#this is more of a diary entry than poetry

[gwyns-writing]

this should be peaceful

but when i am with them i am closeted

i am quiet

i am silenced

i am hidden

my quirks are suppressed

my personality is censored

my happiness is quickly extinguished

and i love them

and they love me

but not really

they don’t even know me

[hotroadkill]

yeah yeah i know richard siken is woefully over-quoted on this site but “there’s a part in the movie where you can see right through the acting, where you can tell that i’m about to burst into tears, right before i burst into tears,” hey what if i walk into traffic. idk why that line rips my heart out every time but it does

[malusokay]

monthly mail -> substack

dolls I've made a substack.

more frequently, more personal, and more real than ever.

if you want messy poetry, spiralling diary entries, and shower thoughts turned into essays...

https://substack.com/@malusokay

[dragongirl642]

heyyy i just read the werewolf shifter hc! it’s great, along with all your others. do you think you could do donna and alcina reaction to a s/o who is very tall (like 7’6”) and is a bigger person. but can cook really well? keep up the great work! <3

Thank you Glad you like my headcanons...here's some more 😎👌

Alcina Dimitrescu

She thinks you are a god/dess. Something divine, a gift plucked from the heavens that she is eternally grateful for.

She likes the warm feeling in her chest that blooms whenever you cuddle on a couch together or she sees you getting along with her daughters.

You're just so soft, and kind, and strong, and tall, and smart, and funny, and beautiful, and talented, and...she will wax lyrical about you in her diary.

If you're a woman, her earlier entries will be plans to drain "the new maid", which then slowly morph into poetry.

If you're a man, her earlier entries will be filled with shock and anger over the "useless butler", which then slowly morph into notes on what her "filthy but cute manthing" surprised her with today.

If you have any insecurities about your body or your appearance, she will loudly proclaim how ridiculous your insecurities are and love-bomb you. She may even read you some of the poetry in her diary about you.

She appreciates your height and strength.

Will shamelessly ogle you when you're doing any chores or heavy lifting.

However, she will avert her eyes and make a comment about "decent attire" if you wear any sort of crop top or tank top and shorts while completing said chores/heavy lifting. (She is secretly swooning.)

When you're anniversary was coming up, you scoured the town and castle to find recipe books and experiment with making vampirism-friendly meals.

Black pudding, blood soup, roasted bone marrow and other organ meat meals.

Alcina won't admit it, but she almost cried when you presented her with your one-year anniversary meal surprise.

She always talks (brags) about your cooking skills with the other Lords.

She will "suggest" you write all the recipes down and "helpfully" leave the necessary materials lying around in places you frequent. She wants to have something to remember you by.

Alcina doesn't want you dead. But she knows the village (and her castle) is full of dangers. Mother Miranda. Feral lycans. Her own daughters (who don't try and eat you only because you feed them and Alcina has firmly, sternly, told them not to touch you).

Once she loves you, she lives with the knowledge she will one day lose you and secretly fears losing you earlier than the end of your natural lifespan.

The Lords will feel like they know you before they meet you.

Heisenberg will make sarcastic comments about how Alcina has lost brain cells since meeting you, but he's secretly overjoyed that Alcina keeps derailing meetings to talk about you.

Some of them (cough Mother Miranda cough) don't like the effect you have on Alcina.

If it got to the point when she had to choose between you or Mother Miranda she's not sure who she would choose.

If it's in the first two years of your relationship, she may choose Mother Miranda while internally crying over the loss. If it's after the first two years (especially after five years) she will choose you, prepare for her battling for you in her mutated form (also, she may even put aside her hate and join Heisenberg's revolution plan for you).

Donna Beneviento

You'd better hope you don't have pediophobia (fear of dolls).

Will climb you like a tree. (just kidding 😅)

But seriously, you picked her up one time (probably to, like, make sure her dress didn't get wet in a puddle or because she tripped and you caught her by sweeping her up into your arms) and she felt so safe and secure and at home in your arms that now she just wants to live in them.

Angie will also try to climb you to get a height advantage by sitting on your shoulders. She feels safe up there. Not to mention she can swear at people without fearing reproach (until you pluck her off and put her back on the ground that is).

Angie acts like Donna's subconscious without a filter and will blurt out compliments or make comments about how cool you are in meetings. She also loves nicknames.

If you're a woman, prepare to be called "Sugar Babe" and "Amazonian hottie."

If you're a man, prepare to be called "Captain Cutie" and "Mister Hunk".

No matter your gender, she may make a plush doll of you for herself.

If you have any insecurities about your body or appearance, she will use the doll to point out all the things she loves about your appearance and basically love-bomb you every day until you're brainwashed and can't remember why you were sad.

Evening cuddles are mandatory. Donna loves your cuddles.

Beware, Angie will want in on any cuddles.

A few of the other dolls might want in too, but they will just be waiting in the background sending you hopeful looks. If you aren't pediophobic (scared of dolls) and tell Donna group cuddles are okay, prepare to be swamped in multiple wooden dolls wrapped in wool and ruffles.

Donna thanks her veil every day for hiding the fact that she is shamelessly ogling you when you're doing any heavy lifting or chores around the manor.

With enough compliments and support, she will feel comfortable removing the veil around you. (Although she will hastily put it back on to hide her blushing).

She absolutely loves your cooking. I repeat, Donna LOVES your cooking.

Before you moved in, three warm home-cooked meals a day were a rarity.

If you write the recipes down, she will learn to bind books just to handmake you a book to put them in.

Tea parties are a regular occurrence in the Beneviento Manor.

You make the food and Donna makes the guests (literally).

Please, please, please let her make you an outfit for the tea party.

Actually, she will want to make all of your clothes. Prepare to be the main model, muse, and customer of the Donna Boutique.

You are Donna's favourite doll.

She thinks you're the most gorgeous person she's ever met. prepare to be given so many tailored clothes.

Coincidently, you also have a set of doll helpers/bodyguards Donna gifted you. They're little butler dolls, who's job is to follow and protect you from Mother Miranda under the disguise of being your little helpers. You can throw/launch them at anything that threatens you, they love it.

Speaking off, Mother Miranda does not like the effect you have on Donna. She will plot to kill you.

If she gets scared enough, Donna may go to Heisenberg and ask for help creating a weaponised soldier doll for you, (which is really just a terrifying amalgamation of a lifesize soldat and a doll in ruffles).

[panthera-tigris-venenata]

Do they keep a diary/a journal?

Mal - yes, actually. But no gross feelings stuff, ew. Just drawings. ...Of various levels of "disturbing". (Peak being begining of D2, of course)

Jay - nah. Better stuff to do. Also lowkey paranoid it'll be stolen.

Evie - yes, technically, multiple. She keeps one journal to jot down what was when done to any potions she's brewing (the correct scientific procedure), her fashion one, of course, for whatever designs she dreams of, and lastly, one to note down orders and payments for her shop.

Carlos - nah. He's got a collection of loose papers with important and "important" info on them. His cousins still keep finding them in Hell Hall. Jay has to move them from his parts of the room regularly. Mal found papers stuck in between her journal.

Uma - no. WAY more important shit to do, and she finds it way too sentimental. She keeps records of stuff important for the running of her crew, but doesn't consider it a journal, rather a public record.

Harry - yes. To the surprise if absolutely no one, the thing he writes most about is Uma. There are several original songs and poems for her as well. He wouldn't mind if she found it.

Gil - I wanna say yes, he tries. He's not very consistent though. The only thing he writes about is his friends and crewmates – he accidentally puts it down in the common space of the ship often, and most of the crewmates picked it up once. Cos, y'know. You see, you take. If they read it, they began blushing furiously under the excited "My friends are SO cool" Gil wrote and gave it back to him without a word.

Claudine - once she stops living with her father, yes, though it took some convincing. She doesn't write regularly, though, because she just doesn't know what to write, and is afraid of putting her thoughts on the paper. Later, she writes poems in letters so small it's illegible, since poetry masks the true self a bit.

Harriet - yes. She writes regularly, though not a lot of feelings stuff. She writes poems and vague stories draws whatever comes to her mind (mostly abstract stuff) and keeps it tightly locked up in her cabin, since that shit is DARK. Smee twins accidentally found it once and Sammy kept complaining they were afraid of her drawings for two weeks straight.

CJ - ...she tries to. It never lasts more than two days in row. But she adds new disjointed entry every time she's reminded that her older siblings do so. It's actually extremely disturbing in different way than Harriet's since she has ZERO ability to self-censor.

Freddie - two. One for music and one for dreams and card readings.

Celia - one. Dreams and Cards and Friends on the other side. Though, technically, both sisters share another one, written in cryptic code and abbreviations and moved from place to place with regularity but without a set schedule. This one is about secrets of the Isle residents, the ones they bother or dare to write down.

Dizzy - I wanna say yes, actual diary, feelings and all. To utter exasperation of all her older relatives.

Anthony - no, keeping tabs on the salon is enough, thank you.

Dulcia - look, my girl deserves a Burn Book.

Ginny - not really. If she absolutely NEEDS something noted down, she tells Anthony. Exception being medical notes at the Escape but she delegates paperwork away any time she can. Also, I feel like her handwriting is borderline illegible to anyone but her and the three people she shares mental disturbances with (Maddy, Anthony, Harriet)

Maddy - she keeps tabs on the Apothecary and like Evie, writes down the shit she's synthetising. It's only correct to do.

Ivy - Yeah she gets a burn book too. She deserves it <3. It's in one notebook with scraps from fashion magasines and and some kaligrams. (Again, that's a form of self-censure. Can't read it, so it isn't there.)

I think I ran out of Isle kids, so AKs (all regarding a diary):

Audrey - canonically she does, I have nothing else to add.

Ben - he tries to, but he doesn't manage to write regularly, what with being a CHILD KING and all. It's healthy for him tho. Took the habit from his mother.

Chad - I refuse to believe this boy has a diary. He views it as "useless" and "too feminine".

Jane - yes, actual diary full of feelings. Starting each entry with "dear diary". She locks it religiously though, since her mother can and will read it if give an oppurtunity to.

Ally - yes and frankly it should be studied and/or published (with different names for the sake of privacy, but i'd pay a lot to read a diary of Ally Liddel of Wonderland)

Lonnie - ...no. she tried to, few times, but never quite managed more than few entries in a row. She doesn't particularly like sitting still, and fancies the thought of someone actually reading what she thinks about certain stuff even less.

Jordan - ...she uses her blogs and vlogs as a diary. The more private ones. Not her Drama Channel.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 14

1523 – The famous artist Benvenuto Cellini is sentenced – for the fourth time – of committing sodomy on both men and women. He was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote a famous autobiography and poetry. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism. He is remembered for his skill in making pieces such as Perseus with the Head of Medusa.

1540 – Pier Luigi Farnese is the Duke of Parma and the son of Pope Paul II, He mounts a manhunt in search of a boy who had refused his sexual advances. In 1537, Farnese was accused of raping Cosimo Gheri, the young bishop of Fano who died shortly afterward.

1850 – Julien Viaud, who wrote under the name Pierre Loti, one of the most popular and respected French novelists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, created a series of novels that chronicle the struggle of a man to understand his homoerotic feelings and their implications for him.

Viaud was born in Rochefort on January 14, 1850, to one of the city's few Protestant families. He attended high school in Rochefort, and then the Lycée Napoléon (today Henri IV) in Paris to prepare for the entrance exam for the Naval Academy.

While he was there he also studied art, and for the rest of his life found pleasure in drawing and painting. The works that survive show a real talent, and some of the drawings reveal a clear interest in the male body.

Graduating from the Naval Academy in 1867, he began a career as an officer that extended over 43 years and took him to many of the exotic lands that he used as settings for his books. Unlike Conrad or Melville, who left the sea to pursue writing, Viaud published his more than twenty novels and travelogs while still in the service.

In 1886, in part to end pressure from his family, in part because he wanted a son, Viaud married Blanche de Ferrière, a woman whom his mother had picked out for him while he was away at sea. The marriage was not a happy one, and in 1906 Blanche Viaud returned to her family.

In 1910, despite his efforts to remain on active duty, the navy finally forced Viaud to retire. When World War I broke out, however, he managed to obtain a commission in the army as assistant to General Galliéni, military governor of Paris after the flight of the French government in the face of the Geman invasion. In addition to diplomatic missions that he was able to perform because of his friendship with several of the crowned heads of Europe, Viaud covered the war for the Parisian daily Le Figaro and the weekly L'Illustration.

Back in civilian life after the War, Viaud became subject to depression and declining health. He published several volumes of somewhat fictionalized memoirs and, with the help of his son Samuel, revised the diary he had been keeping since he was sixteen. Viaud died of uremia and pulmonary edema on June 10, 1923, shortly after a last visit from his friend Sarah Bernhardt.

Because of the homosexual themes in a few of his early novels and Viaud's sometimes flamboyant lifestyle, the French popular press of his time depicted him as gay in satirical cartoons. These cartoons and the rumors that gave rise to them fixed Viaud in the public's mind as gay, to the extent, for example, that French senator Cécile Goldat grouped Viaud with Gide and Cocteau as a distinguished gay writer when legislation concerning homosexuality was debated in the 1980s.

Notwithstanding these widespread assumptions, however, there is no definite evidence that Viaud ever had homosexual relations himself. Edmond de Goncourt, in his diary entry for September 21, 1890, wrote that Viaud had been caught in flagrante delicto with a sailor, but Goncourt was a malicious gossip and not always reliable, so this entry proves nothing.

Viaud's family, especially his grandson, has always denied that he was gay. Near the end of his life, Viaud and his son Samuel went through his diaries, excising and rewriting, so even if they had contained evidence of his homosexuality at one time, they no longer do.

Yet, there are barely disguised homoerotic plots in almost all his novels, often paralleled in a heterosexual situation. In his fourth novel, My Brother Yves (1883), there is no heterosexual romance cover. Viaud recounts the love of his protagonist, French naval officer Pierre Loti, for the handsome Breton sailor Yves Kermadec in a fairly direct manner. (Jean Genet alludes to this novel repeatedly in his own tale of a naval officer's love for a Breton sailor, Querelle [1953].) The mystery, never resolved, is to what extent Yves reciprocates that love and shares Pierre's homosexual feelings.

Madame Chrysanthemum (1888) became one of the sources of Puccini's Madame Butterfly and the musical Miss Saigon. In it Pierre "marries" Madame Chrysanthemum for the duration of a tour of duty in Japan. The author makes it very clear, however, that, unlike in the theatrical works derived from it, the officer has no romantic interest in the young geisha. He is, rather, more than a little worried that Yves might become involved with her.

Viaud's novels never deal with homosexuality directly, but works such as My Brother Yves were obvious enough to foster rumors about Viaud's homosexuality in the popular press of the day. Read in chronological order, Viaud's novels present the story of a gay man working to come to an understanding of his feelings and who he is as a result of them, the first novelistic corpus in Western literature to do so.

Beaton with Audrey Hepburn for My Fair Lady

1904 – Writer, costumer, photographer, designer and raconteur Cecil Beaton was born on this date in London (d.1980).

Beaton launched his career as a `society' photographer in 1920s. Beaton's fascination with glamour and high society prevailed throughout his life and in 1937 he became court photographer to the British Royal Family. Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for official publication. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was his favorite Royal sitter. Beaton took the famous wedding pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. During World War II, he worked for the British Ministry of Information, as a documentary photographer. In 1953 he photographed the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Beaton also became a successful stage and costume designer, most notably for My Fair Lady (1956) which led to two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964), both of which earned Beaton the Academy Award for Costume Design. He also was the winner of four Tony Awards. He died in 1980.

Though primarily homosexual — the great love of his life was the wealthy art collector Peter Watson – he did have relationships with women. Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with the American actor Gary Cooper, who was a close friend of his for many years.

In 1972, he received his knighthood, but suffered a stroke two years later. This hindered him from photographing for five years. He picked up the camera again for a short while in 1979, but died the following year.

Cris as Chip in 'On The Town'

1920 – Cris Alexander, born Alan Smith, (d.2012) was an American actor, singer, dancer, designer, and photographer.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by his teens he was calling himself Christopher, a name he thought befitting of a distinguished actor. Then, as he recalled, he visited a spiritualist, who asked what he most desired. "Success," he shot back.

"Well I can guarantee you success if you do one thing," he quoted her as saying. "Call yourself 'Chris' and take the 'h' out." The next day Cris went to a radio station and got a job as an announcer, even though he stuttered. (He would eventually overcome that speech disorder.)

"I came to New York because I thought they were waiting for me," he once said, recalling how he fled Tulsa, Okla., in 1938 with a high school classmate, Tony Randall.

In New York, Cris Alexander didn’t reach the peaks when Tony Randall did, but Cris did land a major part in "On the Town," the 1944 musical that introduced Broadway to its composer, Leonard Bernstein; Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who wrote the book and lyrics; and Jerome Robbins, the show’s choreographer. But rather than on the stage, Alexander made it in New York as a photographer, taking portraits of the likes of Martha Graham and Vivien Leigh; having gallery shows; working for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and the New York City Ballet; and providing droll pictures for the best-selling 1961 satire of a movie star’s memoir, Little Me written by Patrick Dennis and later adapted for the Broadway stage by Neil Simon.

He had begun taking pictures with his mother’s Brownie at 11 or 12. As an adult, his photography was uninhibited. He gave costume parties and took vivid pictures of his friends, whom he characterized in the Show Music magazine interview as "very gifted fools." One day Patrick Dennis, famed for his oddball novels, admired the "fools" hanging in Mr. Alexander's bathroom. "These are your real work," Mr. Dennis told him. He suggested they collaborate on a "documented autobiography of someone who never was." The result was Little Me.

And he found love. When marriage equality became a reality (and legal) in New York in 2011, he married Shaun O’Brien, the celebrated character dancer with the New York City Ballet. They had been together for more than 60 years and died less than two weeks apart — Mr. Alexander on March 7 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at age 92; Mr. O’Brien on Feb. 23 at 86. They shared a Victorian house in Saratoga Springs.

1925 – Yukio Mishima was the public name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a Japanese author and playwright, famous for both his highly notable nihilistic post-war writings and the circumstances of his ritual suicide by seppuku.(d.1970)

Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the shadow of his grandmother, Natsu, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years. Natsu famously did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, to engage in any kind of sport, or to play with boys; he spent much of his time alone, or with female cousins and their dolls.

Mishima returned to his immediate family at 12. He entered into a relationship with his mother that some biographers have described as nearly incestuous; it was to his mother that he turned always for reassurance and proofreading. His father, a brutal man with a taste for military discipline, employed such tactics as holding the young boy up to the side of a speeding train; he also raided the young boy's room for evidence of an 'effeminate' interest in literature, and ripped up adolescent Mishima's manuscripts wantonly.

At 12, Mishima began to write his first stories. Although his father had forbidden him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write secretly every night, supported and protected by his mother Shizue, who was always the first to read a new story.

Mishima began his first novel, Tõzoku (Thieves), in 1946 and published it in 1948. It was followed up by Kamen no Kokuhaku (Confessions of a Mask), an autobiographical work about a young latent homosexual who must hide behind a mask in order to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24.

After Confessions of a Mask, Mishima tried to tie himself to the real, physical world by taking up stringent physical exercise. In 1955, Mishima took up weight training, and his workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. From the most unpromising material he forged an impressive physique, as the photographs he took show. He also became very skillful at Kendo (the Japanese martial art of swordfighting).

Although he visited gay bars in Japan, Mishima reportedly remained an observer, and had affairs with men only when he travelled abroad. After briefly considering an alliance with Michiko Shoda — later the wife of Emperor Akihito — he married Yoko Sugiyama in 1958. Over the next three years, the couple had a daughter and a son.

In 1967, Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), composed primarily of young patriotic students who studied martial principles and physical discipline and who were trained through the GSDF under Mishima's tutelage.

On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai under a pretext visited the commandant of the Ichigaya Camp - the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of Japan's Self-Defense Forces. Once inside, they proceeded to barricade the office and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the gathered soldiers below. His speech was intended to inspire them to stage a coup d'etat and restore the Emperor to his rightful place. He succeeded only in irritating them and was mocked and jeered. Unable to make himself heard, he finished his planned speech after only a few minutes, stepped back into the commandant's office and committed seppuku. The customary decapitation at the end of this ritual had been assigned to Tatenokai member Masakatsu Morita. But Morita, who was rumored to have been Mishima's lover, was unable to perform this task properly: after several failed attempts, he allowed another Tatenokai member, Hiroyasu Koga, to finish the job. Morita then attempted seppuku and was also beheaded by Koga.

Mishima prepared his suicide meticulously for at least a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked Tatenokai members had any indication of what he was planning. Mishima must have known that his coup plot would never succeed and his biographer, translator, and former friend John Nathan suggests that the scenario was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and even left money for the legal defence of the three surviving Tatenokai members.

While his end may have been intended as a sort of spiritual testament, the theatrical nature of his suicide, the camp nature of photographs he posed for and the occasionally bathetic nature of his prose have taken their toll on his legacy. In both Japanese and Anglo-American academia today, Mishima is virtually unspoken of, especially as his ostensibly 'right-wing' opinions are not politically correct. Nevertheless, outside of academia Mishima's works remain popular both in Japan and throughout the rest of the world.

1967 – The "Human Be-In" takes place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, launching The Summer Of Love. Between 20,000 to 30,000 people attend.

1969 – Dave Grohl is an American musician. He rose to fame as the drummer for the grunge band Nirvana and then became the founder, lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter for the alternative rock band Foo Fighters. He is also the drummer and co-founder of the rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures and had short-lived side projects called Late! and Probot. He has also recorded and toured with Queens of the Stone Age.

At the age of 17, Grohl joined the punk rock band Scream after the departure of drummer Kent Stax. He joined Nirvana soon after Scream's disbandment. Nirvana's second album Nevermind (1991) was the band's first to feature Grohl and became a worldwide commercial success. Following the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, Grohl formed Foo Fighters as a one-man project. In 1995, the project's self-titled debut album was released by Roswell and Capitol Records. After the success of the album, Grohl assembled a band for touring and further recording under the Foo Fighters name, and the band has since released nine studio albums.

Grohl is an advocate for LGBT rights. He has worn a White Knot ribbon, a symbol of support for same-sex marriage, to various events; when questioned about the knot, he responded, "I believe in love and I believe in equality and I believe in marriage equality." Grohl's gay rights activism dates back to the early 1990s, when Nirvana performed at a benefit to raise money to fight Oregon Ballot Measure 9, which forbade governments in Oregon from promoting or facilitating homosexuality. Grohl has also participated in two counter-protests against the Westboro Baptist Church for their anti-gay stance, once by performing "Keep It Clean" on the back of a flatbed truck.

Kevin Bourassa (L) & Joe Varnell (R)

2001 – Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell become the first same-sex couple to be married in Canada.

Kevin Bourassa (b.1958) was raised near military bases in Ontario, in France, and in Germany and moved to Toronto in 1976. He is a former manager at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, specializing in process management. His husband, Joe Varnell (b.1969) was born in Toronto and is a former e-commerce consultant.

Today Kevin works full time as a human rights advocate and writer. Joe is now a manager at the bank where Kevin used to work. Their book, Just Married, has been published to critical acclaim in Canada (Doubleday), the United States (University of Wisconsin Press), and around the world in French translation (Les Editions Stanke).

Just Married is an account by Bourassa and Varnell of how their church, the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, decided to test the Canadian marriage laws, and how they and a lesbian couple agreed to be the ones to make the attempt.

Under the Ontario Marriage Act, any adult couple can be granted a marriage license if a church, following ancient tradition, reads the marriage banns on the three Sundays prior to the wedding. Joe and Kevin had long wished to be legally married in their church. They expected controversy, but little expected the massive scale of the international coverage that occurred, as reporting on their intentions and their wedding of them shot across the Internet and their photographs appeared in newspapers not only across North America but also in Europe, Asia, and South America.

On January 14, 2001, Kevin married his partner of three years Joe in a Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto service. They became thus the first gay couple anywhere in the world to be issued a government marriage certificate. The marriage would not become fully legal, however, until the Ontario provincial government registered the marriage, and it refused to do so. Bourassa, Varnell, and their church brought a lawsuit asking for legal registration.

On June , 2003, Bourassa and Varnell and the other litigants received a favorable decision from the Ontario court of appeal in their suit against the provincial government.

[rins-batcave]

I’ve finally decide to make and intro post!!!

Decorate my tree here 🎄🎄

My resolution

WANNA BE FRIENDS? HERE IF U HAVE QUESTIONS, OR JUST ASK

I’m Rin (Mr Rinithen), Ria, Ren (or Batman), I like a lot so stuff but especially reading and indie music.

I go by any pronouns but mainly they/he/she. I’m gender fluid/queer, asexual and aroflux.

I like being called mostly masc terms (boy, handsome etc.) but I also like being called pretty so I kinda just fuck with everything.

If I know you well (close moots) feel free to like compliment me (Tho I don’t deserve that lol) but it sometimes makes me uncomfortable when strangers do.

I’m up late a lot, kinda inconsistent with my posting, scared of rain/storms, needles and spiders, and I swear a fuck ton.

I am dating @choucon (hehe love you, you're in the intro now angel)

I am an age. (But Fr 1000000000 years old) !!Minor!!

Boundaries - AKA - Please don't comment on my body (calling me skinny) I don't mind basic compliments but please don't comment on much more than that. I am very critical of my own body, but it is my space to do that and I don't need people telling me what I should feel about my own body.

Here is my pronouns page: https://en.pronouns.page/@_Rin-

Other Blogs:

Vent 1 - @rinbowroses

Vent 2 - @i-hate-myself-love-that

Writing - @rinwritiesbutitssecret

Diary - @rins-diary-entries.

Poetry - @rins-poetry-blog

Gay thoughts - @rin-is-very-gay

If you want my 7th or 8th blog msg me

If you want my discord msg me :3

Rules:

- Don’t be an asshole

- Please only message me if we’re moots

I don't use many tags, but #shitty poetry is all my poetry :3 and #save for sad are things that make me happy and I want to look at when I’m sad

I’m an INTP-A personality type

Send me messages please, I’m extremely bored.

NOTICE: Recently I’ve gotten a lot of asks for donations. I’d like to ask people for refrain from sending me these kind of asks as sadly, I’m really not in the position to donate and it really stresses me out

Here’s my moots board, I update it sometimes but it could be outdated

Below the cut is a list of my current interests:

Music:

Dayglow

Wallows

Vacations

Clairo

Last dinosaurs

Good kid

Ricky Montgomery

High sunn

Rex orange county

Rare occasions

Rare Americans

Vansire

The arctic monkeys

Beach Bunny

Cave town

The drums

Baby Queen

Tally Hall

Cage the Elephant

Mother Mother

I’ll stop listing here for the sake of time

Books:

Anything Alice Oseman

Hell followed with us

Anything queer really

Good omens

Movies/TV:

A good girls guide to murder

Heartstopper

Young royals

Heartbreak high

Fandoms:

Osemanverse

Mcyt sometimes

[the-orange-solace]

Somethiing that allows us to heal as a system is writing interactions that happen in headspace or place into words what we're doing as individual people and how that affects others

It's similar to a diary, which we also have, but more narrative

Here's an example from one of our recent entries that embody the two types pretty well:

“You haven’t eaten. The body is fatigued.”  Silence.  “Bakugo threatens to force feed you,” Shadow continues, arms crossed naturally upon his chest, the white puffs of his fur hugging the limbs, thick and fluffy for the winter.  Atreus senses remnants of adoration and affection from afar regarding the change in look. They smile softly at another’s emotions as their own spike of anxiety burns the back of the reincarnate’s throat. “There isn’t anything he can make right now.”  “There is plenty,” Shadow reasons, images of ramen, eggs and seasonings appearing in their mind's eye. 

Guilt washes over Atreus, their eyes boring holes into the circular wooden table before them, Shadow watching them intently as images flicker of well cooked meals, soups and rice before they promptly disappear. Shadow says nothing about the quick closing of their imagery-based communication, an action much too common much to everyone’s chagrin when interacting with their Warden about anything regarding themselves.  Though, it frankly makes reading them easier at times. It was all pattern and recognition, the endless repeating tells. The lack of their bird-like features, hidden away so no one could gaze at their uncared for state, their lack of eye contact and words easily testaments to bubbling shame, guilt, and fear, tense body ridged from unease, frustration and stress.  It wasn’t new, unfortunately. But the light banter and response meant it wasn’t as bad as it could be. Such times usually meant that no one could reach them, find them. Headspace and their abilities intertwined more tightly than Atreus would ever admit outloud, shielding everyone from them while continuing to bare everyone else's' existences.  They didn’t seem to know it consciously either, only adding to the struggles to reach the avian, though never entirely fruitless. Atreus was quick to ease others, even if it meant taking care of themselves to pleasing someone else, to place less of themselves on others shoulders. 

Usually, placing interactions, events, feelings, and our thoughts into words like this (if not poetry for some of us) helps build stronger connections with each other and understand one another much more intimately

A lot gets lost in our brain, but when it's solidified into something like this, it is much less likely to escape our memory or be brushed off

Perhaps this can help someone else or another system?

[thottyimagines]

Who in Naruto would stand on business and not text their ex or situationship back and who actually would

ABSOLUTELY texting their ex:

Naruto, which is canon, I think. I've little knowledge of Boruto, but I'm pretty sure he and Sasuke exchange carrier pigeons, like, all the time. Naruto would text an ex without any prompting, let alone texting them back.

Sakura has shockingly little self-esteem or respect or dignity when it comes to romance, and she's more than willing to entertain anyone interested in her who isn't a total uggo (re: Rock Lee and any other not-conventionally attractive suitor).

Deidara has no concept of boundaries or closure. He thinks he can just keep sending a stream of consciousness. If his ex ever texts him first, he's going to town on the diary entries sort of texts. He's opening his notes app and copying and pasting all the weird poetry he's been writing since the break up.

Sasuke, but ONLY if it's Naruto.

Kakashi wouldn't text an ex back, but if he got a text, he'd show up in person and just...see what happens.

Choji wouldn't know how to not text back, because he'd feel mean, given their shared history. It's anyone's guess as to whether or not he still has romantic intentions.

Rock Lee is texting back with pleasure. A splendid new friend out of the ruins of romance has emerged!

Hashirama and Madara. Just...just look at them.

Jiraiya, in hopes of a booty call coming out of it.

Tempted, but should pull through:

Ino would love to text back just for the drama, but has a healthy amount of self-respect. If there's no reason to reconcile, there's no reason for her to talk, she can sadly admit.

Hinata would, ordinarily, want to text back, but she might just get too stressed and her teammates could find her in time to rebuke the ex's efforts.

Similarly, Itachi has poetry at the ready to send through, but Kisame might just eat his phone to prevent the Young Adult Meltdown that would ensue.

Hidan, if his feeling are well and truly hurt enough, wouldn't text back. But...well, he might show up to their location and give Jashin a real good day.

Kurenai went years without Asuma showing his face, whilst he was running around defying his father, so she should be fine ignoring the siren song of an ex text. But then...

Oh, Neji has paragraphs upon paragraphs to send living right there in his notes app, but he shan't. He won't. He'll just send them rancid vibes whenever they encounter one another in public for life.

Not texting back:

Shikamaru hasn't the energy to entertain this. Things ended for a reason, and he shan't make himself miserable doing a back and forth in the aftermath. Blocked.

Kiba's sister won't let him text his exes back. She blocks them on his phone as soon as the break up happens. Kiba has no idea they tried to reach out.

Asuma has no interest in texting unless it's for a booty call.

Gaara is too afraid of his wounded pride unleashing the monster within, so he doesn't entertain highly emotional interactions like this.

Kakuzu is straight up tracing the text back to his ex and turning them in for bounty, no matter how meager it is.

Shino agonizes over it, but he prevails.

Tenten talks it over with Neji, who just beats up her ex for her instead.

Genma has deleted their number as soon as they stopped hooking up. Who dis?

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

500-Year Diary Headcanons: Updated

I’m reposting this rather than just reblogging the other one because I changed the timeline

One: writes pretty regularly. Doesn’t record his adventures so much as grumble about people and the universe, interspersed with the occasional joke or amusing anecdote, but does include enough detail to read between the lines and guess at what he did and that he had fun doing it.

Two: writes almost not at all, instead doing watercolor landscape and urban sketches, labeled with the place and date but no other information.

Three: usually starts off intending to rant about humans or time lords or the universe at large but gets distracted and ends up either indodumping (about cars or other tech) or happily relating an anecdote about one of his companions.

Four: very, very bad about remembering to write ever. Does directly relate adventures, and a fairly good writer, but heavily editorializes them into being the way he wants to remember. Just as often as writing about what happened, he instead discusses his feelings or the sudden realization of what someone was trying to tell him several days ago.

Four addendum: Romana. Keeps her own diary for 80 years or so, but after regenerating discovers his and begins annotating and correcting the entries, and eventually just writing down their adventures for him. She is more consistent and accurate than he is, but not perfectly either, and includes quite a lot of side commentary.

Five: much less emotional about it all. Also (a little tiny bit) more consistent. Tends to write short, summary-like entries about adventures without much detail.

Six: oh Rassilon, the purple prose. Almost entirely poetry and legend-style tales starring him and based only vaguely on what actually happened. Any companions are barely an afterthought.

Seven: tbd, still not quite there yet.

Eight: the most normal diary of all of them. Records and processes thoughts and feelings, as well as fairly emotional and fairly accurate recounting of his adventures (though still not fairly consistent) in case he loses his memory again. Does stop writing the moment he gets involved in the Time War, though. Initially meant only to take a break because it felt too big to think about, but begins to dread having to record it until he just stops writing entirely.

War: nope. Actually tries to destroy his diaries but the tardis saves them and spits them back out into the library.

Nine: doesn’t start writing again until after the whole empty child thing, and when he does it’s only listed itinerary-style recordings of what happened with no detail or feeling at all.

Ten: wildly emotional without actually processing any of those feelings. Writes in glitter pen. Goes on for pages and pages about his feelings and forgets to include the actual events that happened. Can only really read between the lines to get the gist of it because he does gush about his companions and others he meets.

Eleven: the most adhd anyone has ever been. Will start recounting a story only to get distracted by any number of things: rants about pasta shapes, listing favorite planets, telling a completely unrelated story. The margins are filled with doodles of people and objects. The books themselves are heavily dented from all the times he throws them across the room after failing to understand what his past self meant when he wanted to look something up. Writes less often towards the end of his life but has too many thoughts in his head to ever stop entirely.

Eleven addendum: River. At some point she discovered his diary and read it. Maybe she thought at first it was like hers and meant to compare where they were. At any rate, it’s how she learned so much about his life and past and old companions. She starts using it to leave him notes, though he frequently doesn’t find them for years.

Twelve: approximately half infodumps about his newest hobby while trying to sound too cool to be that into it. The other half is ranting and raving at the universe right after a traumatic adventure or speaking fondly of a happy adventure years after the fact. Is written in plain pen and incredibly messy, full of crossed out and corrected rememberings.

Twelve addendum: Missy. Steals it at some point while she’s locked up and role plays as him for years, but eventually tells him when he completely fails to notice. He leaves angry annotations in the margins but doesn’t tear out her entries.

Thirteen: the second most adhd anyone has ever been. Writes in brightly colored marker, always very excited, with a ton of exclamation points. Almost no emotional depth. Often recounts adventures with a coherent beginning and end but no middle at all because she got distracted by her thoughts on a detail, a different story, or gushing about someone (75% of the time it’s Yaz). There is the occasional rage-filled sentence in a spiky bubble with 50 explanation points, but never any context.

Fourteen: actually uses it to process his feelings as well as get excited about all the little everyday things he is discovering, and within a few decades gets in the habit of writing most evenings before bed. Also does those complex scrapbook-style journal pages and sometimes detailed drawings.

Fifteen: keeps up the nearly-everyday routine of it for a bit, but as more things happen he gets out of the habit and goes back to just whenever he remembers. Writes excitedly, coherently, and in plenty of detail about his adventures, but does have a habit of focusing on little things that made him happy and glossing over or entirely skipping big things like nearly dying. Still, does occasionally process negative feelings with it. Often illustrates his stories with lovely pencil sketches.

[soracities]

Hey i hope your day is peaceful 💗

I have been thinking about writing and poetry lately and i wonder if all poetry out there or most of the writings are from the writer's personal experience and suffering/pain/joy i mean do u think some writers just write (aside from fiction stories ofc) about a thing they don't truly feel it resembles them or they haven't gone through (or not going through) but they heard about it or liked the idea of it so they write about it?

In general, I do, but I also think it really depends on the poet, the subject and the poem itself. A lot of the time though, I think it's probably a mix of both. Keats had this thing he called "negative capability" which, if I remember correctly, is about a poet's ability to be receptive to the world and objects around them & express an emotional landscape or reality separate from the poet's own identity & life as an individual person. It's what allows you, as a writer, to put yourself in an alternate experience and imagine the world from a completely different point of view.

I don't think everything a poet writes about pertains directly, or literally, to events in their actual lives--I do believe, though, that a lot of poets have particular themes, questions, ideas and images that move them and that they often come back to or examine in different ways, from different perspectives. But not all of those perspectives relate to something happening to them specifically (do you have to go to war to write an anti-war poem, for example?). Some poets are more personal & intimate in their poems; some aren't. Some poets weave the personal and non-personal in so tightly the question of literal biography is a pointless venture. It really depends on the writer and what the poem, as a space, as an act of engagement, means to them.

I think the whole "sit at a typewriter and bleed" mantra has made autobiography seem like something that is inherent to every poem, but I don't believe that's true; I think the only way you can address the question of "was this real?" is on a poet by poet basis, by looking through their work and their recurring preoccupations, their life and what they themselves have said or explained. But as a default, I don't think it's a fair reading because so much can be happening in an individual poem (emotionally, structurally, linguistically) and it runs the risk of obscuring the larger questions we could be asking about the poem or missing where it's trying to take us. At the end of the day I think framing it as "what is this poet curious about" rather than "did this actually happen to them?" is a far better way of getting acquainted with the world of a particular poem, if that makes sense?

We look at poetry as this deeply intimate form of writing, and it can be, but, again, every poet is different and every poet has a completely different relationship to that writing. It's intimacy is not the same as a diary entry. A poem is also, ultimately, not a piece of reportage: it's a work of art and the work part often gets missed: it has just as much intention, construction, rewriting and reworking and creative license as a novel or a painting. Sometimes a particular event will have inspired something and sometimes that event is front and centre ("Mid-Term Break" by Seamus Heaney, for instance). Other times the event is nowhere near as important as the questions it poses and those questions, in turn, lead somewhere completely different. That's my view on it, at least x

[andromeda4004]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @carry-the-sky, thank you!

How many works do you have on ao3?

7 (8 by the weekend!)

What's your total ao3 word count?

276,499

What fandoms do you write for?

Exclusively Good Omens at this point, not that I don't enjoy others. But the more I give myself permission to write for fandoms, the less likely I am to ever get around to finishing off my own OCs' story.

Top five fics by kudos:

Morningstar Abbey (Regency AU, T rated, 116K)

Mission: Ineffable (spy action AU, M rated, 25K)

Vaster than Empires (non-angsty S3, E rated, 5K)

The Serpent of the Loch (historical crack, T rated, 8K)

Antoinette (1920s wives AU, T rated, 118K)

Do you respond to comments?

As much as possible, although it does sometimes take me a while. I prefer to do them at my laptop than on my phone (typing is quicker) so sometimes I catch them up in a batch.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

That would be The Truth I cannot Speak, a post-1827 Edinburgh diary entry from Aziraphale where he reflects on all the things he cannot tell Crowley, and might not ever get the chance to now. That one has poetry!

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I do tend towards the happy ending for preference, but I guess Morningstar Abbey would be happiest, since it ends drinking wine in the garden the day after the wedding 💕

Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet, I haven't.

Do you write smut?

I do now! Vaster than Empires was the first E rated fic I've shared, and I have a new one coming out this weekend for the High Pollen Count sex pollen event.

Craziest crossover:

Mission: Impossible, probably! Although that's not a crossover, it's a human AU. I haven't written a classic crossover yet, and I don't know that I will, it's not quite my style.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of, and I've only been doing this just over a year, so seems unlikely.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet, but one lives in hope!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I would love to! I do like beta reading and providing some collaborative suggestions when people are looking for them, so I suspect I'd enjoy formally co-writing something with an author I clicked with.

All time favorite ship?

It's got to be the Ineffable Husbands/Wives/Partners. The ship that keeps on giving!

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I try to focus as much as possible when writing, to avoid having too many half-done works at once, so I don't have any WIPs which are languishing at the moment. Except for my original work, but that will get finished, just quite slowly!

What are your writing strengths?

Plots and dialogue. I like to tell a story, a whole thing, with lots of developed characters and psychology and subplots, which leads me to the weakness...

What are your writing weaknesses?

Stopping! All my fics end up longer than I was hoping because I can't stop writing them! And on the smaller scale, simple things like working out where to stop a scene, I just can't do it! Rather, I can because I've worked at it, but it has been effort to get better at this.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Love it. I'm fluently bilingual, and have basic functional language skills in two or three more (or I do with a bit of warm-up!), but verbal is not the same as written, so I do try to get a native speaker to beta anything more than a word or two.

First fandom you wrote in?

In the beginning... the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Yep, first fandom I remember writing things for was H2G2, back in the 90s when everything was on paper. Although I have been in fanclubs since Discworld as a teenager and further back I think Redwall as a kid?

Favorite fic you've written?

No, don't make me pick! They're all lovely! Although probably Mission: Ineffable, because I'm currently enjoying revisiting that AU to work on a sequel.

tagging! (no pressure!): @afrenchwriter @sabotage-on-mercury @suavissimapenna @hotcrosspigeon @homemadeapplecider @voluptatiscausa and anyone else who sees this and wants to play :)

[otherpeoplesheartachept-2]

day 1: A Record of You and I

A diary from the mid 1700s kept by a man named Simon Snow, a farmhand for the Grimm estate. He records the death and the subsequent vampiric transformation of his close friend, and heir to the Grimm estate, Basilton Grimm.

Rating: M

Length: 4,321

Warnings: main character death/undeath. non-graphic (maybe slightly graphic) depictions of violence/blood, mentions of animal death, implied sex

Read on AO3 or below the cut

September 3rd 1742

I've never had a journal before but Basilton tells me it will help with my reading and writing. He's taught me all my letters and wants me to practice on my own now. He says he’ll continue reading to me if I like. He’ll keep helping me with handwriting too, but Basilton insists that having a personal record will do me good. Even so, I do not know what to record. Though I must not waste this lovely gift. Basilton says to write about my day, my thoughts. He must have more thoughts within him than I, for I am already out of things to say, and Basilton adds to his journal at all hours of the day. 

September 6th 1742

Today I milked the cows and took them out in the field to graze. I ate fresh bread with a lot of butter.  I did some other chores. It is late. I do not wish to write more.

September 7th 1742

Today I had porridge for breakfast, and some tasty stew Ebb made for supper. Charlie, the cattle dog, found a new favorite stick out in the pasture today, he hasn't stopped chewing it since this morning.

September 8th 1742

I hope Basil will forgive me for my short entries. It's not as if he’ll read what I put down here. Personal journals are to be personal, he tells me. So I’m just meant to speak to myself? I will keep at it, if only to gain more surety in my handwriting. 

September 9th 1742

It is Sunday, I went to Mass. Basilton came to the cabin after the service. Brought me some scones Vera made. Sir Grimm does not approve of his son spending so much time with a farmhand, Basilton told me of another scolding he got earlier this week. I do not know why he spends time with me, against his father’s wishes, but I will not stop him. We ate lunch together. I enjoyed the food, and the company more. Basilton would call me a liar if he read that, my love of scones is rarely bested by anything, but Basilton is a good friend to me. 

Everything feels so easy with Basil. He can make me laugh no matter what, even when he's poking fun at me. We talked for hours yesterday, and he listened when I spoke about my days, my observations of the cattle. Basil worries I work too hard, but I don't do much really, and I enjoy the labor. Besides, what else am I to do with my time? We discussed a poem Basil had read to me a few weeks ago. I am not usually one for poetry, but Basilton speaks about poems in a way that makes sense to me. I thought him unbearably arrogant when I first started working for his family, speaking of literature constantly and looking down his big nose at me. He still is arrogant at times, but now that we are friends I know he is also kind and caring and truly intelligent. He speaks of his sisters often, and how he worries he won’t meet his father’s expectations. He remains unmarried and this troubles Sir Grimm. 

But Basilton has land to inherit and good social standing. He has many admirable qualities, and it goes without saying that he is handsome. He should have no trouble finding a wife. I said this to Basilton today but he became uncomfortable. Quickly, he brushed it off and picked up a new topic of conversation. This has happened before, I do not know if it’s the subject of marriage, or if he is too modest a man, but many times I have stated his good qualities, only for Basiton to blush and deny them, or leave the conversation. 

September 20th 1742

I ate Turkey for supper yesterday. One of the bulls charged at me today because I looked at him wrong. Bastard. Gareth made me help him till the field today. Another bastard. He said he couldn’t get it done in time without help, despite the crops being his and his sons’ job, and the cattle being mine. 

Went to the pub with Ebb, the goatherd yesterday. She told me a great joke about goats but I was drunk and can't remember it now. I might ask her to tell me it again.  

September 22nd 1742

Today was an easy day, I fiddled with my carving knife while out in the field. Made a little wooden Charlie but when I showed it to him the blasted dog chewed it up. I tried to stop him but then I just laughed. I suppose I’m glad he found my carving nice enough to devour. 

September 30th 1742

Basilton visited today. He brought me some of his books, said I could keep them, since I mentioned how much I liked the last one he read to me. I thanked him for the books, he is so kind to me. I do not know if I will ever read them though. Perhaps I should not have taken them. It’s not that I am ungrateful, I just didn’t know how to tell Basilton I mostly enjoy hearing his voice read to me, more than I care about the contents of the books. I am sad as this probably means he will not continue reading aloud to me. 

October 1st 1742

I’ve not been writing as much as I feel I should. I fear my life is just not that interesting. Basilton tells me it’s plenty interesting. He’ll listen to my stories about cattle and Charlie without complaint. Gareth tells me my stories are boring though. “Who cares if a calf was born with a spot that looks just like a field mouse?” he said to me when I told that story at the pub last week. As if throwing seeds on the ground makes for great stories. 

October 8th 1742

I found some poppies in the field, the first of the fall. I picked a couple of the red flowers. Gave them to Basil when he came round my cottage in the evening. He tried to resist them but I insisted. I told him it was repayment for the books he left with me. That wasn't all true, I just wanted to share the beauty of those little things with him. Basilton accepted the flowers then, I do hope he likes them. I cannot offer him much more, though I wish I had more to give to my friends. 

October 10th 1742

I tried carving a flower out of wood but I cocked it up. I might try again with a thicker stick.

October 12th 1742

The cattle are well. The sun is shortening our days. I heard a bird song I did not recognize today, while out in the field. It was lovely. I must start saving up for a new winter coat, mine is threadbare and has not been keeping me warm enough as the world gets colder. Basilton tells me he’s going deer stalking with his cousins in a few days. He will be gone for at least a month. It will be their first hunt of the season. 

October 15th 1742

Basilton left today. I tended to the cattle. I tried to brush off the sadness that seemed to hang over the day. Perhaps the cloudy days are affecting my mood, or the cold weather. I might just sleep early today. 

October 30th 1742

He died. On that trip he

November 25th 1742

I went to Mass today. I sat alone. I tried to welcome the Holy Spirit but I feel so alone in this world. I grieve Basil every waking moment. I thought this would pass, it’s been nearly a month and still the wound is as fresh as the day I learned of his death. I’ve never had someone to lose before, like this. I loved him deeply, as if he were my own family I have come to realize. I find myself almost grateful that I did not know my parents, that I will not, one day, have to grieve them as well.

The Lord’s Day is the most painful, God forgive my soul for saying so. I cannot distract myself with work. I try to pray, but my mind wanders ever back to my lost friend. I grow tired of writing, but I will not put down this journal forever, Basilton wouldn't want me to.

November 27th 1742

I woke up this morning to something strange. I found one of the cows dead in the field. I hadn’t noticed any signs of sickness in the herd, but there were also no signs of an animal attack. There was no wound I could find, no blood. She looked strange, I cannot say why, though. It was as if something was missing, from beneath the skin. I told Sir Grimm, and the other farmhands, in case there is sickness in the herd. I’ll be keeping a closer watch on the cattle.

November 29th 1742

I visited Basilton’s grave this evening. It did me no good. I only felt the pain of loss much stronger standing there, reading his gravestone. It was as if there were a stake ran through my chest. I could hardly breathe through the sobs that came out of me. It was so strange, knowing Basilton was so close, only two meters or so below where I stood, and yet he was impossibly far. 

It does me little good to dwell on these negative feelings. 

November 30th 1742

I try to fill my days with actions. I inspect the cows twice, three times over, to check for any signs of decaying health. I pace the perimeter of the field while they graze. I help Gareth work the land when I should be resting. I chop enough firewood for this winter and the next two. I stay too long at the pub and drink more than I can afford. I imagine spots in my cabin that need cleaning, and I scrub and scrub and scrub until the pain in my hands is all that I can feel. And yet, I still ache for the companionship of Bailston. What am I to do with myself?

December 1st 1742

I cannot stop thinking of Basilton. Truly, I never stopped thinking of him, even when he was alive and with me. The Grimm family told us he was trampled by his own horse, fell off it while hunting. In quiet moments my mind creates imaginations of his last terrible moments. When I lay in bed, if I am not drunk as a lord, I cannot sleep for hours. I pray to God for a miracle, but my pleas are left unanswered. I know it to be foolish, but I cannot help myself. I would do anything for Basilton. Anything to see him again. 

December 4th 1742

I do not want to write this, but I feel I must. I saw Basilton last night. I know, I know that he is dead, and God willing, he is at peace in heaven. But I came home from the pub late last night, crawled into bed, then, I saw Basil in my room, as if he were alive. He did not look ghostly, no, he looked as if he had new life coursing through him. His skin flush. His smile wide. There were no signs he had ever been dead. 

I cried out, I could not help it. He came to me, to my bed. I sat up to meet him. And he held me. A hand pressed to my chest, the other wrapped around my back. His dark hair against my chin as he rested his face to my collar bone. We did not speak. I feared I would wake from the dream. And it must have been a dream. 

I woke up this morning half expecting to see Basilton about the grounds, as if his death was a nightmare I could finally wake from. But he was not here, of course not. My mind has been so fixed on Basilton it only makes sense he would creep into my dreams.

December 5th 1742

It happened again, last night, I was not asleep this time. I was changing into my night clothes, when Basil appeared to me. I did not hear him come in. My candle cast his shadow against the wall. He must have been standing there as flesh and bone, not as a ghost or a vision. He wore regular clothes, not the burial shroud–made from his own family’s wool–that he was laid to rest in. He had on his purple vest with yellow embroidered flowers. It was one of his favorites, he told me years ago. Again he did not speak, but he touched my hand. He was so cool. a welcome feeling; I was so hot. I pulled him into an embrace. I whispered his name, I did not know what else I could do. I swear to God, he spoke my name in response.

Suddenly I felt so tired, so drained. Likely the day’s work catching up to me. I tried to fight the urge to sleep, but my eyes closed before I could watch Basilton leave, or say anything more to him.

December 6th 1742

Another cow, and one of the bulls have died, for the same mysterious reason as the first cow. The herd was restless yesterday, as if they could sense misfortune in the air, but I could not do anything to prevent their deaths. I do not even know what I need to be protecting them from.  

I am worried, and unsettled.

December 8th 1742

The night before this last I stayed up, hoping to see my old friend again, though he never came. But last night I saw Basilton again. He spoke this time, only my name. My heart filled with joy to hear my friend’s deep voice call me Simon after I was sure we’d never be able to speak to each other again in this life. He sat beside me on the bed. I told him I had missed him. He placed a cool hand on my cheek, looked into my eyes. His were a familiar light grey, but he wore an expression I couldn't make sense of.

Then, he kissed me. I hesitate to write these words. He must be a sodomite. I have always heard such men are evil, but I could never think of Basilton that way. He's always been so lovely. 

And the worst part is that I kissed him back. The best part is that I kissed him back. I have not kissed anyone before. He was so soft against my lips. So cool. His hand held my jaw, and his tongue pressed against my lips. An elation sprung up within me that I cannot describe. I held him tightly, wanting more than anything for this moment to last forever. I couldn’t help but think he should have done this sooner. We should have done this when Basil was still living. 

Oh God! I weep remembering that he is dead. 

Basilton kissed farther down my neck, across my collar bones, left kisses on my chest so hard they hurt. I did not stop him. He didn't go farther than my bosom, but-

I wanted him to. I felt as if under a spell, wrapped up in a world of pleasure balanced by the slightest pain. I wanted more, wanted all of him , but before I knew it I was awake, and alone, as the morning sun shown through my window. 

I was slow in my work today. Gareth noticed, told me I should not be so lazy. My body betrays me, I feel so weak.

December 13th 1742

Basilton visits me nightly now. I welcome his touches, his hard kisses. I walk through my days now, dreaming of night. 

The cows have begun to distrust me, they put up a fight when I try to milk them, and a few are no longer eating. I do not know why. Sir Grimm, despite having experience with livestock, seemed just as perplexed as I when I brought up the strange deaths and behaviors of his herd. Though, I know his mind is elsewhere, the mourning clothes he and Madam Grimm wear are a constant reminder of their loss.

I hear whispers at the pub of ghost sightings. I hear gossip from the house servants that the Grimm children wake up screaming in the nights now. 

December 19th 1742

The weather gets worse. I feel frozen to the bone. My hands hurt daily. My work gets harder, as more animals under my care drop dead, and my strength seems to dwindle with each moment. The waking world has no joy, no pleasure left. But I go through each day, waiting for night. Only at night can I remember what happiness is. Basilton comes to me. He holds me, and we kiss for hours. Basil leaves marks and bruises on my skin but I welcome it. My hands praise the skin he uncovers for me. We commit sins I never knew could bring such pleasures. 

December 20th 1742

I admit, I have not allowed myself to consider how or why Basilton appears to me alive, when I know he was laid in his grave two months ago. I just cannot think of it, I cannot search for reasons to distrust this gift I have. I may be a fool, or a doomed sodomite, but I cannot find it in me to fight what is happening. I cannot consider this to be anything but good or I might truly lose myself. 

December 24th 1742

Last night was disturbing. Basilton came to my room as usual. We kissed, and lay together, and I felt so joyous, but quickly the tides turned. He pinned my naked body to the bed. He sat over me and tore at my flesh with his bare hands. I cried out but I could not stop him. Some dark part of me did not want to stop him. Basilton lapped up the blood that poured from my chest like a starved dog. The unGodly sight did things to me. As if possessed by something, I craved his bloodshed.

I do not know what is wrong with me. 

I awoke with deep wounds on my chest. A mess of horror and lust arose within me as I touched the raised flesh, the dried blood. I know this is not natural, this is not holy. I should seek out a doctor, or a priest, but I can't stand the thought of losing my dear Basil again. I would open up a vein for him. I would tie our hearts together for eternity if it meant Basilton could be mine. 

December 25th 1742

It is Christmas Day. A holiday that should be full of cheer. Basil once told me it was his favorite holiday, so it holds an extra special meaning for me. I wish he had been here, enjoying the day. I try not to be too sad, he will be here soon, arriving with the stars in the sky.  

Ebb spent the day with me. I gave her a small wooden goat I carved. She does not say it but I know she misses her brother most around this time of year. I tried to be there for her, as I pretended not to notice the tears running down her red cheeks. But I found it hard to care. All my thoughts were consumed by anticipation for my next visit with Basilton. I know that is terrible. I tried to fight it, to focus on the friend I had with me at the moment, but I struggled. My mind, and my heart are trapped in a world with only Basilton and myself. A world no one else could understand. 

December 26th 1742 

Basilton attacked me again last night. My neck, chest, and stomach are covered in signs of his violent affection. Oh my dear God, I try to feel remorse, to summon disgust at our actions, but it is just not there within me. My mind is a haze of painful pleasure, my thoughts, along with my flesh and blood, fully consumed by Basilton. He is a fallen angel. He is a monster, and I must be one as well, but I have no will to change that. 

I love him. I’ll love him no matter what we become. 

I found more cattle dead this morning. Now nearly a third of the herd is gone. This time they have markings to match the wounds on my chest. 

I told Ebb about the deaths, she told me a few goats have passed as well. I will tell the baronet tomorrow. 

December 27th 1742

I went to tell Sir Grimm about the dead cows this morning. 

In the manor I overheard the baronet and baronetess speaking of another attack last night. I stopped myself short of the doorway into Sir Grimm’s study. I stood in the hallway, slowing my breath to hear them through the door. 

“Mordelia saw Basilton again last night. He hurt her, picked her up and left scratches on her back,” Daphne said to Malcolm. Sir Grimm stated he’s seen their son some nights as well. I became jealous upon hearing these words, at learning I was not the only one Basil is giving attention to. A foolish thought, of course he would want to see his family. But they spoke of him in fearful tones. They do not know my sweet Basil is only full of love. 

“He is a vampire,” Sir Grimm said. I had to stop myself from crying out. Madam Grimm gasped, begged him no. Sir Grimm mumbled something comforting. “It must be done. He’s not our son anymore, Daphne, he is an evil creature.” 

A vampire. The livestock dying, the frightened children, and my nightly visits from Basilton, all signs of a vampire. Dear God, Basil did not deserve such a fate!! I know what they will do to him: dig up his grave, stake his heart, cut off his head, and burn him to ashes. 

He will be gone forever. 

I cannot bear the thought! 

I know now what I must do, and I must do it quickly. 

Later on the 27th

Hastily, I have made my preparations. I could not risk Sir Grimm getting to Basilton first. I am prepared to go tonight. 

December 28th 1742

I went to Basilton’s grave late last night. I was the only soul awake besides the owls. I brought along a lantern, a shovel, a small pack with all my coin and what few possessions I care to keep, and a small wheelbarrow I took from the barn. The light of my lantern guided me through the familiar trees and headstones, until I found the name Basilton Grimm carved into stone. 

The rain poured down endlessly. The wet earth offered little resistance to my shovel, but digging was not quick work. The wind put out my lantern thrice. I gave up relighting, nothing would stop me. I had a singular purpose. I felt as if I’d been guided here, to this moment, to save my love. 

After hours of labor, my shovel kissed the wood of a coffin, I nearly collapsed from relief, and exhaustion. Prying the lid from my Basil’s prison was harder than I had expected. Once I had it off, I threw it from the hole. 

I wept. There was my dearest Basilton asleep in his coffin. I relit the lantern. I fell to my knees, sharing the cramped space with him. The light revealed a blood-stained mouth and burial shroud. His hair was a little longer, more lustrous than in life, his skin ruddy and plump. I worried I would find his face smashed, his body mangled from horses’ hooves, but he was unmarked and as beautiful as ever. His hands were free from his shroud, also bloody. 

These are all signs of a vampire, but I could not care. I had to reach out to touch his cold flesh.

I had to kiss him. 

My lips met his, and in that coffin, surrounded by earth, over the sound of the attacking rain, Basil softly moaned. I swear I heard it. I swear his lips moved against mine.  

Elated with indescribable joy I tried to wake him more, desperate for proof he really was living. He did not open his eyes, or speak to me, or move. But when I pressed my ear to his chest I heard the drum of his heart beat steadily. 

My sweet Basilton alive! Now that I have him, I will let no harm come to him. I will keep Basil safe from those who want to kill him again. 

It is early morning now, the sun is just starting to peak over the land in the East. This will be my last entry. I shall leave my journal here, in my Basilton’s empty grave, in case anyone is searching for us. I care not who reads these words, they will not find us. I will be far away, with my love, finally happy. 

(A note placed in the back of the journal)

Dearest Simon, 

I hope this journal will be of use to you. I do believe keeping a journal will help you continue improving your literacy. And perhaps it will aid in other ways. I find it helps to have a private place for one's thoughts and feelings. My journals are a great comfort to me. 

Beyond that, I must admit I do enjoy the thought that there will be a record of you and of I. That people may know who we were, and that we were good friends.

Yours truly, 

Tyrannus Basilton Grimm

[burningvelvet]

Byron simping for the Irish orator, politician, wit, and lawyer John Philpot Curran

Byron in a letter to Thomas Moore dated October 2, 1813:

"I have met Curran at Holland-house — he beats every body; — his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics; — I never met his equal. Now, were l a woman, and eke a virgin, that is the man I should make my Scamander. He is quite fascinating. Remember, I have met him but once; and you, who have known him long, may probably deduct from my panegyric. I almost fear to meet him again, lest the impression should be lowered. He talked a great deal about you — a theme never tiresome to me, nor any body else that I know. What a variety of expression he conjures into that naturally not very fine countenance of his! He absolutely changes it entirely. I have done — for I can't describe him, and you know him."

In Greek mythology the female virgins of Troy would go to the Scamander river (which Scamander supposedy lived in after going mad and throwing himself in) and bathe in it while ritualistically praying for Scamander to take their virginity (sources: Theophoric Names and the History of Greek Religion by Robert Parker and Neilomandros. A contribution to the history of Greek personal names by Peter Thonemann).

In an 1816 entry from his diary Detached Thoughts:

"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such imagination! there never was any thing like it that ever I saw or heard of. His published life — his published speeches, give you no idea of the man — none at all. He was a machine of imagination, as some one said that Piron was an epigrammatic machine. I did not see a great deal of Curran — only in 1813; but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh's, Holland House, &c. &c. and he was wonderful even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time."

In his later destroyed memoirs, quoted by Thomas Moore:

"In his Memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises of 'The riches,' said he, 'of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever seen written, — though I saw him seldom and but occasionally . . ."

[ow-old-men]

Faces / Changes

Two immortal shapeshifters find each other. Again

——————————⋆♱✮♱⋆——————————

The first time Jaime becomes painfully aware that he is lovely, Kassem wears an unfamiliar face.

It’s not the first time. They’ve stumbled across each other with bodies fresh and impermanent, faces morphed or hidden before and it won’t be the last either. Time has slung them into each other’s orbit uncountable times already. The first time - at what Jaime has heard other, more temporary beings, describe as ‘the dawn of time’ - he’s pretty sure neither of them were much more than formless clouds of heat and potential. If Jamie had figured out how to give himself anything resembling eyes a few millennia before he did, there’s no doubt in his mind that Kassem would have been beautiful, even then.

No, the newness is not anything newsworthy in and of itself and that is not why the realization suddenly carves through his chest like a knife.

Kassem is leaning back on his hands in the shade, his face remade in a cascade of unfamiliar angles, his hands suddenly slender and free of the freckles Jaime spent a week mapping out sometime last century. He would recognize him anywhere.

Jaime puts his hand to the small of some woman's back, parts the sea of people gathered on the square and walks. He knows that Kassem has seen him, knows where this ends and that it still has to begin somewhere. So he stops a couple of meters away from the low table Kassem is sitting at. He wavers on his feet, two women dressed in flowy robes pass between them.

“You look good,” he says and can’t help that there is a breathy, too honest quality to it. Like he’s run miles through the cold, breath stuck in his throat and cheeks flushed. Kass just looks at him, smiles mostly with his eyes. Eyes that, Jaime suddenly notices, have retained their teint of burned amber. A flash of sunset though his midnight gaze. He would have been no less terrifically beautiful with eyes made wholly anew, and yet Jaime finds a pang of gratitude tingles through his spine.

“Thank you,” Kassem says, and like always, he manages to say it like it’s hiding some shared joke, “you too.”

Jaime runs a flighty hand over his own biceps, shrugs almost unapologetically. “Same old, same old.”

Kassem smiles until his eyes nearly close with it. He nods, almost imperceptibly. “Come sit anyway.”

Jaime does.

“What have you been up to?” Kassem asks and raises a teacup to his lips while Jamie shuffles carefully down beside him. Their knees do not touch under the table, but the few centimeters of air between them buzzes like a beehive.

He shrugs. He makes it a point not to count the years and simply let time bubble past like a river. He knows not how many years he is accounting for now, and right now he remembers only dimly exactly what he’s been. Briefly he was a wildfire along the coast of North America, wading through the flames that felt as much a part of him as this current face he wears. For an even shorter amount of time, he planted corn and traveled slowly further south, wearing a man’s face and a wide brimmed hat pulled down low. Mostly he’s waited with no real sense of what all this waiting will net him. At times he wrote flighty diary entries, through the fire scorched the majority and all were in some script he no longer thinks anyone but he could decipher.

“I hear you went on tour?” he says instead and that makes Kassem hunch his shoulders with a sudden burst of laughter.

“A tour?” he asks and the laughter bubbles in his throat and in his voice. Jaime adjusts how he’s sitting, feels the buzzing pride in his hands.

“You wrote, last time, some poetry” he says and is again betrayed by the tone, wistful and secretive like he hadn’t planned for it to be. “I’d hoped you got to share some of it?”

And this time it’s Kassems turn to shrug. He twirls the teacup once, then twice, looks up and Jaime is treated to the freckles suddenly scattered like secrets high on his cheeks. “Most of them weren’t meant for other people.”

At times, Jaime feels crude, almost unfinished, compared to the man beside him. He is a creature of heat and fire and malleable sudden change, and yet he finds that he’s become primarily a creature of habit.

His face is easy, now that he’s learned it’s shape. It stays intact and rarely flickers. He tries, for fun or out of boredom, to reimagine what he could be and finds that he catches glimpses of himself suddenly in mirrors and he’s become the thing he fought to change.

His self seems unavoidable. The shape of his nose the only one he can seemingly dream up. And yet he knows that he changes, right then and there. No blooming freckles, no glint blazing through his iris, but there is something.

“Well, I thought it pretty great.”

“Of course you did.”

He raises his hands reflexively. “I know great art when I see it.”

He’s not sure, but he’s pretty sure Kassem rolls his eyes at him. One of his hands lands on the table with the distinct clink of a ring wrapped around one finger. And it’s like the sound dislodges something in Jaimes chest. Or dislodges something hanging above his head that’s lingered there for a while. He stares, transfixed, at Kassems hands and finds, for the first time consciously, that he is beyond lovely.

Beautiful in a way that defies the very definition of that word. He could be anything - has been anything and then some - and yet the thing that is not beauty would still cling to him. It settles like a dying star in the pit of his stomach. It is almost unbearable when Kassem at last looks over, one brow slightly raised. It is both a question and a declaration that he already knows. Mostly it’s a dare.

Behind them, the crowd shuffles on through the market square.

“Would you care for a walk?” Jaime asks after a beat, exactly like he’s been prompted too. Kassem measures him up once, a darting heartbeat of a look over. Then he nods and stretches a hand out to the side after his cane. The eye contact never wavers.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The sun is still enormous and orange. Jaime knows from the taste of the air, that the sea isn’t far, but he has no idea what narrow streets he’d have to walk down to get there. It doesn’t feel important anyway. There sits a bubbling laughter in his throat and a flighty restlessness in his palms while Kassem walks and retells most of the time they’ve spent apart.

Then he falls silent. Jaime can almost hear the waves, at least he thinks so. The very air glows in soft orange.

Kassem runs a hand across the back of his skull. One of his thumbs digs into the strong tendon right where the skull and spine become one. His hands are soft.

“I think I’d know you anywhere,” he mumbles and pulls Jaime close until their lips meet. Hungry and soft and familiar. Halfway, Jaime wants to pry his eyes open and see if Kassems face changes and yet stays the same.

He doesn’t. He keeps them screwed shut and takes and takes. His hands find their way to Kassems shoulders, seemingly without needing any instructions. Holds him careful and desperate. He knows, can feel and in no way control, how his own face morphs - folds and becomes. It doesn’t matter. He’s learned by now he can’t become something that doesn’t look like the thing he is. Can’t become something that wouldn’t fit in the way Kass cups a palm around his jaw.

So he stays the same. And changes.

[alchemy-arts-bookstore]

It took me years to see the connection between David Bowie and the occult – more specifically, chaos magic – that was already visible to those who had spent more time studying him, or listening more exclusively to his music. I knew he was an amazing musician, but it took time for me to see that there was more to him than that. For me, the seed was planted when I saw the ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2014.

One thing that really struck me about the exhibit was a display that explained how Bowie took inspiration from everything around him, from all kinds of sources. As stated in the exhibit catalog, ‘His exceptional breadth of interests alongside his acceptance of the mantra ‘the medium is the message’ have opened him to inspiration by others – but as we have seen, he takes inspiration from an exceptional breadth of subjects and creates from them something entirely new.’

It really impressed me to learn that that anything Bowie saw or heard or experienced could become inspiration. The exhibit was filled with evidence of this: sketches, diary entries, stage costumes, photos, and so much more. As many people have said, he was a chameleon. He recreated himself on a regular basis, in ways only he could imagine, as he encountered new ideas and merged or rearranged them.

Years later, I came across a different version of this process when I became interested in chaos magic. According to Wikipedia, ‘Chaos magic teaches that the essence of magic is that perceptions are conditioned by beliefs, and that the world as we perceive it can be changed by deliberately changing those beliefs.’ Or in other words, belief is what gives magic its power, not the details of how it’s presented. My personal view of chaos magic is that you can use elements in your practice, or your rituals, that are not from any traditional magical system. They can be taken from another source. (Literature, pop culture, music, etc.) What makes them magic is your belief in them as such. Again, anything can become inspiration.

I started seeing the connection when I started studying my favorite chaos magic book, Hands-On Chaos Magic by Andrieh Vitimus. The author states, ‘anything can be used for magical work.’ He discusses using images from anime, from the movie Dr. Strangelove, and from Harry Potter, among others.

Reading this, I remembered the David Bowie exhibit, and the biggest lesson I took from it: pay attention to everything around you, anything can be inspiration for art or music or other creative endeavors. As a then-novice, this idea made me feel much better about my evolving magical practice; it was telling me there wasn’t really a single ‘right’ way to do things. It let me know that it was acceptable to do things in a different way, a way that worked for me. It might seem strange or hard to understand to others, but it wasn’t wrong; it was chaos magic. I’ve gotten ideas from the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies, from popular music, and from poetry, and I’ve begun experimenting with adapting magical practice to the virtual world Second Life. I try to stay open to new ideas, wherever I might find them. I try to follow Bowie’s example and not limit the things that inspire me.

A final quote to sum up, from “David Bowie and His Mysterious Connections to the Occult and Paganism” by Jacob Shelton on ranker.com: ‘Chaos magick isn't about creating a sack of money, or getting a record contract. At the end of the day it's about creating a reality that's more in line with your imagination. With that in mind, it's clear that Bowie is the most successful chaos magician ever. Through his work, which was a multi-decade ritual, he made the world more open to the oddities of life.’ That’s the kind of magic we could use more of.