#to the people who follow me so we can revel in our silly little horror podcasts

[gnomebinary]

I'm just putting it on the record before the first show that I think "terrible influence" has a double meaning, both that they've been a terrible influence and that having this influence has been terrible for them.

[loregoddess]

6,11,12,26 and 35? :D

6. Who's your favorite lord/protagonist? Hnngh, technically Alear bc I think they were handled really well as a protagonist character and I adore their characterization and personality, and also as an "avatar-esque" character they fix a lot of issues I personally have with "avatar" and "avatar-esque" characters and also offer the solution to a very specific bone I have to pick w/ an entirely unrelated series that I won't get into bc it's not FE. But mostly I just, adore Alear, what a kind and sweet character, despite all the horrors.

Also I don't talk about it ever, but I really like Ike as a protagonist bc he's. Just some guy. Not royalty, not nobility, not secretly anyone special or of some sort of crazy bloodline (and we all know Tellius has some weird stuff going on with bloodlines), he's just a guy who gets caught up in things, and does his damned best to keep his friends alive through it all.

11. A character that deserved better? Answered here!

But for some more characters, I've got so many thoughts about Subaki (there are a lot of interesting implications about his past, but lack of any proper characterization beyond his joke trait of being a snooty perfectionist means I am literally grasping at straws; fandom likewise ignores him which is wild bc he's our first canonical male pegasus knight, but I mean, large cast so I get it), and Izana having a paired ending with Corrin for Revelations (in both the Japanese and localized versions) despite dying will haunt me forever (also rip that localization, I swear my love for this character isn't as random as it seems, I just happened to follow all the Japanese-release stuff before the localization dropped a year later, and have a really confusing impression of all the Fates characters as a result).

For Echoes, despite my ignoring him every run bc Sonya pretty, I think Deen should have had more...just more everything, I guess. In the actual game, since all his backstory is hidden in the artbook/records book project. He's actually a really cool character overall, but Sonya feels like she has so much more narrative relevance bc of Jedah and Marla and Hestia.

For 3H bc I have a whole lot of thoughts about all sorts of characters, I actually really wanted Sothis to get more...I dunno, narrative relevance as well. I wanna know what her regained memories were, her thoughts about Fodlan as it is. About Rhea and Seteth and Flayn. Three Hopes doesn't count bc the writers kinda butchered Sothis's characterization to the point of hardly being recognizable, and she deserved better than that.

12. A game that deserved better? Hmmmmmmmm, Engage and Fates for sure, at least as far as fan reception goes. Engage's was at least a bit better, but I still see people recycling the old arguments over Fates even all these years later and it's like, listen it was Fine, it was a good game, leave it be. (Also wildly unpopular opinion, but I think 3H--both Houses and Hopes--deserved better writing. What we got was okay, but it could have been so much better. For all the complaints it gets, at least Fates has consistent and completed worldbuilding with little to no questions about lore things at the end of all the routes and DLC. Like I love 3H, I really do, which is why I wish I got More and also Higher Quality writing and worldbuilding and lore and everything).

26. Come up with a pitch for a new FE title, no matter how silly it is! Let's blend fantasy with horror bc it's spooky season. Two nations are fighting each other over [insert some stupid excuse for a war to get people to enlist, but it's actually a scheme to get the people in power more power], and each nation has access to various weapons and things that seem normal at first, but slowly become more sinister and horrific the more the protagonist learns about them (i.e. maybe one of the armies has access to seemingly humane homunculi soldiers as an alternate to sending citizens to war, but it's later revealed that they can only be manufactured with parts of the dead, and the nation using them harvested their own population to make the homunculi army).

I dunno who this protagonist is, but I want them to be just some random person who gets caught up in things bc I love random people who get caught up in things. Anyhow, eventually the protagonist and friends figure out that both nations are harvesting their "technologies" from some sort of eldritch horror buried deep beneath the earth (which is NOT an evil entity, I feel this is important to note, but like I think it should be how the nations are using the being that's malicious, and the being is just a thing that exists), and I dunno, instead of fighting god or the being (which can be a dragon of sorts for the purposes of this being FE, and also be we don't have enough weird dragons in fiction), the protagonist and friends have to find a way to root out the corruption in both nations' rulers or something, although how balancing taking out two different final bosses would work who are also very much trying to kill each other, without doing split routes (which I'd like to avoid if possible) would be a task. (Maybe have the protagonist start off as part of an uprising/rebellion in one nation and then after throwing out the corrupt rulers, have to turn around and somehow fend off invasion from the other nation? I dunno, I'd have to think on this plot point a bit).

Oh but, hm...I've written all this, and now I kinda like the idea. Might let it stew in the back of my head for an original project later on.........

35. What's something you wish IntSys would just stop doing? I will sound like a broken record, but I think gender-locked classes are stupid, I want them vanished. Fates had it right (although I think I should have been allowed to stick men in maid dresses and women in butler suits. As a treat). If I can have nothing else, I want the gender-locked classes removed forever.

I'm also not a fan of split-routes (although again, Fates handled them better than 3H, in my opinion, but they're still a lot of work to get through). I was so relieved Engage was just one route. It's not like they're bad per se, it's just that FE has been kinda messy with the narrative trying to span that many routes. I'd rather have solid, consistent characterization and worldbuilding in a single route, than a flimsy attempt to explore various "what ifs".

EXCEPT for whatever the fresh hell FE Heroes is doing--the multiverse can continue to exist in that with all its weird "characters from this alternate universe you didn't even know existed now exist and can be summoned to fight alongside you in this incomprehensible Norse-themed story". Whatever FEH is doing is hilarious, I will never play it ever in my life, but I love seeing all the character art and pretty animated cutscenes. (And sometimes we get tidbits of interesting characterization for wildly underdeveloped characters. Sometimes).

[kingofthewilderwest]

what’s your zodiac sign

I think it was my junior year of my undergraduate. I was chilling around campus, which was empty here because almost everyone else was at a football game on the other side. I was slightly surprised to see a young man with a big smile on the same part of campus as me, who seemed to have just as little to do with his day as me. We got chatting and he seemed like a legitimately cool bloke, so I decided I’d give him my cell number and maybe we could have coffee sometime.

After some phone mishaps (like him calling me at 4:00 AM that night drunk), we chatted on the phone a little. He said he had a very pressing question to ask me, which he HAD to know. If he didn’t know the answer, he would have no idea how to interact with me or be friends with me or anything at all. He wanted to make sure that we’d have a fun time together understanding each others’ person. Hm. Intriguing. Sounded like an interesting question. Something existential or about personal values or some silly little nothing maybe? I asked him what it was.

Listened to my phone speaker for the answer.

He spoke.

“What’s your zodiac sign?”

That…………… wasn’t what I’d expected.

Now, at the time, I had a neutral opinion of horoscope stuff. I didn’t know what personality traits Gemini was supposed to have, had no idea what a Moon Sign was, wouldn’t be able to tell you what the sign is for people born in April, etc. All I knew was that, when I was bored in high school reading the newspaper before classes started, I would look at my zodiac and read two sentences about how my day was allegedly supposed to go. I didn’t buy into it - I hope none of you friends mind me saying that - but I could see how zodiac was fun or why people would be into it. I thought it sort of fun, too.

So, despite feeling slightly weird this was his all-important question… I told this young man my zodiac sign.

Hooboy.

Hoooooooobooooyyyy.

He proceeded to go into nothing shorter than a twenty minute character analysis of who I was, what I would like, what I would be like, and how he would prepare for our hangout based solely upon my zodiac sign. I listened, on the other end of the phone line, in muted horror, as he described a personality…

…exactly OPPOSITE of mine.

A complete stranger.

Who was supposed

to

be

me

The first character trait he listed of me… made me frown. Wait, what? I was emotionally-driven? What? Where did you get that from? My eyes widened as he talked about me being a hopeless romantic. My eyes bugged out in shocked understanding when he prattled about how he knew I was a very social person, maybe a socialite, undoubtedly an empath, gossipy and flirty and…

I was speechless.

Background. In middle school, I was nicknamed “Calculator.” In high school, I was “Spock.” In college, right here right now, I was getting a Bachelors degree in Philosophy with a focus on Mathematical Logic (alongside several other degrees). I’ve always been known for my grades, my academia, my level head, my close-to-hermit levels of introversion, my non-fashion, my complete disinterest in following mainstream culture. I don’t like Myers-Briggs, but for those who do, I’m the quintessential INTJ. For most of my life, I found other peoples’ romantic and sexual attractions bizarre or ridiculous because I didn’t understand them (I’ve since then come to understand). I still don’t comprehend “normal people” and what they do with their time or mental energies. I’m often stiff, guarded, and quiet in public, with little success of carrying on everyday conversations. I spend a good 95% of my awake time alone. I respect everyone and have great friends, but I don’t “connect” with most personality types. Most people, in turn, don’t know how to connect with me. I’ve always been someone friends confide to and I respond in any way I can to help them, but I do it from the angle of someone who doesn’t have much innate empathy. I mean, I have compassion and do feel for others, but it’s always guided first and foremost in my head, and I logic through how I should talk and respond to people in troubled times.

So hearing someone tell me I was a gregarious, stylish, cutesie, emotive flirt who sounded like she belonged in a romcom was… hahahaha… appalling. 

I tried to correct him. Not rudely, of course. But I started to levelly explain that maybe my personality differed than what he predicted. When… he started laughing.

“OH MY GOODNESSSS!!” he crooned, ecstatic he Perfectly Understood™ our social interaction. He guffawed loudly into the phone. “WHAT A CLASSIC [XXXX]!!!”

At this exact second of my life, I decided two things:

One. I would not, in fact, schedule a hangout with this young man.

Two. My zodiac was dead to me.

Yes. Yes, my friends. It was on this day I disowned my birth sign. This day I decided that, while my birthday is cool and at an awesome time of year, my zodiac sign does not exist.

I have transcended the world of signs and astrology and human births. I am an enigma of the universe, no zodiac sign, floating through the cosmos, the constellations, the colors of the galaxy, unique and apart from the chained expectations of my once-mortal coming-into-being.

I am Haddock. Fish. King. Spock. This is the start and end of all things.

Since that momentous day of revelation, I’ve noticed that this young man might have focused more on some traits of that sign than others, and that not all the traits of that zodiac sign are contradictory to my personality. As with any sort of zodiac or personality test, you can place almost anyone decently under the umbrella by giving broad, generic personality traits that most humans have at least SOME of. Of course something in there’s going to describe me - or frankly, anyone, regardless of their actual sign. But it does unfortunately mean I feel zero emotional relation to that sign, and actually dislike that sign. XD I’ve secretly picked my own “honorary sign” that I relate to more instead - adopted myself into it, as it were. I don’t let the signs describe me, which is why I usually don’t tell people what my sign is.

Hopefully this comes off as an amusing story to you, friend, and not a disregard to your question! I’m just here to laugh and have fun with this. I’ve got no hate for zodiac (beyond the Grievance Of My Own Sign XD) and I agree zodiac can be lots of fun. It’s just not for me because of this! Thanks for asking me, take care, have a good day, and live long and prosper!

[lokilickedme]

Hello My Lady! Just because you asked, here are my faves of yours: #1 King (no surprise here), #2 Jack (too crazy not to love, and the stream crossing of pretty much all your stories is genius) #3 Chem/BD/TTW/TKH/TWK/can't remember them all. They're all special in their own way! Can't believe it'll be 3yrs soon since I started squatting your page!!! God time goes by fast! I'd like to add a special mention for the Muse Meetings, sooo funny, and a Golden Snowflake to Aleks. Cute little bumkin.

Thank you @fudgemuffinanon!  Dear god, has it been that long?  Seems like I joined up last year…*sits here blinking at my posts from 2015, wondering how that happened*

**LONG TEXT POST COMING UP**

You drew the lucky straw today my darling, I’m feeling wordy and in the mood to share.  A lot of people have asked me over the last couple of years how some of my stuff came about, and you mentioned one that gets a lot of asks.

Lemme tell you something about the Muse Meetings.  Way back in 1998 when I got my first computer, one of the very first things I ran across by way of internet fanfiction was a little something called The Very Secret Diaries penned by a writer named Cassandra Claire (who is now professionally published under the name Cassandra Clare).  The Very Secret Diaries (which are hilarious, btw) woke something up in me - mainly because, as a lifelong writer who had never allowed anyone to read 95% of my work, I finally realized that yeah, there were other people out there whose brains deviated from the standard in the same way mine did.  Her writing style back then (in the Diaries specifically, I’ve never actually read anything else she’s written) was very similar to the way I wrote, and those Diaries were exactly the sort of silly, ridiculous, irreverent thing I’d scribbled in my notebooks for most of my life.  And people liked it, she had a huge following based on just those out-of-context glimpses of her characters’ personal thoughts.  She was writing behind the scenes thoughts of characters, things that would never make it into books, and it was brilliant.  That was the kind of stuff I loved to write but had never given myself permission to show anyone.  She was showing hers to people, and they were loving it.

Which gave me the inspiration to not only put my work out there in the public eye for the first time ever, but to stick with my personal writing style (which I’d always assumed wasn’t what other people wanted to read, based on the books I’d been exposed to most of my life).  Not change anything.  Just do me.  And doing me meant writing silly nonsense if I wanted to.

So - The Very Secret Diaries are more or less the inspiration for the Muse Meetings, or at least the official written version of them.  I’d always imagined dialogues with my characters outside the confines of whatever story I was working on, but never thought anyone else would be interested in seeing me write it out.

The Diaries made me realize different.  Not only were her characters yammering and complaining and snarking at each other (both out of character and in), they were doing it in exactly the way I’d imagined my own characters interacting in the real world.  I loved it.  Seeing someone else do what I’d always done in my head - and do it in an official, out-there-in-the-public-eye capacity, was a revelation.  Finally I was able to give myself permission to write the way I wanted to, without restricting myself to the styles and methods in the books in the family library.  It had always been in my head, but now it didn’t have to stay there.  I could write proper stories, but I could also write what was going on in the other room, where the reader seldom gets to peek.  And other people besides myself might like it because hey, there’s precedent.

That was freeing, and I am grateful to Ms Claire for that.

So, a little history that leads up to how and why I finally started writing out the Muse Meetings:

My first fandoms that I wrote for online were Harry Potter and Star Wars (Kenobi specifically).  And yes, way back then (late 90′s - early 2000′s) there were already muse meetings among my characters.  I’ve been doing these for a long time, and I wish the out-of-character stuff I’d written back then still existed (my HP stuff bit the dust when The Restricted Section shut down, and my SW stuff was on FF.net for a little while but honestly I don’t remember my user ID there or the titles of the fics, though I have searched…so they���re most likely lost as well).  It’s sort of a shame because there were some old Anakin/Obi-Wan muse meetings that you guys would have loved…and the stuff between Remus and Sirius while we were hashing out what was going to be in their next chapter?  It still pains me that it’s all lost, but maybe it’s for the best.  That was nearly two decades ago, we move on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.

After my urge to write HP fic fizzled out I stopped writing for a while, but there were always muse meetings going on in my head for stories I scribbled mentally.  To me they’ve always been more fun than the actual stories, which explains my love for gag reels and behind-the-scenes featurettes for movies (I watch those first, always).

And then I found AO3 - funnily enough, I discovered it while searching the internet for one of my lost HP fics - and I decided to start writing in earnest again.  With all those thousands and thousands of fics and endless fandoms, it seemed like the perfect place to indulge my need to share what went on in my head.  And as I settled into the MCU and my stories started to grow to include multitudes of characters, those impromptu staff meetings with my muses kept being called to order.  Stuff that my characters would never say in the context of their stories got said.  Scenarios that were too ridiculous to waste time writing were played out.  Arguments and fights and bantering between characters who, in the restrictive confines of their own tales, would never in a million years interact…now they were throwing poptarts at each other (and occasionally knives) while the side characters wandered out of the room to watch TV or raid the fridge or sat in horror as someone’s until-now unassuming wife brandished a melon baller as a weapon.

It was messy and fun and was by far my favorite part of the writing process.

That’s what eventually became the Muse Meetings.  You want to know how they escaped my head and became an official thing?

Well I’m gonna tell ya lol

One of my very first friends in here, the fantastic @elvenfair1, was one of my first readers at AO3 and she told me I should post links to my fics at this site called tumblr to bring in a bigger audience.  So I opened an account here, followed her, posted some links as suggested, and she and I began messaging back and forth pretty much every night as we wrote our respective fics, bouncing ideas off each other and discussing plot points and brainstorming for character names.  And as my characters sassed me and refused to cooperate with what I wanted them to do, I would tell elvenfair what was going on in my head with my dumbass OCs and OFCs and we’d laugh and gripe about trying unsuccessfully to reel in our unruly muses.

And then one night back in 2015 she said “You should post this muse stuff, it’s hilarious.”

You know what the first thing I thought was?  Cassandra Claire did it 14 years ago and people loved it.  So yeah, I can sure as hell do it if I want.  If nobody is interested in it, at least it’ll amuse me and elvenfair and that’s cool enough.

And so I did.  I started posting them in here first, then as people started requesting them more I eventually moved them to AO3 in a more structured format.  And now you guys have multiple Lokis hurling curses at a bartender and viciously baiting a hapless movie star while teenage versions of two other attendees flirt with unsuspecting OFCs, with an occasional appearance by Thor dropping hints about future chapters and looking for fruit roll-ups.  It’s messy, but it’s fun and I’ve always enjoyed writing it as a way to let my brain decompress, especially when one of my “real” stories has hit a roadbump.

Since then I’ve seen countless other professional writers doing the exact same thing - J.R. Ward even posts her own version of muse meetings on her official website AND has a published book (her Insiders Guide) that is almost entirely nothing BUT muse meetings.   It’s surprising how many writers actually do this and I sometimes wonder if authors like Poe, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Tolkien, Gaiman, McMurtry didn’t do it themselves (I’d bet money on McMurtry).  Just goes to show there’s not an original idea anywhere in the universe…no matter how much you might believe you came up with it first, someone out there has been doing it for a long damn time before you - and a million more will do it after you :)

Anyway, I haven’t written any muse meetings in a while but they still go on constantly in my head.  I get asked about once a week to go back to doing them, and one day I will, when I have time for it.  My actual fics are struggling for writing time as it is and I made a conscious decision to weed out the unnecessary stuff in favor of “real work” (yeah right lol)…but yeah, the Meetings are still one of my favorite things and I won’t stop doing them permanently - they’ll be back.

So thank you Cassandra Claire for inspiring me to let them fly…if it weren’t for those whacked-out Diaries, the Muse Meetings would all still be in my head with only one person (me) laughing at them.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Review] This HELLRAISER’s JUDGMENT is Guilty of Being Cheap

Somewhere, in the underlining story of Hellraiser: Judgment, there’s a good idea. In its brisk 81 minutes, which somehow manages to doubly bore with its police procedural knockoff and apparent obsession with Cenobite bureaucracy, there is at least the foundation of something that could have made for a truly compelling Hellraiser entry. Unfortunately, director Gary J. Tunnicliffe decided to remake Seven, and thrown in some scenes that felt more like a back door pilot for Law & Order: Leviathan.

The idea: what if modern life is so sinful, that the mere idea of sin being bad and shameful is quaint. Everyone’s sin is an open book, and no one seems to care because we’re addicted to our phones, or something. Look, they’re demons, not Rhodes scholars! The basis for Hellraiser is that when truly terrible sinners run out of Earthly sin, the Cenobites come and offer next level sin through their puzzle box. What greater sin is there for a cynical culture is the belief we’ve “been there and seen all that”? The idea that there are no more surprises. We are numb to everything.

Too bad this latest entry didn’t follow its own advice because Judgment is just about as pedestrian as you can get. Fans can forgive the horridness of the previous entry, Revelations, because it was made under the cynical precept that Dimension was just putting something together to hold on to the Hellraiser rights. In this business, it’s called pulling a “Fantastic Four”. Tunnicliffe though, having worked behind the scenes for years on Hellraiser movies as a make-up artist, seemed like he had something specific he wanted to do. Whether or not he accomplished it is a question I can’t answer.

As for the film itself is every strung-out cop cliché you can think of in the packaging of an actor who looks like someone in casting said, “Bring me Michael Fassbender’s cheap American equivalent.” Detectives Sean Carter (Damon Carney) has been there, seen that, and read the book, but he stopped short of watching the movie version because you kids don’t read any more! That insult is directed at little brother and fellow detective David Carter played by Randy Wayne, who looks like he’d last about five minutes in Fifty Shades of Grey’s Red Room, to say nothing of the Cenobite’s Hell Realm.

These two detectives of nowhere/anywhere USA are investigating the serial murder spree of “The Preceptor”, who’s committing a murder in honour of every one of the Ten Commandments. The Preceptor has killed all the way through to #8, and who’s ever in charge of this surprisingly depleted police force has assigned Detective Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris) to help the brothers make a break before the last two murders are completed.

If the limited budget of Judgement is hurt the most by any one thing, it’s the complete and utter lack of extras. All the scenes at the police station take place in the same small dingy detective’s office that Egerton rightly mocks as looking like something out of a hard-boiled 1940s film noir. Crime scenes are surprisingly sparse as one man guards a spot in the middle of an open area where there’s no press attention from a media that would undoubtedly be hungry for every last detail about such a salacious killer. Also, there is not a single CSI person collecting evidence! If these three people are responsible for the policing of an entire city, that explains a lot.

As for our old friend Pinhead (now played by Paul T. Taylor), whatever’s going in, he seems cool with it. Every once in a while, we cut to Pinhead, sitting in a room somewhere, starring at a wall. We’re introduced to a new Cenobite called the Auditor, played by director Tunnicliffe himself. The Auditor is part of the previously unseen Cenobite legal system (I guess?) where you recount for him your sins. Those sins are assessed by a character played by Feast director John Gulager, who eats the type written pages listing those sins, and then your guilt/innocence is determined by a jury of three naked women with half-eaten faces who put their hands in the Assessor’s barf after he throws up the pages. Spoiler alert: no one is found innocent.

Though I mock the Cenobite legal system, likely to my own detriment, I must also confess to finding this the film’s most interesting part. When Sean Carter finds himself before the Auditor, it felt like the movie was going somewhere new and interesting. We had to slog though just about every serial killer movie cliché catalogued in the last 20 years of cinema history to get there, but I would have been okay with that if the movie managed to keep this feeling of genuinely exploring new ground in a well-worn universe.

Sadly though, this Seven parody must answer itself as Ameri-Fassbender struggles with issues of being the toughest cop on the force, of being messed-up from his military service, of being a crappy husband, and on, and on, and on. This naturally leads to a plot twist, which is hardly unexpected, but far from earned. At 81 minutes, we’re not given nearly enough time to get to know Carter, or to be either shocked or impressed about the direction the story takes his character in. Instead it seems like a weak way to bring the Cenobites, always the most interesting part of any Hellrasier story, back into the plot.

It is in the end that we finally see Taylor show off his chops as one of the most iconic horror characters. I give Taylor credit for at least being able to wear the pins and the leather with a certain degree of majesty, but there’s no way that he can fill the shoes of Doug Bradley. That’s not to say that no one can out Pinhead Bradley, and maybe if Taylor had been given something more to do he could have proved it, but Pinhead’s appearance in Judgment seemed kind of pro forma.

In other words, the Auditor, played by the film’s director, was the Cenobite star, and that’s okay. As for human celebrities, we get A Nightmare on Elm Street star Heather Langenkamp as the landlady of one of the Cenobites’ victims, and the production must have only been able to afford her for one scene, because there’s actually a scene later when Sean talks to the landlady through an open door, which obscures the view of the hallway outside. Did Langenkamp get paid by the word? And why invite horror royalty to your set, and give her such a blah part as an eye witness? This is like getting Jason Statham for a James Bond movie, and having him appear as the bartender that makes 007 his martini!

This infuriating exercise seems to be brought to us by the same people at Dimension who just seem to crank out Hellraiser movies now as a way of holding on to the rights so that no one else can have them. Meaning that Tunnicliffe’s ideas might have been able to bear fruit if the studio wasn’t being so damn cheap. This is a series that has gone into space, dammit! Seriously though, whatever Tunnicliffe might have been going for, I doubt it was a 75 per cent warmed over remake of Hellraiser: Inferno, another chapter from this franchises about a haunted cop hunting a psycho killer with a silly name.

Next time, and there will be a next time, let’s hope that Dimension digs deeper in their pockets to let the director be able to execute a modicum of imagination greater than what’s accomplished in Judgement. In the meantime, this Hellraiser is for fans and completists only.

1.5/ 4 Eberts

The post [Review] This HELLRAISER’s JUDGMENT is Guilty of Being Cheap appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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[abnahaya]

Jesy Nelson and I Can Finally Look at Our Old Photos Without Feeling Bad

I’m not a famous person, I can still count how many cruel online comments that I get, but I remember them all. There was a time when I was a dancer in a nightclub and they uploaded my picture with my fellow dancer who was younger and cuter —according to society’s beauty standard, and many of the people made fun of my features. Or another time when I received a weird and offensive question on a social media platform about how I gained so much weight. Even though I know that these aren’t the slightest true statements, and that I shouldn’t think of them, I can’t erase them from my mind. I try not to dwell on them but it’s so easy to recall those moments in a flash.

Now imagine hundreds or even thousands of hates comments every day for five years.

A few days ago, I watch a documentary of Jesy Nelson, a personnel of British girl group Little Mix. I like Little Mix but honestly, I don’t follow their journey from the start, they just caught my attention when “Wings” was released. Apparently, ever since their X-factor days, Jesy had been bullied online because of her looks and it affected her a lot. It broke my heart when Jesy told the BBC three that on the night Little Mix won X-factor, she was actually sad and devastated, she didn’t care about winning, all she wanted was to go home, but she couldn’t destroy the joy of her fellow band mates. At that point, all the bullying had gotten inside her head, overwriting her own ideas of herself. Not even the achievement of her dreams could chase the fears away. In the documentary that left audience weeping —including yours truly, Jesy told how she couldn’t look at her old pictures and videos because of deep trauma they evoked. Even after losing weight and applying makeup, she still hated herself.

***

I remember when I met my teacher from Junior High School days and the first thing she told me was, “Oh you’re prettier now, you used to be pitch black” (not trying to be racist but she literally said the word). I told my mum and she laughed it off—because it’s true, she said. And even though deep in my heart I wasn’t flattered one bit by that statement, I had to brush it off and forcefully telling myself that I was at least getting better. But even so, I couldn’t bring myself to look at my old photos because I thought I looked horrible. I erased all the old profile pictures and hid the tagged photos on Facebook. One time my friend uploaded one of our old picture and I felt so disgusted with my own face —although all I said to her was: “OMG LOL”.

I must say I’m lucky I’m a nobody, because I can easily forget about the times those “bad memories” comes into surface and they don’t pop up that often if not because of Facebook Most of my friends were too busy with their life to reminisce the old days, and I wouldn’t even do it in a million years, or so I thought.  However, once it happens, it’s like watching a horror movie. I don’t want to see it, even the sound itself already scares me, yet everyone keep shoving it into my face and telling me to look until I have to peek from between my fingers. Usually ends up with me looking for a brief two minutes that feels so long, before I squeak and close my eyes again, hoping that the image that has been carved into my brain can disappear quickly. But of course, it doesn’t, instead it’s going to haunt me for a couple of nights and making me feel uneasy.

I hated looking at my own face because it reminded me of how “ugly” I was, that all the features I had back in the days were laughable. It also made me sad that I thought there were so many wonderful memories, great stories and experiences, yet what people would remember from me was just how unattractive I was. I know vividly that my look was a big insecurity for me in those years, and even though some of my closest people were cheering for me at that time, as time pass by, they said the same thing with the bullies. One time my mum told me that she mentioned the name Naomi Campbell the supermodel only to make me feel better, but she never thought that Naomi was pretty, she was just simply stating we share the same skin tone. She laughed again as she continued describing how silly I was to believe her so easily, and that my teacher was right.

I tried to laugh it off many times, too. After all, those time has passed. I am now good in applying makeup, knows what clothes to wear, and not as terrible looking as before. I have grown into an adult and expected to face “criticism” with grace and a light heart. I tried not to be one of the “snowflake generation” whom offended easily in trivial matters. At least that was what I was told.

***

I believe how Jesy’s documentary could reach so many hearts are that because many people have been through similar experiences. Maybe not online, and maybe not by thousands of people, but just enough to hurt them. Others can also relate to the symptoms she describes on tape, maybe these people didn’t even think of getting bullied but at some points, they understand how it feels to just despise the image you see in the mirror. We all know very well how powerful words are, sadly, because at some points we have been hurt by others’ words.

Jesy went to see a beauty image consultant and we could watch short sessions between the two of them. In the second visit, Jesy was showed her old footage from the X-factor days and even further back to her childhood pictures, it was the first time she saw them after years. The consultant asked her what the old Jesy would think if she was told that she would have her dream coming true in the future, would she think of being sad? Of course not. The wake-up call for Jesy was when she was reminded that who she had become today was the result of the evolution of her past self, that she wouldn’t be able to reach her dream without the past Jesy inside her, and that she wouldn’t survive and become stronger if not from the painful journey the past Jesy had gone through to become the present Jesy.

I had a similar revelation, despite that I didn’t have to visit any consultant and simply just had extra time to look within myself. My wake-up call was just when I scrolled my Twitter timeline and finding a post where a guy put his new picture and a childhood picture together, saying that he didn’t change much. I looked through my tagged photos and saved a few of my old Junior High School pictures, the period when I was in a weird transition, leaving my cute childhood behind and not yet arriving into the graceful adult, basically the worst pages of my life lookbook. I stared at both pictures from different decades, puberty didn’t hit me like a truck, but I sure have evolved with time.

I mean, maybe I’d have a slightly better picture if iphone —or at least Xiaomi had existed in early 2000s. But that’s the point. Time has changed. I have changed. There have been so many things came in my way ever since and I survived. That skinny, curly-haired girl is still here inside me as I am inside her. I wouldn’t be able to be who I am now if she hadn’t put so much effort and positivity all along. Just as I picked up another picture from my golden days, when I was in Uni, the period in which I miss almost everything —slim figure, fun days, dancing non-stop, life free of responsibilities, and not having any more regrets. I no longer hate my few extra kgs or how my leg feels weaker when I twerk, not anymore, because I have everything in the present me. I have me.

We heard many wisdom sayings, like: life is like a roller coaster, just enjoy the ride —or some sort. It’s not wrong. I just want to add a bit of a note, that is to go to the toilet and take a look at the mirror. Appreciate yourself today. You are alive. Then remember another quote: life is a gift, that’s why we call it present. Your life today is the gift given by you from yesterday, last week, and even 8 years ago. Enjoy it. If it’s a bit too much today, scream it out, remember, everyone in the roller coaster are freaking out anyway. You’re not alone and you are beautiful.

[btsvt-adventures]

Sixty Percent

Title: Sixty Percent Pairing: Hoseok x Reader Warning(s): Mentions of death, suicide, dark thoughts, strong language, gore depression, overdosing, self harm, self deprecation, self hatred, anger, lashing out, verbal abuse, physical abuse

If you’re easily triggered, please don’t read this

Word Count: 3097

A/N: This is so dark oh god. Also i wanted to post this on Hobi’s birthday (for dramatic purposes okay) but things got in the way, and well… it’s late. Oh well.

60% of males with Schizophrenia attempt suicide at least once. Today is Hoseok’s fifth.

He glances at the handful of pills in his palm, watches them glint against the harsh white of the asylum’s bathroom lights.

Do it.

It ain’t like anyone gonna miss you

That bitch doesn’t really love you. It’s all fake! All so you’ll be a good, quiet little patient  

Do it right and we will go away, cross our hearts

And hope you die

The shadows were taunting him again, tempting him to try. They crept along the walls, in the mirror, behind him, next to him, in the corners of the room. Where he went, his shadows followed. When darkness came, his shadows ruled.

He’d stolen the pills, after getting Taehyung to distract the staff. Taehyung had been delighted, eager to lie and trick anyone and everyone he could. With that boxy smile of his, it’s easy to believe him, easy to fall into his trap, easy to let him lead you and all the others away. He stares at them for a moment, the bottle of water in his hand shaking slightly.

Six years. It was exactly six years ago that he was admitted. He’d kicked and fought, yelling at his parents that he was fine, that he wasn’t actually going to kill himself, and that he’d meant for it to be a joke. His parents cried, sobbed, wailed as they put their precious son into the asylum, swore that they’d visit him, that they’d get him out when he was better.

They never came back.

He resented them, of course he did, for never visiting, never calling, for basically leaving him here to die, but it was tiring being angry all the time.

It’s not so bad, he supposes, glancing in the mirror, eyes roaming over his gaunt features, worn and tired, making him look older than his twenty two- no, twenty-three years. He sighs, mind drifting again, to the things he’s done to all the messed up patients here.

And what fun it was.

He’s seated across Jungkook, scoffing quietly when he sees the younger lash out at another nurse. Jeon Jungkook, 20 this year, and still as easy to piss off as when he was admitted a mere three years ago.

Make him angry.

Fucking piss ‘im off real good

Fight! Fight! Fight already won’cha?

Don’t be a fucking wuss, do it, you little bitch!

It doesn’t take much for him to cave. The voices, the shadows, they loved screwing with Jungkook, pissing him off to the point that they’d fight. Hoseok’s lips curl into a manic grin, the shadows cheering him on as he stands abruptly, strolling easily towards Jungkook.

“Yah, you’re pathetic, you know that?” he sneers gleefully, and Jungkook glares at him, barely restrained anger burning in his wide doe-like eyes.

“Someone with such a baby face, you’re just begging to be babied aren’t you, cute little maknae,” he goads, and Jungkook’s glare intensifies.

“Shut your face, dickhead,” he snipes, fists clenching as he fights the urge to punch Hoseok in the face.

Hoseok gets stopped (unfortunately), dragged away before he can cause any more trouble. He lets out a manic laugh, eyes wild as he loses a shred of fragile, composed sanity. The male nurses take him back to his room and sedate him, threatening to keep him in lockdown if he misbehaves again.

He does, repeatedly, but the nurses eventually figure he won’t actually push Jungkook far enough for the younger to kill him.

With Yoongi it’s more… stimulating. He gets a kick out of seeing nine year old Yoongi bawl his eyes out when Hoseok ‘tells’ on him. Yoongi will sulk, pout, whine and wail, just so he doesn’t have to take his medication.  

But the fun part isn’t watching a twenty-four, almost twenty-five year old turn into a nine year old. The fun part, is when Hoseok can catch Yoongi at nine, and force him to turn to his deliciously violent, oh-so-sexy nineteen year old self.

“He faked taking his meds today,” he tells one nurse casually, innocent lilt in his tone. Yoongi cusses him out, and he just laughs, high pitched and gleeful, watching as the nurses pin Yoongi down and force the myriad of pills into his system.

“I’ll have my revenge, asshole!” Yoongi snarls, fighting hard against the male nurses, who all struggle to keep him from killing them (or Hoseok).

Hoseok would have let him, but the nurses pull him away, somehow determined to keep everyone alive. If only they’d realized that half of them didn’t want to be.  

He laughs, darker, more manic, slowly descending into the madness of his own mind. Everyone has their own demons, and he watches the misery, anger, hatred, fear, and uncontrollable urges consume the other patients. He giggles in wild, deranged glee when the sounds of their screams echo along the hallways, knowing their nightmares taunt them, their own demons rip them apart, piece by delightful piece.

He revels in the knowledge that they’re suffering too.

That he’s not the only one.

The therapists try and tell him his demons aren’t real, that he should stop listening to the false promises and dark whispers of the shadows, but they don’t understand.

They’re real.

They haunt him, and taunt him.

They make his life a living hell. But the dreams are worse.

Failure.

‘Course you suck. Pussy.

Well look who fucked up?  As per-fucking-normal

Looks like you failed again.

He growls, swiping at the shadows, screaming for them to go away, to just leave him be. He screams until his voice is hoarse, but they laugh at him, hurling razor sharp insults until all Hoseok wants to do it slam his head against a wall until he’s broken, and they’re gone for good.  

Hoseok wants to die, to leave this dismal, dark, horror-filled world for the peace of eternal darkness, and this time he’s going to succeed. He closes his fist around the colourful pills, eyes shut as he takes a deep breath.

A brief memory flashes in his mind, a burst of colour in his dark, dark world. A memory of you.

Your first meeting wasn’t significant, just a fleeting smile, and a sweet “good morning,” but it stopped Hoseok in his tracks. You were new back then, fresh faced and hopeful to help the people in this place.

Hoseok almost wanted to scoff when he first saw you. No one here could be helped. It was an asylum for a reason. But you tried anyway. Everyday you helped Jimin battle his demons, coaxed Yoongi into being more receptive, switching the way you spoke as effortlessly as he did between his childlike innocence and violent alter-ego.

He saw it in the way you refused to take nonsense from Taehyung, but let him get away with those white lies he couldn’t help but tell, in how you gently reminded Seokjin that eating six people’s worth of food was too much, but letting him have that extra bowl of rice anyway.

He wanted to hate you, to sneer at how easy it was for you to lie (read: talk) to the patients, how all of them seemed happier whenever you were around. He found himself gravitating towards you, unknowingly craving the same affection you offered the rest of his ‘circle.’

You were just so good, too pure for this hellhole they’d assigned you to. You never said a word about what Jungkook did to his teacher, the way he mutilated her, tortured her in ways so twisted the news dared not report the severity of it, before she was granted the painful mercy of death. You spoke to him like the troubled teen you knew he was, coaxing him to talk to you about things that interested him.

Hoseok tried to deny it. He didn't want to be friends with you, didn't want to have hope in his already hopeless world. He pushed you away, insulted you, sneered and treated you terribly, anything to get the glimmer of hope blooming in his heart to stop growing. It taunted him, mocked him almost, but he was just so fucking drawn to you.

“Jung Hoseok right?” you grinned brightly at him, and he’s blinded, bathed in brilliant, beautiful colours, contentment and sheer peace washing over him. He’s floating, high on your gentle voice and kind eyes, drowning in so much… light, that for the first time in his life, he truly, truly believes his life isn’t meant to be shrouded in shadows.

He nods, completely enamored by you, but more enraptured by the fact that you didn’t classify him by his illness. He was just Jung Hoseok.

It was good, so, so good.

At first.

You chased the shadows away, made him laugh, made him happy. You snuck in sweets and snacks after bedtime, shared silly stories about childhood and about family, friends, and Hoseok felt… normal.

Then the shadows come back, fiercer and darker than before. Hoseok’s plagued with horrifying, terrifying nightmares, of you mocking him, of you looking down and laughing at how much of a shell he truly is. He wakes up screaming your name, and grabs the nearest thing (his plastic cup), hurling it at you when you come sprinting in. Every time.

“You! You!” he screams, thrashing as the other nurses try and hold him down, injecting him with relaxant. “You’re a liar! They say you’re a liar and you don’t really care! They say you’re using me,” he shrieks, tears sliding down his face. Hoseok looks you dead in the eyes, and for the first time you see how truly haunted he is.

You’re frozen the first time, heart dropping when you see how much he truly believes his nightmares. The helplessness claws at you, tearing you apart as you watch him struggle, shrieking at the top of his voice, frenzied with fear and panic while his mind falls apart once more.

“You. You’ll break me. You’ll break me, and I’ll let you,” he whispers, mellowing out as the medication takes effect.

You head straight into the break room when he’s completely calm, eyes shut in temporary peace, and you hiccup, letting your weakness, your pain wash over you. Hoseok’s only a few years older than you, but his eyes, in that moment, were filled with more pain and torment that you could ever think was possible.  You let your emotions take control, sobbing in the tiny break room while the other nurses bustle around, some shooting you sympathetic looks, others leaving you alone to cry it out.

It doesn’t stop you. The shock eventually wears off, and you’re more prepared to handle him. You come back each time he screams your name, reassuring him you’re not going anywhere, that you truly do care, that the shadows are lying.

“How do you know they’re lying?” Hoseok asks you one day. It’s a good day today. The shadows are quiet, lurking in the darkest corners of the brightly lit room.

“Because I’m here, right now. The shadows, they never tell you good things, like how your laugh makes everyone laugh, how you’re so pretty when you smile, how you’re kind to everyone, even the ever-so-grumpy Min Yoongi,” you ramble on, and on, and Hoseok feels hope and affection bloom deep in his heart.

You lace your fingers with his, and he stares at it, almost in shock, before he turns your hand over, tracing the lines on your soft palm with almost childlike curiosity. He wants to memorise just how soft your hands are, learn each line and cut, trace over the smoothness of the tips of your fingers until he can see them imprinted on the back of his eyelids. Hoseok’s in awe, because he thought your hands would be calloused, rough from having to deal with patients like him and Yoongi all the time.

He leans down, pressing soft kisses to the center of your palms, and comes back up to peck a soft, sweet kiss to your cheek, feeling his already impossibly wide grin widen when he sees a pretty pink dust your delicate cheekbones.

When Hoseok first realizes it’s love, he knows he’s screwed. He tries to deny it, but he can’t resist. Each smile makes him want to push harder. Each sweet kiss gives him hope. The nurses are amazed by how much progress he’s made. Each time you praise him, he feels so full of love he thinks he’s going to burst.

But that was only in the light.

Once darkness takes over, the shadows taunt him for it. It’s a constant struggle, desperately trying to remember the happiness that filled his heart when he saw you mere hours ago. The days you’re not there are the hardest. He’d resort to sleeping pills, just so he could hide his struggles, because your happiness meant his happiness.

She’s lying

She only wants to see you when you’re happy

Once you crack, she’ll disappear

They all disappear

Always

Two nights later, it’s a bad night. He’s angry, violent, furious at both you and the world. He stalks you, like a predator would a prey, hurling sharp, hurtful words that burn themselves into your brain,

“Slut! Bitch! You’d open your legs for any damn guy who asks, thinking it’ll heal them? Make them better?” he snarls, eyes feral as he grips your arm tight. You gasp, not in pain, but in shock. There were bad days, but this was different.  

“Only for you hobi, I only want you,” you murmur quietly, reaching out to cup his cheek, not resisting when he pulls you closer by your arm, snarling in your ear.

“Liar. What a fucking liar you are. Here’s some breaking news, bitch. We’re all here because we can’t be fucking fixed. So get the fuck out of here and leave us to rot in this goddamn hellhole!” he roars, shoving you away, before letting the nurses tackle him.

He looks straight at you, lip curling in disgust, eyes filled with contorted hate and glee.

“I told you you’d break me.”

Four nights later, he cracks. The lack of sleep, the constant torment, the whispers in the dark about hurting you before you hurt him, about him already being broken, drive him over the edge. He screams at you, hands flying and voice hoarse.

You reach for him, cooing softly, lacing your fingers together so he’ll calm down, but he tries to pull away.  

“This is your fault! All your goddamn fault!” he shrieks, pulling away violently. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you fucking dare touch me!” he hollers, glaring hatefully at you.

It’s a choice. You can see the choice he makes in his manic, wild eyes, but it’s too late to stop it, and the sharp sound of palm meeting cheek echoes in the suddenly silent room.

It’s enough to shock Hoseok back to his distorted reality, and he panics when he sees you on the floor, eyes glazed over as you hold your reddened cheek, the mix of pain and shock clearly evident in your eyes.

“I- No, no please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, the shadows they-they keep telling me to hurt you, I try, I try so fucking hard to ignore them, but they haunt me. They torture me with dreams of you leaving, of you mocking me, saying I’m hopeless, that I can’t be cured, I just want the voices to go away!” he screams, falling to his knees in front of you, reaching out to tug your hands away so he can see the damage for himself.

“And they will go away,” you promise softly, letting him run his fingers over the mark, his mark, heart shattering at the remorse and regret on his handsome face. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re going to get better, okay?”

You’re still stunned, because you knew the risks of getting too close to a volatile patient like Hoseok, but you couldn’t help it. He drew you in, mysterious and haunting, one minute goofy smiles, the next hateful glares. Your cheek burns hot, tender to the touch, but the pain doesn’t compare to how much it hurt when he broke, when you saw just how much you broke him.

Hoseok was right.

You did break him, and a dark, demented part of him hoped the knowledge would haunt you, knowing it was your fault.

He tried. Hoseok tried so hard for you, but they kept getting worse, and worse. The voices, the shadows, whispering evil into his sick, twisted mind, telling him to end his misery, to end his pain. He’d tried so, so hard, but the shadows, the torment, the torture – He failed.

60% of males with Schizophrenia attempt suicide at least once. 10.5% of them succeed.

For the first time in his life, Hoseok won’t be a failure.

This time he’d succeed. This time he’ll make them go away for good. The shadows will finally leave him in peace. He’ll be free.

He grips the bottle tighter, tilts his head back, and downs everything. It doesn’t take long, and he gasps in pain, feeling his insides churning. His vision blurs out, and he’s on his knees, body trying desperately to reject whatever he’d forced down. He vaguely hears the door slam open, hears your voice cry in alarm, and almost, almost wants to fight back, but he’s tired.

He’s just so tired.

He feels himself being lifted onto something soft, so, wonderfully soft, and glances up to see you, yelling out orders to try and cleanse his stomach, to try and figure out what he took.

“N-no,” he forces out, mouth drier than the sahara desert. “N-no m-more,” he rasps, and you look down at him, desperation clear in your eyes. He knew it was time, but he needed you to know it too.

“A-always...Love y-you,” he breathes, shaky hand reaching up to try and brush your tears away. He misses, stroking your cheek instead, but you choke on a sob-laugh, letting him see, openly, how much this hurts you too. He hears, just barely, your heartbroken plea for him to stay, to keep fighting, but the shadows are crowding his vision, his world darkening one final time. He lets himself languish in the darkness, feeling it envelop him in it’s cool, soothing embrace.

Peace.

At 12.00am, Jung Hoseok sees his twenty-third birthday. At 12.28pm, he realises he’ll never see his twenty-fourth.

At 12:29pm, on 18 February 2017, Jung Hoseok closes his eyes on his twenty-third (and final) birthday.

[exitpursuedbyasloth]

shaselma replied to your post “Some Thoughts On Supernatural 12x11, “Regarding Wasted Potential”

I disagree about the comedy/angst contrast, I thought it worked well, but HOLY SHIT that pseudo-rape joke scene was uncomfortable as fuck. Why is it played as funny that she'd even care if she'd taken advantage of him? That is the right attitude to have, and they shrug it off like she's an overly-concerned SJW. And really, no, he hadn't actually been roofied, but he'd still been drinking, and assuming she wasn't because she was working... That's STILL fucked up. SQUICK.

See, it’s funny because SPN thinks men getting raped/sexually assaulted is funny (or hot, depending on how hard they have to No Homo that week). So the idea that a person, a young woman (also a joke in many SPN episodes) thinking she may have unintentionally taken advantage of a man who was roofied, is a hilarious farce.  I mean, like Dean would even care if she had, ahhaha.

Or maybe it’s just a personal jab at those silly audience members who complain when SPN does things like normalize and LOL at sexual assault, or when the writers make jokes about the sexual abuse of characters. Silly little SJW tumblr girls, all not appreciating SPN’s glorious rape culture bullshit.

The show (especially since Bucklemming came back in S6) is littered with “LOLrape” jokes when the man is the victim. Whether it’s Dean and fairies in s6, or “Season Seven, Time For A What The Shit Am I Watching” bullshit with Becky and Sam, or 9x03 (which was mocked again in 9x09), Girls Girls Girls, just everything about Dean + Amara, Sam and that British Lady of Letters hallucirape, men getting sexually exploited and abused is funny and/or hot. 

But, to be fair, they often makes jokes about women getting sexually assaulted too. Equal opportunity terribleness.

(And I’m not saying the show didn’t have rape culture bullshit in the earlier seasons, it most certainly did. But the earlier seasons would occasionally treat rape like it was a bad thing, even when it happened to men. However, ever since Bucklemming returned in S6, there’s been a noticeable increase in the amount of sexual assault, and an increased trend in normalizing it. Bucklemming and Klein were some of the worst offenders, but Dabb and Berens and many of the other writers are also guilty. Robbie Thompson and Misha and about half-a-dozen of the recurring actresses are the only ones to have ever actually acknowledged SPN has a problem with this.)

We may not agree on the episode’s merits as a whole, but we are bang up in line about the unfunny and uncomfortable as fuck psedo-rape joke scene.

Let me expand upon my issues with the execution of this episode, that aren’t about SPN’s deeply troubling issues with sexual abuse.

Comedy/Angst contrast works amazingly well when done correctly, when it’s balanced, when the humor is genuine, when the serious moments are thoughtfully and the humor doesn’t undercut them, when the emotional moments cut to the quick, when they mean something, and when it’s a well constructed narrative. When done well, the comedy will enhance the emotional impact/drama, and visa versa. And in this case, I feel the episode failed on pretty much all these fronts. Not unlike the writers previous episode, “That Fucking Hitler One (Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?)”

It was not balanced. The episode was 95% vaguely insulting humor at Dean’s expense, 3% serious, 1% gross rape joke, 1% painful montage.

The humor wasn’t funny, for the most part (even excluding the rape joke). I could tell the episode wanted me to laugh, but I didn’t get why I was supposed to be laughing. A couple lines here and there weren’t bad (Like, paraphrasing, “Our best friend is an angel?! That’s awesome!”). But a lot of it was “LOL, Dean is kinda gross and dumb, he eats like a pig, he’s a womanizer, look him stumblr about”. I am so fucking tired of their overcompensating dudebro retcon of Dean. I am tired of Dean’s trauma being used for laughs. I mean, like the food for example; they forget that they wrote Dean not having enough food as a child because of John’s neglect. In earlier seasons, when his food habits were focused around eating a lot, using it as comfort, wolfing it down, being super protective of his food, and wanting to feed other people (just not from his plate), that all residue effects of his childhood hunger. His focus on pies was because he remembered his mom giving him some, and it was one of his only memories of her. It was a character quirk that actually reveled something deeper about the character. Unfortunately, in the post-Edlund era, Dean’s eating habits have become a punchline, its there for other characters to raise an exasperated eyebrow at.

I mean, compare it with “Bad Day At Black Rock” where much of the humor was based on the increasingly ridiculous things that kept happening to Sam due to his bad luck curse. Both Sam and Dean get cursed with something that WILL harm them, but  I think the humor worked in BDABR because there’s no real life equivalent to his curse, other than those days where it seems like everything is going wrong, that the universe is out to get us. But in Sam’s case, that isn’t just him being dramatic, the universe really IS out to get him. However with Dean, there IS a real-life equivalent to his memory curse, and it’s dementia/Alzheimer’s. So it’s hard to laugh at the flippant humor that doesn’t seem to acknowledge that this is an actual serious thing people go through. There can be humor in dark places, but with something like that, your humor should punch up (or at least across), and not down as this episode did. The punchline of so many jokes was “LOL, he has Alzheimer’s!”. 

I’m not even sure if that one emotional gut-punch moment  (the mirror scene with Dean) was even intended to be serious, a moment of terrifying realization at just what was happening. Had Jensen delivered it differently, it could have been more funny than horrifying (well not actually funny, but the writers attempt at funny). I mean, being helpless to stop your memories from fading away, yourself fading away, is some Yellow Wallpaper quiet horror. And it’s not like there’s not real life tragedies to draw from, dementia and Alzheimer’s. But there was so little of that, compared to so much “LOL, lookit Dean bumble around!”

(The brother moment at the end was just the same rehashing of stuff the show does over and over and over. There was not a thing new about it, because this show is terrified of growing and changing.)

I also just don’t think this episode was well-written on a fundamental level. The memory loss spell didn’t seem to follow any rules. I mean, it’s vaguely suggestive of dementia (in which case most the humor was just in bad taste), but as the episode went on, it seemed more apparent that how the spell progressed was based entirely around “What can we make a joke about/what funny thing can Dean do”, that’s what the pathology centered around. First Dean has some short-term memory loss, can’t remember the previous night. Then he randomly forgets how to do certain tasks, what the names of things are (at this point I was still with them, because this can be how dementia presents itself). Then Dean’s personal memories began flickering in and out. Then Dean’s personality seemed to go, and also that was supposed to be happy Dean? The forgetting tasks and names gets dropped, because Dean still knows how to read, operate a gun (is this more of the ‘Dean is a natural born killer’ Bucklemming BS rearing it’s ugly head?). And then the witches out of fucking nowhere, that Rowena just HAPPENS to know very well (of course....why was that even a part of the episode?). And that fucking montage...I love shows that don’t take themselves too seriously all the time, but this felt unearned and trying too hard. A slo-mo of Dean riding the bull would have worked much better on it’s own. And of course, the rape joke. All in all, it wasn’t particularly polished, it was like a rough first draft.

It was a good idea that could have actually been done really well. But again, if there’s anything SPN will never fail to do, it’s waste some perfectly good potential.

[morganmulchi-blog]

And they overcame him [the enemy] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony… (Revelation 12:11 NIV)

[ OVERCOME :: verb – succeed in dealing with (a problem or difficulty) ; defeat (an opponent) ; prevail ]

We can sit on our battle wounds, sit on our scars.  We can hide them.  We can push them under our coats of performance or perfection or “normalcy”. We can keep their stories quiet.

Or we can expose them, risk sharing them. We can share our scars’ stories and open them up to the oxygen outside their hiding places so they can breathe and heal, really heal.  We can tell the stories of our battle scars so others can hear them and so others can gain strength from them. We can tell the stories of our battle scars to celebrate the songs that they sing.

May we tell the stories of our scars to celebrate the songs they sing.

Songs of victory.

A Victory Song

It was 6th grade Health class.  We were watching a movie on suicide and suicide prevention, and my innocent ears couldn’t tune out the deep voice of the narrator as he shared stories and statistics on the topic.  I was sitting in the back of the classroom at my desk, scared to watch the video yet as a student, unable to leave the room for more than a quick bathroom break. The film was being so detailed about kids who were suicidal and what their tendencies were, what their thoughts were and how they acted. I was scared hearing these things.  It was a terrifying topic for my 11 year old mind to try and comprehend, and that was before the moment itself actually came.

But let’s not start there.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I was born during the time of boy bands and Furbies – an early nineties baby born into a family with two amazing parents, a beautiful older sister, and a little pink house in a small Charlotte neighborhood.

If you lived in that little pink house (which yes, in fact was pink), you believed in Jesus, said your prayers before bed and understood the household standard of southern hospitality and good ole’ love and respect. I grew up going to church and was baptized around the age of eight, fully aware of the decision I was making and fully aware of my God who created and loved me.  God was always there.

When I was still in elementary school my family picked everything up and moved from our cute Mellencamp house in Charlotte to a nicer home in Harrisburg, North Carolina, but my parents made sure we packed our great memories with us along with our deep faith.  Looking back, I am so thankful to have grown up personally knowing God like I did. There’s nothing sweeter than a childlike faith, and I’m grateful to have been raised in an environment that encouraged my walk with the Lord. I actually attest the foundational joy that I have now, which started as a young child, to knowing God for so long. He was always there.

However, middle school years were particularly tough for me, and I remember always being right on the outside of the ‘cool’ crowd, right on the outside of being…well, in. I thrived on academics and dance, but there was something about those few years of teenage awkwardness that I didn’t quite seem to have down (though who ever really does…it’s middle school!). As if the braces and red-framed glasses didn’t help enough, I remember sitting in the atrium of the school on the outside circle of the group of pretty people and class all-stars. Looking back, that moment served as a metaphor for where I sat in the social hierarchy of my pre-teen years.

And then came that day in 6th grade.

As I said before, we were in Health class and were watching a film on suicide (a topic I personally believe NO young mind should ever be exposed to). I was uncomfortable watching it because it frightened me, but being that it was the end of the day and I was likely not going to share my discomfort with the teacher (#SOuncool), I sat there in the back of the class squirming in my seat, writing “I love you Jesus” over and over on my notebook paper and trying to avoid hearing too much.

A part of the film came where the narrator spoke about the actions a teenage boy took in the days before he ended his life, one of those actions being that he gave away his personal items – things like his wallet. In those moments, in that Health class, I felt a question rise up in my mind – a deceptive and confusing thought that would follow me for many years to come: I’ve given some of my things away before.  I’ve done some of the acts he’s mentioned.  Am I suicidal? Maybe I am.  

At that moment, in that Health class, fear of self-harm and the harming of others entered my heart and mind.  I became overwhelmed by the dread and horror of such acts and equally as horrified that I had actually thought I might want to attempt such things. As you’re reading this correctly, you’ll see that it wasn’t my desire to do any of those awful deeds. I wasn’t suicidal. I wasn’t angry or vengeful. I was a vibrant and joyful young girl with Jesus in my heart and a bright future in my eyes (despite those desperately unfashionable glasses I wore…sigh). However, that simple lie from the enemy had so horrified me in my young age that I couldn’t help but feel confused about my motives and intentions, and because of that, feel dirty and ashamed.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. (1 Peter 5:9 NIV)

The enemy is an awful one, isn’t he?  He doesn’t care about how young or innocent you are but will do anything he can to try and take you, God’s beloved, out of the game. His craftiness goes as far back as the book of Genesis when he confused Eve into thinking she could eat from the Tree of Knowledge. He twisted her perception and convinced her to believe something contrary to God’s truth, and unfortunately, she fell for it.  And so had I.

And surprising as it may sound, I couldn’t shake that fright. For years after that day I struggled with waves of fear, having terrible thoughts of wicked acts like suicide and murder roll through my head like destructive storms : they’d come in, tear the serene landscape of my mind apart, and then roll out, leaving me there to clean up the pieces. The irrationality of it seems crazy though, right? To have a fear of thoughts, a fear of doing something to myself or someone else that I didn’t in fact want to do – it almost sounds silly.  However, the deceptive seed that had been planted in my mind on that 6th grade day had started taking root and was choking out the garden of peace in my mind and spirit.

I questioned how much God could love and forgive me. After all, God had to be disappointed.  How could He love me with all of those terrible thoughts running around in my head? I wasn’t a bad person on the outside, and (because I didn’t WANT to do the bad things in my mind) I didn’t THINK I was a bad person on the inside, but those thoughts and that FEAR that haunted me (that I tried so hard to push away) made me feel that I had to earn God’s love anyway, which we know we can never actually do.  I would have conversations with my dad late at night saying, “Dad what if I think I’m good with God, but when I get to Heaven He says we weren’t on the same page and sends me to hell?” Or, in an attempt to divulge some of this inner turmoil, I would ask him, “Dad what if I have thoughts of bad things but don’t want to DO those things?” And though he made valiant attempts to comfort me with things like, “Morg, it’s not what’s in your head, it’s what’s in your heart,” I could never quite shake that painful confusion.

However, despite those seasons of inner turmoil, my upbringing was filled with beautiful moments of family, friends and JOY, and a common thread wove itself through all of my child, adolescent and teenage years – the thread of Jesus Christ. I look back and see times of sweet peace in my life, of progress and victory despite the waves of internal and external trial, and I know the only way that could have happened was because of God’s covering, His leading, His Spirit in me.  

The same childhood bedroom that saw tears from fear and confusion was the room that my parents let me cover with hand-painted Bible verses and was the same room filled with stuffed animals and sleepovers.  

The car that I’d drive to my dance studio (a refuge where my fear would temporarily subside) was a car often filled with uplifting worship music (sung countless times with an open sunroof and blasting speakers – some things never change).  

I even experienced God’s overwhelming peace for the first time as I prayed one day on my parents’ bed. I had cried out to God for help and received his awesome peace, not yet knowing the scripture Philippians 4:6 which only until months later would I read for the first time.

…by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7 NIV)

Despite the enemy’s regular attempts to confuse me and take me out (quite literally), I continued to grow in my faith, walk into my destiny, and experience God’s love and hope in greater and greater ways. God was always there.

And even in my lowest points that came later in life – when I wouldn’t watch any movie or show with a lot of violence, when I cringed at medicine commercials as they mentioned “suicidal thoughts” as a side effect, when at age 18 I wouldn’t go into the kitchen for fear of touching knives and harming myself or others (yes, it’s true) - God was always there.

He was there when I hit my knees on my bedroom floor, close to giving up and praying to what only felt like the ceiling. He was there in the park when I sat at a picnic table trying to figure out what was going on with my life and desperate for answers. He was there the night I sat all alone at my apartment fighting contractions of anxiety with only worship music and His Word. He was there.

And he was also there when I thrived academically through high school and college. He was with me when I went on my (fully-funded) first mission trip to Los Angeles and first heard my call to women’s ministry. He was there when I left college and a 4.0 GPA to complete my second year internship at Freedom House Church.  He was there when I received my prayer language, when I spoke my first message on platform at Freedom House Church and when I came on staff and began this journey into ministry that I am so grateful to be on now.

Through the clearest mountaintops and the foggiest valleys, God has always been there, and because of that Presence, I haven’t limped through life with these challenges but I’ve actually grown and thrived DESPITE them.

And that’s just who God is.  He’s there with us in our lowest moments, in our times of trial, in our successes and in our greatest victories.  He has NEVER left us, and he never will – He’s a faithful, loving God who has a never-ending HOPE for our lives – lives filled with joy and peace in his Presence.

The thief [enemy] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10 NIV)

There are a few things I’ve learned from this journey and a few truths I’m still uncovering as I run this race. I hope these few encouraging words speak to you in YOUR personal journey with God.

1.    God is always with us, no matter what the enemy is up to or what life circumstances we face. The Bible says he is an EVERPRESENT help in times of need (Psalm 46:1), and he never leaves us or forsakes us (Deuteronomy 31:6).  The sun may be tucked behind the clouds some days, but we know at all times that it’s still there in the sky; the same is with our Heavenly Father.  Some days we feel his great warmth and some days we have to rely on our faith to know that he’s still with us, but he is.  And he’s still all-loving and all-powerful and is cheering us on as we walk out the calling he has for our lives. He is always there.

2.    As a mentor of mine has said to me for years – Know your Bible. The power in those three words is tremendous.  To face any trial, to nullify any lie, to be able to (I believe) survive and THRIVE as believers in this tough world we have to know God’s Truth.  It’s everything. God’s Word is our sword, it’s our bread, it’s our lifeline, and we need to have it ingrained in our hearts so we can BE encouraged and so we can also ENCOURAGE others in their own lives.  With as much emphasis as I can convey – we must know our Bible. If you have read this far in my story and are financially unable to purchase a Bible, please reach out to me and I will personally get you one.  It’s simply vital.

3.    Our lives are JOURNEYS, and if we are always looking for the destination, it can become quite exhausting when we realize how far off that destination actually is.  As much as I wish I could steer my life’s ship onto the golden shores of an easy, struggle-free life, that’s just not reality in this world.  Reality is that we will face trials of many kinds, and some of those we may wrestle with at varying degrees of difficulty throughout our lives (the enemy doesn’t stop his fighting!).  However, we can rest assured that with Jesus in our boats, we are SAFE, we are STRONG, we have AUTHORITY over the enemy (remember – he is under your feet!), we are LOVED and we are headed in a FIXED, GUIDED direction no matter the storms we face. We are meant to rest and ENJOY the ride because our God is with us, and he is GOOD.

The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1 NIV)

And finally, I’ve been learning throughout this journey the power in our scars and the power in their stories. We’re in a real, spiritual fight on this earth for God’s kingdom and for His people, and that means life’s difficulties will often leave us with battle wounds. However, God’s Word says we overcome by His Son’s blood and by our TESTIMONY, and though for a long time I kept this piece of my story quiet, God’s shown me that it is when I share the stories of my scars (even if I’m still in the midst of the battle), I find the MOST empowerment and am able to encourage others on their journeys too.

When we freely expose our scars to the oxygen outside their hiding places, they heal greatly while helping others to heal as well. When we tell our battle scars’ stories, they have beautiful songs to sing, and those songs need to be heard.

May you find encouragement today to tell the stories of your scars so their songs can be heard.

Because those songs, my sweet friend, sing of victory.

[felicezhukov]

:: Dear Nicolas Jaar::

This is another edited entry of a previous post, I wrote it drunkenly, in despair, on Sunday night / Monday morning...

 I haven’t written for a long time, my life has been a series of misadventures, mishaps, missteps and misjudgements. It’s also been an awful lot of fun, now I’m lying in bed taking 2 rest days to recoup, fast and detox and attempt to get back to level ground again. Last night I was laid out on the sofa necking cider and cramming chocolate hob nobs into my mouth whilst Sunny in Philadelphia crackled on the monitor and my ex tapped his feet in his computer chair. It was the final scene in a spiral of consumption and intoxication: on fire with emotion and insatiability, bouncing from place to place in the darkness, with knobbly gnarled knees, a scratched face and a progression of shorts and dresses as the backdrop was engulfed by thick hot sunshine, beating down over this metropolis I call home.

Field Day is this week, you’ll be here soon, they’ve been prepping for over a month, as you enter the mile end part of Victoria Park you are greeted by gates and fences for as far as the eye can see. At first it was just the large cocoon like structure they were erecting by the road, which is where I assume you’ll be playing, but now its expansive, the 3 metre tall green fence encompasses the entire length of park that I walk on my way to work. There’s a large screen at the entrance, at first it confused me on Saturday because it was displaying information about Field Day, advising not to buy tickets from touts and that Saturday was sold out, they must have been testing it.

You must travel from sphere to sphere landing in these shrines to music, where so much love and dedication is put into you being there, these structures that take weeks to erect, which only shelter you for a short time, I hope you appreciate that. There has been so much advertising for Field Day, posters seem to grace every part of London that I travel through, by my studio in Clerkenwell, in Hackney Wick as I walk to work, on the walls of the places in East London I’ve been revelling in. When I walk past the posters specifically of you, I touch your face, not because I’m in love with you Nicolas Jaar, you are now a manifestation of freedom to me.

So then, Tuesday, my open studio’s, all around the studio an energy building from the temporary structures being erected in the adjacent car parks, sheds plonked lovingly in the front and a multimedia installation by shazed dawood, arching against the side of the building. It felt exciting, many of my neighbours in the studio expressed surprise at how there seemed to be an anticipation building, a lot of money had gone into Clerkenwell design week, the audience was tidy, well presented in light flowing fabrics and glossy shimmering eye makeup.

I’d been in the studio solidly for 3 days preparing the installation that is my life, gently folding christmas decorations over heaters and sprinkling flowers under chairs, pegging my clothes up overhead. By the evening it was time to let people inside, there had been promise of a set of art based philanthropists coming to the studio, but it never surfaced and although to me this was a matter of easy come easy go I think to others it might have engendered the evening with disappointment. As I surveyed my studio at 6pm I was satisfied with what lay before me, an odd sort of forest populated by these objects that have travelled with me from place to place for so many years, it was poignant and melancholic, a sight we rarely get to see, our lives in all their finery, as decoration, suddenly making the usefulness of everything you’ve ever possessed somehow obsolete.

People came, many friends I’d contacted last minute walked into my museum, took their shoes off and sat with me on the dirty duvet covers and sofa bed which has never served the purpose it was supposed to have had. What became clear and now is startlingly apparent is that I am selling remnants to friends, no collectors or third parties have expressed any interest in buying anything thus far, it’s people that have touched my life somehow who are walking through my doors, to pick up a little memento of our time together. This is heart warming and has given me a new perspective on how my art travels, what it means and to who. I sold more than I was expecting, particularly to one woman who recently sent me a message that spoke to my soul, about what my art meant to her, about how even after fucking 2 cucumbers you still have to do your washing and tidy up. We haven’t spent a lot of time together but she means alot to me.

And I think that’s a large part of what’s happening here, for the first time in months I have the space to reach out to all the people in my life that mean something to me, invite them to come see what I have accumulated and lived with, to purchase any of it if they desire but mostly to use this piece as a backdrop to re establish relationships.

Outside of this Tuesday was a naughty, silly sort of evening, a collection of me and my neighbours convened and regressed to a childlike state. Stealing a box of prosecco and gulping it down on a bench nearby, laughing and behaving with reckless abandon. I paid for the theft the following day, as karmically no bad deed goes unpunished, at least for me anyway, but I also finally got to know the creatives that reside by me a little better and start to build the foundations for friendships that will blossom as time passes.

I wonder if the bank holiday has been a factor in the ensuing debauchery that’s taken place and the hijinks I’ve been running through. It’s not an alien topic in these letters, I’ve addressed it previously, something about bank holiday weekends just always seems fertile and strange.

On Thursday, I sold a picture of my ex husband to a complete stranger, it was one of those images that's burned into my psyche, I remember the weekend I took it as if it’s just passed. He’s lying on a pulled out sofa bed, the covers still lapping over his legs, with the laptop I’m now typing on, perched on him and an ashtray precariously placed on top of it, in his hand is a cigarette, thick plumes of smoke ebbing out of it are illuminated by the light in the background coming from a partially opened window. His face is one I recognise as I’ve seen it so often, he’s rubbing sleep from his eyes and I just know he’s at that brittle stage where he needs to be left alone or he’ll be rude.

It was at my sister and ehr ex husbands house, we went down to see them and walked about the park, drank lots of lager and wine and sat in their studio apartment talking and jesting till the early hours, then he and I went on to Alton Towers and were both to delicate to enjoy any of the rides. So instead we spent the majority of the time huddled together in the rainy gardens in matching cagoules, we won a cuddly toy each, grey and goo, matching seals and stayed in a lovely b&b in the surrounding area, which is leafy and has a fairytale like quality.

I sold the photo for £3.

Spurred on by the emotional discharge of such a transaction I went to meet a friend and go out to Alibi, a fairly notorious club in Dalston, well known for being a bit of a dive bar and for accommodating the surrounding area’s punters once kick out time has occurred. Without fail Alibi has provided me with some unique and bizarre nights and it didn’t disappoint again, we rolled through a series of interested suitors, talking to a kind man who took the time to read the last entry I wrote you, indulging in whatever was on offer and enjoying the attention we received.

Once outside at the end of the night I found myself in the midst of a group of Frenchmen, who I hadn’t seen in the club, always the driving force for travelling onwards to an after party I encouraged them in their pursuit of the next venue and waved goodbye to my friend who disappeared into the night with the kind man. We ended up in the kitchen of a neat anthropologists house, divided into groups, I sat with a visiting financier and heckled his friends for not speaking to the host, I get bossy when I’m drunk. But they wanted to go to bed so then we ended up in Haggerston Park in crisp morning light, on the cycle tracks which I walk past daily. For a while I just ran around the track but gravity intercepted and I fell a few times, they came over to pick me up and, in a feral state I then veered into the bushes alone, allowing the inner beast to take over and guide me, for some reason this is not the first time this has happened in the same park, after a night at Alibi, I guess these whims are somehow guided and we end up repeating ourselves in the most unusual of ways.

Eventually I launched out of a bush, covered in blood from scratches and scrapes, at a lady who was taking her dog for a morning stroll. She was kind and atypical of the area we were in, having lived out her own odd creative life before becoming more settled, we spent a while together, concern rife in her face rather than horror, and then I charged my phone in a plumbing supplies shop and managed to get in touch with the frenchman I’d been with earlier, who had my bag.

He was an unusual and strangely innocent kind of man, in the throes of finding a house to move to as his 3 year relationship had ended due to his careless lifestyle. In his eyes was a gentle acceptance, a total lack of judgement or ego. We went back to the beautiful top floor flat he was staying in and spent several hours enraptured by each other, slept for a bit and had food in a local pub which was a favourite haunt of mine and my exes before we broke up. He looked at me like he was in love with me and I felt enveloped in this and safe, broken from kissing and behaving like a savage in the park it was healing to have this moment with him. Then he went on to a bar and I met my friends and hung out on her stoop listening to music and laughing for a few hours before getting back to my exes and dragging myself to bed.

I was broken on Saturday.

On Sunday I’d kept seeing some characters that exist on the perimeters of my job, I’d never seen them outside of work before, or inside of work for a while either, so seeing them twice in one day from a distance was unusual and leant an odd tint to the day. I was so broken, my face healing from kissing friction burns, my knees covered in deep scrapes, my eyes puffy and delicate, that I’d never of approached them, so instead just waved and wondered what they were upto. My friend came to visit at the end of the shift, to check out the bar I work in, which is going to be the location of a few arts based nights I want to hold and curate. We decided to go out again, the energy of the weekend still pulsing through us.

More random events and switching of locations ensued, meeting people on the canal, going to a warehouse party for a little while, wandering the streets with a horny mancunian boy and taking him to the boat under the bridge to drink my cider, wading through a downpour, powerful heavy rain which cut through the night and somehow perfectly enshrined the hot beauty of the day.

Then taking a taxi to meet my frenchman in Shoreditch at a house party in an expensive place across the road from the church. This frenchman clearly wandered in circles which were wealthier than mine I thought as we sat at another window looking out over the city whilst he despairingly mapped out the details of his finances, he earned 4x the amount I did a month, and why he had no money. Because he kept spending it on trips, parties and the excesses that go alongside such things. He said he wanted to give up but part of me was saddened by that thought, in all truth if he wants to spend his life from party to party dancing and singing songs I don’t know if I’d consider that a waste, he seemed otherwise content with his choices as far as I could tell. Anyway I got back to my exes around 5am on Monday morning, he shouted at me, I wrote you the original draft of this entry, ate crisps, I’ve eaten a lot of crisps this week, and passed out.

Then I crawled out of bed again, somehow managed to put makeup on and get out of the house and to work, fuelling myself on coca cola and alka seltzer. Last night is another story I won’t write about now.

I’m lying here now, fully accepting of the fact that I won’t be getting dressed or leaving the house, content with this and now I’ve written down the vast portion of what’s happened able to see the patterns and just why this week has not been a write off. I’ve been panicking, worried that I won’t sell all of my things, perhaps also spurred on by the fact that I haven’t produced anything this week, which is rare, essentially unheard of, for me. But being an artist is not just centred in the act of making, I remember watching a talk with your father that illustrated this point.

You have to live, observe, digest and distill what’s going on around you. I guess I’m getting better at these days of reflection but have not had a solid moment of living in quite some time, I’ve met so many people in the last few days, have messages and new contacts etched all over my phone and got to spend time with someone totally out of my normal realm who gave me a kind of unconscious care that healed and centred me, despite it being brief.

I’m happy Nicolas, I hope you are to.