really inject my soul into these answers make sure theyre multi paragraph endeavors and what do you give me?

"oh yeah my girlfriends pissed" like what do you want me to do with that theres so many factors at play here about how to get back on her good side or even if such a feat is possible cause trust me there are ways to get on a bad side permanently and for all i know you have done something worthy of the permanent bad side

like did you fucking go out and cheat on her?? if so then go ahead and dump yourself she doesnt deserve to put up with you

if you just like forgot to wash the dishes that one time or something???? yeah thats probably an offense you can recover from and im hoping that youre talking about something like that over the cheating because i am not a pro cheating advice column ill have you know

im a respectable advice column with family values and also a decent and healthy amount of respect for all romantic partners

anyways if you did something like forget an anniversary then that depends entirely on the girl and how long youve been together and how badly you forgot it

if it is a make up-able offense though what you do to get on her good side is......... also dependent on some awesome details that you didnt fucking give me

like my dude did you put effort into this question at all

did you just decide to mass produce this so that you could send it to multiple advice bogs? actually im gonna ask around and see if anybody else i know got it

anyways its a shit question put more effort in next time

some general shit you can do is obviously like buy her something that she likes take her on a special date to a place that she likes or try and do the thing you screwed up the first time but dont screw it up this time

but mostly just apologize

though i kinda hope you did that already because if you didnt even think to toss a lil im sorry in between the time you sent this and the time it took me to process it and actually respond then im sorry you might be beyond help

oh yeah that said one way to get on a girlfriends good side is to be a super famous advice columnist because then whatever you write will be public and apparently your girlfriend could be into public apologies like i dont know you didnt give me enough to work with

but i guess this is to say uh

sorry for joking about the thing you were right youre always right everybody should go to the best advice column ever the tentacled therapist for all of your best advice needs

(that was not a paid advertisement btw but i cant say that it was done entirely by choice)

((but no really im joshing you dont tell tt but her advice is actually pretty sound. even some of the ritual sacrifice stuff is kinda reasonable when you think about it. she usually only recommends it to assholes that deserve it its not just a blanket ritual since thatd have no meaning))

anyways good luck i guess?

like good luck if you arent a douchebag and i guess if you ARE a douchebag then good luck to your girlfriend i hope she dumps you and goes on to clearer waters

Dear Tentacled Therapist,

I'm thinking of proposing soon. What are your thoughts on a public proposal? On the one hand, it's kind of romantic getting to share a special moment with a lot of other people... but on the other hand, it does kind of trap the other person into saying yes because they don't want to seem like a jerk in front of a lot of other people. What do you think is the way to go with this one?

Sincerely, Nervous Proposer

Dear Nervous Proposition,

Whether or not a public proposal is a good idea depends entirely on the person that you are proposing to.

By this point, I would hope that you had some sort of idea about what the person you are proposing to might like as far as public proposals. Are they easily embarrassed by attention, or do they soak it up like they are plants who desperately need all available sunlight for photosynthesis? How keen are they on things such as surprise birthday parties? Have you ever thrown them a surprise birthday party? Perhaps, before considering marriage, you should throw them a surprise birthday party. You cannot truly know a person until you have seen their reaction to such a fiasco.

I would also recommend that the two of you have discussed the topic of marriage before you even consider popping the question to your prospective fiance. I wouldn't propose until the two of you consider yourselves to be - and I apologize for my use of this cliché - "engaged to be engaged." Make sure that your partner is planning on the prospect of a marriage with you.

You might even consider doing two proposals - one more subdued, in private, just to make sure that they say yes. Then you can propose that you have a big surprise that the two of you get to share with everybody else, and you get to propose a second time without any of the stress.

Now, personally, public proposals are not my style, and anybody dating me would know better than to do such a proposal. But.

That is assuming that they can beat me to the punch. ;)

I wish you luck in your endeavors, and I am sorry there was no good place for sacrifices to the Old Ones in this week's column.

Sincerely, The Tentacled Therapist

Dear DJ Strider,

Who should I pick to be my Maid of Honor? I have two really good friends. One I am closer to, and I know she'll probably pick me to be her maid of honor... but the other one is a LOT better at planning shit out. I know that if I pick her, my wedding will be run like a well-oiled machine, but I also don't want to upset my other friend. Then again, the friend who's good at planning might be offended that I chose the closer friend, and be frustrated when she has to deal with her bad planning as a bridesmaid.

So... who do I pick? It feels like I lose no matter what.

Sincerely, Fretting Fiance

dear ff

yo i fucking hear you on this shit weddings are the most stressful thing that has ever been invented by man

i mean man in the generic sense btw not the male human sense though i guess it might have also been made by a male human? idk i should ask about the history of weddings later maybe

anyways its all politics dont let anybody tell you any different

like you gotta be oh so careful with your seating placements at the reception or ol grandma berthas gonna tear the eyes out of uncle jimmy and we cant risk getting that blood all over the table cloths or else were gonna have to pay a really big fee to the table cloth company we hired and were already gonna be broke because of the honeymoon

and yeah we gotta make sure that shellys the bridesmaid second from the left because otherwise shell block out kelly in all the wedding pictures and kelly will pitch a fit

anyways i guess the easiest thing to do is going to just be to talk to them

you could always offer to split the honor between the two of them too if your planny friend is as good as planning as you say i bet you can come up with a good way to work 2 maids of honor into the ceremony

also uh i guess this is a good a time as any to make a lil announcement guys

so after april rolls around im not gonna be dj strider anymore

better get ready to start making your pleas for help out to dj lalonde

-- the artist formerly known as dj strider

#homestuck #daverose #dersecest #though they are not related in this fic #stripe writes #stripe au challenge

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