#trying to logic myself out of overthinking but its not going well today

[peachyykira]

.

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Let’s talk: RUN Episode 131

by Admin 1

I know I’ve probably said this about literally every episode but this one was so fun! Admin 2 and I were honestly laughing almost the entire time while also trying our best to follow along their “debates” and just taking in all the chaos. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Quick recap: in this episode we’re at the pool that belongs to the same hotel at which they had lunch at the end of the previous episode and the objective is twofold--not get wet and win a debate. That’s basically it, it’s like the mint chocolate debate episode but even more hilarious and with the addition of wet Bangtan.

Something I truly love is how it took vmin exactly 57 seconds (which includes the 18 second long intro) to find some kind of ‘reason’ to hold/shake hands behind JKs back. Because of course they did.

After the whole “mess” that ensued after the Titanic preview picture was posted yesterday, I can basically just say one thing--there was literally no need whatsoever to get all anxious and uncertain about the picture, or anything the shippers made out of it. As always the best course of action, which is the one I usually apply, is waiting until we get the full thing so we have context for what we’re shown in the picture/teaser/scene. It’s like that scene at the end of one of the ITS episodes where Jimin goes to JK to tell him about a supposed leak in his room which was taken way out of context and proportions until we got the next episode a week later and the actual events were completely different from anything and everything that was theorized. 

So, what’s the lesson? Wait until we get the full thing, dear fellow vminnies, that way we can avoid making each other anxious and unsure.

Anyway, let’s get into it by starting with the ‘warm-up’ which consisted of one-on-one “battles” where the members stood on these floating foamy mats being held by two staff members and having to make each other fall into the water by playing the hand pushing game. 

Yoongi VS Jimin -- I like how the two shortest members went against each other, which I’d assume might’ve had something to do with Yoongi’s shoulder and how chances of Jimin hurting him due to his height/size/weight were the smallest as opposed to Namjoon or even Hoseok. Maybe I’m imagining/overthinking things but it seemed like Jimin was a little hesitant/careful in how he approached the game and in the way he touched Yoongi, which honestly is very thoughtful and cute of him if that’s true, considering his shoulder and all. In the end Yoongi, after they basically goofed around more than actually tried to push each other, offers a deal of just doing it once properly, ending in both of them falling in the water since Yoongi leans forward, hugs Jimin and drags him down with him.

Tae VS Hobi -- These two might’ve been the quickest, given how Hobi said he’s scared at least three times and Tae basically use a moment to ‘attack’ where Hobi was distracted by the fact that a moment prior he thought Tae almost would’ve hit him in the face with his forehead on accident. That lucky did not happen, but Hobi did end up in the water and Tae remained on the float and completely dry.

Namjoon VS Seokjin -- Now these two, how can I put my thoughts/feelings into cohesive words and sentences instead of just a long key smash? They were hilarious, and their round definitely took the longest out of all of them, both trying to make the other fall yet simultaneously seeming like they weren’t trying all that hard since neither wanted to land in the water? After all before the game started Seokjin did complain how the RUN crew told him they wouldn’t have to get into the water. And yet, in the end, after a visible moment of contemplation, Namjoon hugs Seokjin (who hugs him back) and they fall into the water together (when I tell you how much I love them, wow).

JK VS Jimin --Here’s where we get the Titanic moment while JK and Jimin stand on the float and are being pulled to the middle of the pool, the members immediately jumping in with Hobi going “Jack, come back” in a breathy voice while Yoongi (?) sings the melody of My Heart Will Go On and everyone is laughing. It was an absolutely hilarious and cute moment. What made me laugh the most during the whole thing were the Jimin heads used to hide whatever, which I as a joke called the “Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra (Head Edition)” while talking to Admin 2. During the game itself Jimin and JK are hilarious, slapping each other’s chests and trying different tricks to make the other fall, showing how amazing their core strength and balance is, but eventually Jimin shoves JKs chest and JK falls into the water, winning the game since Jimin “cheated” and thus lost.

Seokjin VS Tae -- Interesting to note is how Jimin remained in the water and close by while these two were playing. Seokjin and Tae though somehow seemed the most chaotic out of all of them, despite Seokjin offering that they should just do it in one go...which didn’t work out. They leaned into each other twice while laughing before starting to “wrestle” until Tae put his arms around Seokjin’s waist and basically threw him into the water while subsequently being pulled after him and falling in as well. Sometimes I think we forget how strong Tae is (though after his BE_log earlier today I doubt we’ll forget that again any time soon).

Once “warm-up” was done, the members were split into two groups of three while one person, the MC, sat in the middle in a glass box (though missing the front glass panel). The rules were established and we basically figured out that there are water canons in front of the seated members and a bigger one releasing water onto the member sitting in the middle. They got words and things they were not allowed to do/say since otherwise they would get splashed.

Safe to say they all fairly quickly looked even more like very wet puppies. I mean look at Yoongi and his cute curly poodle hair, adorable!

The debate portion itself was about “crunchy or soft cereal”, “eggs of peas on jjajangmyeon” and “firm or soft peaches” and truly more chaotic shouting than actually debating. The team members and the “MC” changed for each round, which lasted 11 minutes each. Who debated what was chosen by the crew (or the MC). My highlights for the cereal debate (besides Seokjin cutely complaining how he prefers his cereal soggy and Namjoon equally cutely telling him to just pretend he likes it crunchy) were Yoongi (who was team soggy cereal) and his argument that since Kendrick Lamar eats soggy cereal, that’s basically the winning argument, Namjoon arguing that since “cereal” and “crunchy” both start with a c that’s the only right answer, and Tae arguing that if you eat chocolate cereal it’ll melt and you’ll additionally get chocolate milk so obviously soggy cereal is better. The jjajangmyeon portion had discussions about prices, as well as Hobi (team peas) arguing he doesn’t like seeing animals in pain (which was quickly countered by JK saying he’d just eaten pork before the episode) and Tae generally being appalled by having to argue in favor of peas since he doesn’t like them yet used the argument that his dad likes them so if you argue against them...well. 

And finally the peaches debate had Tae and his galaxy brain using their Chilsung Cider ads as argument and how the peaches in it were firm since they bounced and thus they are better, which JK tried to counter by pointing out that those were just CGI to which Tae basically said he’s insulting their beautiful ads, how dare. I also love how Jimin, who was on Tae’s team, went along with whatever nonsense argument Tae came up with as though it was the most logical one in the world. Just lovely soulmate things, we love to see it. Speaking of nonsensical arguments, you have to give points to Namjoon for his ability to sound like he’s making perfectly sensible and logical arguments while doing, well, the exact opposite. Or Yoongi who just bs-ed his way through the entire thing while acting totally serious about it.

Can we please have a quick look at the following screenshot:

And now, can we please talk about how everyone is nicely sitting in their designated place with space between them...and then there’s vmin who are like magnets because “Space who? We don’t know her”. 

Admin 2 asked me to add their comment/thought about how it looks juuuuust a little as though vmin may or may not have been holding hands below the table, which, I mean, we’ll never know but, at this point (especially after the BE unit unboxing video) I wouldn’t even be surprised if it were true.

At one point when Seokjin became the MC the water kept on coming and coming and the members were desperate to figure out what was the thing they were doing that caused it. Jimin thought it could be the caps that some of them wore, so without hesitation or question, he took off Tae’s cap (bless Jimin for giving us another view at wet hair Tae, truly) and then, I swear, it looks like he wanted to ruffle Tae’s hair yet just a second before making contact he stops himself and instead turns his hand in like a “I’m presenting some kind of argument” way. Adorable.

A final note goes out to the fact that they are wearing white button downs which, I mean, makes perfect sense I guess? And also how the crew gave them bathrobes so they’d stay warm, I’d assume, yet very quickly those were drenched as well thanks to the water canons so it basically defeated the purpose completely. And yet, despite all the water etc they all look fantastic.

Overall it’s a hilarious episode that’ll give your stomach muscles and lungs an amazing workout. Bangtan were their chaotic, loud, and mischievous selves and honestly, I can’t wait to see what else they’ll debate in the next episode.

[psychedellic-phase]

Fifteen (part 10)

A/N: Part of this chapter is inspired by the song 2 Years by Thomston. Thank you to the lovely anon that told me this song reminded them of this fic! I highly recommend listening to it! 

word count: 3.9k 

tw: mentions of childbirth, slight season 9 spoilers, otherwise fluffy 

masterlist: “A few months later we were in Boston, on that strangulation case. It’s a pretty hard case to forget, I mean, you delivered a baby. A real human baby, that you brought earthside with your own two hands. You delivered him, and she named him after you. Baby Spencer. 

Morgan and I dragged the unsub out into the street, hearing that poor woman scream and cry as you brought her baby into the world, but you did great, and he was beautiful. Just like his namesake. When I walked back inside I saw you give her the baby, and my heart just about melted into a puddle on the floor. You and kids, it just does something to me. It feels like my heart comes out of my body and into your hands like putty. It's an odd feeling, like you’re physically poking around in my chest. In a weird way I’ll miss it. 

Then I saw JJ give you a side hug, and put her arm on your chest. She even leaned into your neck, with a soft, sweet little nuzzle. You probably didn’t notice it, but I did. I always noticed. A million little ways to say ‘I love you’ without actually saying ‘I love you’. Right?

Yet again, I said nothing. I had no logical reason to be worried. She was married. You told me daily how much you loved me, how special I was, how beautiful, how amazing, how lucky you were. It’s a shame you didn’t feel like that at the end. But I made it okay. I told myself I was just overthinking it all, like usual. I buried it all down. Again, and again, and again. 

That night we went to that bar Rossi loves and everyone was happy, talking about how you delivered a baby. 

Alex asked you, “How on earth did you know what to do?” 

You explained how you memorized all the delivery manuals when JJ was pregnant, just in case. I often wonder if you’d do half the things you do for her, if it were for someone else. Or are some things just for JJ?

I just smiled and laughed, still pushing the feelings away. It was a night to celebrate and I was determined to not be a party pooper. Instead, I went the other way. I was the life of that party. We all got on stage and sang ‘Piano man’ karaoke, and if anyone was making love to a tonic and gin that night, it was me. Many, many, tonic and gins. I stumbled into an Uber with you and ended up at home. You helped me into bed. You wiped off my makeup and undressed me, putting one of your large shirts on me, leaving a bottle of water, two advils, and a note that said “i love you, love” for me to see when I woke up. Stuff like that makes me wonder if you’d only ever do some things for me. It sounds selfish, but I hope wiping my makeup off and putting my moisturizer on for me is something reserved for us. I know there are many things I have reserved just for you, Spence. No one will ever be that kind to me again, and that’s a fact.”

Are some things just for JJ? Really? He was irritated for a passing moment, why were you mad about him caring about his best friend? Before he had even met you?

But then that anger was soon replaced with confusion. Why’d you never mention it? In all the fights you had, you never once mentioned JJ. You never once threw the feelings that were so clear to everyone in his face. Why? Why not? 

Every word made him feel like he didn’t really know you, but also made him wonder if you even knew him? Because if you did you would’ve known he did nothing for JJ, but everything for you. 

“I immediately fell asleep.

 I woke up at some point, maybe around four am, and you weren’t in the bed next to me. I remember patting the sheets, looking for you as I usually did at night. To sleep, I needed to feel you pressed up against me. I didn’t. I panicked. I looked at the note, and for half a second I thought you left. It did look a little like a goodbye note, Spence. I yelled your name a few times, and when I didn’t get a response I really started to worry. I got out of bed and stumbled around; my head was still fuzzy. I walked around the house calling your name. You still didn’t answer. I finally found you on the balcony. 

It was warm for April, and you were sitting on a chair in your pajamas, staring at the stars. 

“Talking to the moon again?” I said, and you turned to look at me. 

The moon was a waxing crescent (thank you for that) so I couldn’t see you well. If it had been full, maybe I would’ve seen your sad eyes. 

“Hey, what’re you doing up?” You whispered.

I sat in the other chair, “I woke up and you weren’t there, so I came to find you. You scared me half to death, Reid.”

 I was looking at you but you wouldn’t look at me. I needed you to look at me.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Only if you come with me.” 

I was trying to be funny, but the pit in my stomach was insane. I really felt like I was staring the end in the face. That was the first time I ever saw you like that, completely shut out from me. You were always forthcoming with me, no matter what was going on. Your voice was rough, like you were getting a cold. You cleared your throat. 

“I think I want to stay out here a while longer.”

“Okay, then I’ll stay with you.”

“Y/N...” You were warning me, I should’ve listened. 

I stood up to walk back inside and I patted your shoulder. I disappeared to get a tub of ice cream and two spoons. We both knew your stomach would hurt afterwards, but we didn’t care. The comfort that binging on ice cream when you’re sad brings is well worth a tummy ache. And even in my half drunk brain fog, I could tell you needed it.”

Spencer chuckled, remembering how you always kept two tubs in the freezer “just in case.” Whenever one of you was having one of those days, the other would grab a tub, and you’d sit in silence and eat. That was back when each other’s company was enough. He still kept one tub in his freezer, hoping in some weird way that you’d be back and the two of you could sit and eat in silence, and somehow that would make it all okay. 

“We sat in silence staring at the sky and taking turns grabbing spoonfuls of cookie dough ice cream. It was comfortable, domestic, calm. 

“So, are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

You shook your head, “Nothing’s bothering me.”

“You only talk to the moon when you’re upset, Spence.”

You sighed, knowing I was right. The ice cream was for bad days, but the moon was for when you needed to think. And think alone. You said staring up at the moon helped you feel grounded; it reminded you how important we are. It always reminded me of how small I am, how I am literally a speck of dust on a planet that’s a slightly bigger speck of dust that’s hurling through time and space. It reminds me of how small we all are in the grand scheme of the universe. Then you’d tell me: “Everything that makes up us is from those stars. We’re literally made of stardust.” Then I’d feel important too, because you made me important. I mattered because I was in this place at this time with you. You’d tell me about the big bang and the million miracles that led to us being here, alive in this moment. You’d say it reminded you how lucky you were that you got to exist in this world with me. I don’t know if I believe in God, Spence, but if there is one I thank him for letting me exist at the same time as you, even if it was only for a finite time.”

He had to remind himself to breathe. How could words suffocate? How could ink take his breath away? Spencer wished it was nighttime, so he could talk to the moon again, so he could feel important again, so he could feel lucky. 

“You didn’t answer.

“Was it the case?”

You just nodded slightly, as if to say ‘sort of’. 

“This is literally as good as it can go. We got the guy and you brought someone’s baby into the world. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier ending.”

“No.”

That’s all you said, and I let the silence fester. We both just kept eating the ice cream. After about fifteen minutes you said, “The world looks different from here.”

“From the balcony? Yeah I guess, the city looks small, tiny ant people.”

You chuckled, “No, like from where I am right now in my life. I just see the world different than I did yesterday.”

“And I’m sure we’ll look at it differently again tomorrow.” I was trying to help, but it was 4:30 in the morning and I was still slightly buzzed. No amount of ice cream or an existential crisis was going to get rid of that. 

“I held a human being in my hands as it took its first breaths today, Y/N. I was the first thing he ever saw. I literally held his life in my hands.” 

“I know. Maybe you should take up obstetrics.” Another failed attempt at a joke.

 “It just made me think.”

“About what?”

“I just, I always thought I wanted kids,” you said it doubtfully and with a shrug. You looked at me in my eyes finally, and wow did it hurt. 

“But now I’m not so sure.”

I’m pretty sure my jaw almost dropped. How did delivering a baby make you no longer want a village of kids on Christmas morning? I thought it’d have the opposite effect. I thought it’d ignite your baby fever, like it ignited mine. My heart sank, “Why?” 

“I-I don’t know.”

I tried, again, to lighten the mood, “Is it because of the actual birth part? Because I promise I can handle it. No epidurals for me.”

You half smiled, “No, no it’s not that.”“Well then what is it?” I had this dreadful feeling that you were going to tell me that it was me. That I was the reason. That you wanted kids, but you didn’t want them with me.

 “How am I supposed to pass on these genes?”

“Your super smart, tall, handsome, magnificent genius genes? C’mon Spence,” I scoffed. 

“I meant schizophrenia.”

The air went cold between us. 

“You don’t have it though.”

“Having a grandparent with the disease increases your chances of developing it by 5%.”

“Yeah, and I have bad eyesight and terrible allergies and had braces as a kid, which our kids will inherit.” 

“You don’t understand what I mean.”

I rolled my eyes, “No, Love, I don’t. But I do know that you can’t be scared of what ifs.”

You ran your hands through your hair, and just groaned. You sighed, but I kept rambling. I blame my loose lips on Rossi. He kept buying, and I kept drinking.

“And there’s so many what ifs. What if they do get schizophrenia? But what if they don’t and you didn’t have kids because you were scared?”

“It’s not just that it’s—”

“It’s what Spencer?”

“I-I didn’t have a dad! I don’t know how to be one.”

We sat in silence. I didn’t know what to say. 

“I just don’t think it’s for me anymore.”

I felt tears sting my eyes. If we weren’t on the same page, this conversation was going to end horribly. “

But if you don’t want them then—“ I stopped and shakily wiped my face. 

“Then what?” You sounded scared.

I stopped myself from saying something that I’d regret. I wanted to say ‘then I can’t do this.’ Thank god I didn’t. 

“I just, I always thought my kids would be your kids too. I don’t think I want to be a parent if you aren’t there with me.”

Your eyes were shining from the tears and the sliver of moon when they met mine, “Really?”“

Yeah, I’ve told you this a million times, love. You will be the best father because you know what it’s like to not have one. You become better than the people before you.”

You dropped the spoon into the almost empty tub, “I know, I know. I just got in my head about it all.”

“Stop thinking about years ahead, Spence. All you have to think about is right now. I know it feels like we’re running out of time, but don’t rush life.”

You smiled watery and I went to sit on your lap. You rubbed your hand against the small of my back and we watched the sun start to rise. We were done talking to the moon. I dragged you inside, the new day’s sun was coming in through the windows. 

“Do you really think you’re running out of time?” You asked me, holding me close.

 I nodded, “Yeah. I always feel like I am. I thought I’d have two kids and a golden retriever by thirty-one, but I have none of that and I’m getting close to thirty-two. Twenty-four hours just feels shorter and shorter everyday.”

“That’s because each day is a smaller and smaller fraction of our memories. Time feels quicker and quicker every day.”

There you were. There was my love. My you. 

I squeezed you, “I know. It’s just scary. I feel like I’m behind.”

“I feel like that a lot too. You know I thought I’d cure schizophrenia by twenty-five?”

I smiled, “Even you can’t do everything, love.”

“Do you want to catch up?”

“How so?”

“We could get a golden retriever.”

I laughed, “Sure, and next you’ll be saying ‘let’s have a baby.’”

You shrugged and swooped me in front of you, “Why not? Me, you, a baby, sounds pretty good.” 

You said it as a joke, but it didn’t feel like one. “

You mean that?” I looked up at you and could see that longing in your eyes. You could see it in mine too. Always so pensive, Spencer Reid. 

“I didn’t mean like right now, but we can soon. We have to get married first.”

I rolled my eyes, “Who says we need to get married first? JJ and Will didn’t get married until Henry was four. They’re perfect.”

“Henry wasn’t planned.”

“And?”

“And, I’d like to marry you before knocking you up,” you said it like a joke again, peppering me in kisses. 

“We don’t need a stupid piece of paper from the government, Love.”

“So you don’t want to marry me?” There was amusement in your voice. 

“Oh, I want to marry you. I want to marry you so hard, Spencer Reid.”

We laughed, “I want to marry you so hard too.”

You kissed my forehead, and then my lips before moving away from me. 

“So, we both know we want to marry each other and we just agreed to have a baby, like soon?” I clarified. 

“Yes. We did. So, what’s stopping us from doing it right now?” You started milling around in the book case, looking for something. “

Don’t you dare get down on one knee right now, Spencer Reid. I told you already, I am not getting engaged without my nails done.”

You smiled, “I wasn’t! I wasn’t! I was just going to put on some music.” You held up a CD, and I smiled. You came back and pulled me close, and we started to sway back and forth. I always wanted to dance in the kitchen with the love of my life. That morning I did.

After the song ended, we went up to bed finally. I remember laying down and kissing you, going to the place we usually went. Afterwards, you held me against your chest again, “Did you mean it?”

I nodded, “Every word.”

You sighed happily, “So did I.”

I looked up at you, grinning, “So does that mean puppy Reid and baby Reid are coming soon?”

You rolled your eyes, “Puppy Reid, I can handle. But baby Reid is after Mrs. Reid. Call me old fashioned, but that’s how I want to do this.”

I toyed with your hair, “I can handle that.”

While I was packing, I found the CD you were rummaging for. I put it on and danced around the kitchen again. It wasn’t the same. ‘Your Song’ by Elton John is a love song, and love songs just hurt when you’re alone. I swayed in the sunlight, imagining you were swaying with me, talking about having a baby and getting married. I miss that feeling. I miss talking to the moon. I miss ice cream. I miss dancing in the kitchen to Elton John. I miss baggy tee shirts. I miss little notes. I miss the way “How wonderful life is when you’re in the world” felt when I was in your arms. I miss late night kissing. I miss the way you feel with me. I miss us. I miss you, but I miss that you. 

You’re probably wondering what your souvenir from that night is. I thought about giving you the CD, I thought about giving you some ice cream and a spoon, I even thought about giving you the moon, but I decided on the note. “I love you, love.” 

The note was badly wrinkled and his pencil chicken scratch was faded with time. He smiled, remembering the hundreds of notes he probably left you. They always ended in “I love you” with a little doodled heart. He remembered dancing in the sunlight and looking at engagement rings and rescue dogs. He missed you, and not just the version of you from that memory. He missed the version of you from the end. He hated that you didn’t miss that him too.  

“I thought going through all of this would bring me some closure, and now that we’re halfway through I realize that was a mistake. Instead of stitching me up, this opened wounds I thought I had long since healed. This brought it all back. I hope this doesn’t do that for you. I hope it’s the period on the end of this run on sentence. I hope this is closure for you. We both need that.”

He took the letter and the note and walked to his bed, flopping on it and staring at the ceiling fan. It was soothing, in a weird way. He fell into a trance. 

His phone ringing tried to snap him out of it. He didn’t reach for it and waited until the vibrations died. They came again, and he forced himself to look at it. 

JJ. 

Great, first Derek, now JJ. He knew they were just being good friends, but it was getting tiring. He wanted to just be alone, and he especially didn’t want to hear from JJ. His relationship with her was a point of contention with you and he didn’t even know. Between what he had just read and the photo from her wedding, all the old feelings he had for her were brought back to the surface and made him feel gross. He now realized the way your face would turn sour whenever he would pick JJ up in a spin and your off remarks when he’d mention going out with her. In hindsight, you were being jealous but somewhat reasonable. Before he met you, he wondered if he was just waiting for an alternate universe where he could be with JJ. One where there was no Will and no bad Redskins date, where he could look at her without it hurting. Now he knew he’d only be waiting for an alternate universe where he could be with you. 

The phone buzzed again and he finally decided to grab it and answer. 

“Hello?”His voice was groggy and hoarse from not being used. 

“Spence? Hey, it’s me, I just wanted to see if you were okay?”

He didn’t answer, eyes still trained on the fan. 

She cleared her throat, “I just talked to Derek and...”

“What’d he say?”

“He told me about the letters, little dramatic huh?”

He could hear her roll her eyes. JJ was the sweetest person alive, but when it came to Spencer the claws could come out. 

“Yeah, I’m up to number ten,” he kept his voice steady and almost bored, not wanting to reveal anything to her. 

“Out of how many?”

“Fifteen.”

Spencer stood up and walked to the window by the chess table.

 “How are you doing?”

“Did you know every seven to ten years our cells regenerate completely?” Spencer spoke into the phone, staring out the window. It was mid afternoon by now and the snow had stopped. The cars on the road had ruined the innocent white snow, leaving dark gray slush in their wake.

“Every cell?” JJ said back, the phone making her voice crackly and hard to hear. 

“Yeah, skin cells live two to three weeks,” He swallowed thickly, “So the skin she has right now is skin I’ve never touched. Those cells don’t know who I am. My lips are already on the second cycle. They’ve never kissed her. Eventually I’ll have a body that doesn’t recognize hers and she’ll have a body that recognizes someone who isn’t me.”

JJ didn’t speak, just sighed, “You know that isn’t true.”

“It is, Jennifer,” He ran his hands through his hair, “I’m going to be stuck here and she’s going to move on and it’s killing me.” His voice cracked at the end.

 “Then don’t think of it as being stuck, think of it as a turning point. You get to choose a direction now. You’re at a crossroads, Spence, you can choose to move on.” 

She sounded earnest and he knew she was right, but he couldn’t help the feeling. It’s like he was in quicksand and no one could pull him out. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled. 

JJ sighed, “Do you want to talk about the letters?”

“No,” he said harsher than he intended, “I just want to finish this and then figure out what I’m supposed to do.”

“Well, if you need any help, you know where to find me.”

He nodded as if she could see him and whispered, “Bye.”

He hung up before she could respond. He threw the phone on the window sill and walked to the bathroom, splashing cold water over his face. He stared at his own reflection in the mirror. It looked foreign. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, his skin looked pale, and his hair looked like he had just rolled out of bed, which he kind of had. He felt like his whole body was bruised. He toyed with his hair to get it to a tolerable place and sat back down on his bed, grabbing the tenth letter.

part 11!

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[deadmandairyland]

I’m watching reviews of the Resident Evil 3 remake. From what I’ve seen so far, general consensus seems to be that it’s good, but not as good as the RE2 remake, and probably not worth buying at full price. One common criticism was that they left out a bunch of stuff the original had. From what I heard, they pretty much cut out puzzles from the game (and to be fair it’s kinda silly that an entire city would require solving the soup cans to get through), which I think might be the reason why iconic locations like the clock tower were cut. But that’s still a shame because while I haven’t played the game myself yet I cannot imagine this game without the clock tower. But I’ll reserve my judgment for when I play the game myself, which I probably will eventually, if only because I have a big collection of RE games on my PS4 that is distinctively missing a 3 and it’s bugging the hell out of me.

But since I’ve already seen comments about this remake possibly being a step backward compared to the RE2 remake, I feel like now is a good time to make a post that I wanted to make for a while but didn’t really have the motivation to make until now. Because while I wasn’t as hyped about an RE3 remake as everyone else was, I couldn’t deny that I wanted it to happen... because then it would mean that there might even be a Code: Veronica remake, which was an idea I was actually more excited for.

Though I do love RE3, Code: Veronica holds a special place in my heart. It is what first got me interested in the horror genre as a whole. At the time I was--and, let’s face it, I still am--a bit squeamish, so horror didn’t really interest me until I--not even joking--looked up the IMDB page of one of the voice actors from a cartoon I was into at the time and found out he had a role in a Resident Evil game, and I looked up clips from it, and I saw this cutscene and I was like “Wow, I really like this.” ...And no, not because of the naked woman, I promise you.

But enough about all that. This post is already getting long and I haven’t even gotten to what this post is about: I want to share what I would like to see in a Code: Veronica remake.

(I’ll try to keep this brief)

First off, one thing that the RE2 remake was highly praised for was how streamlined everything was. The layout of the police station made a bit more logical sense (adding stairs in the main hall helped) and placement of items was done in such a way that backtracking didn’t feel like as much of a chore. I feel like this last bit is especially important because if there’s one thing Code: Veronica is criticized for, it’s how ridiculous the backtracking is... and I have to agree. Now, granted, I do like some of the ideas CV threw around--the metal detector and the optional stuff like running back to the solitary cell to give Rodrigo medicine come to mind--but there were times where the mandatory backtracking got in the way of the story being told and I think that’s the main reason why I want to see a remake of this game.

Because think about it. In the first RE game, what is everything leading up to? What do all the files and backstory of the game lead you toward? The laboratory under the mansion, right? Same with RE2: everything in the game leads up to the laboratory. Now to be fair these are endgame areas, so backtracking out of them would be kinda silly anyway, but I’m not bringing them up because they’re endgame areas. These locations are built up to through the plot and the files you find throughout the game. Imagine if after you reached the laboratory in RE1, you found a key that you needed to unlock a door all the way back in the guardhouse, and you had to do all sorts of other shit before you could finish the laboratory. Even if it wasn’t the final area of the game, having to backtrack out of it when there’s so much build up for it would ruin the flow of the game, right? So let it be clear that this is not an endgame issue, but rather a story flow issue:

Once you reach the private residence, you should never have to backtrack to another location on Rockfort Island.

Now, granted, the developers had enough foresight to realize that once you reach a certain area in the Ashfords’ mansion and hear this song, you are no longer required to go anywhere else on the island until it’s about to explode, because they knew that going back to bumfuck elsewhere at this point would have really killed the downward spiral Claire has become unfortunate enough to get caught up in. However, I feel like they didn’t go far enough with it. I personally feel that as soon as you walk through the front doors and hear THIS song, you should never have to go back to the prison or unlock anymore rooms in the palace! That should all be over and done with by this point! Because like the laboratories in previous games, every file, every cutscene, every fucked up thing you see in the prison, literally everything up until that point in the game is building up to this fucking house and the secrets within. It should be a point of no return up until the place starts to fucking explode.

Second, either make Chris’s segment of the game shorter or give him someone to interact with. That’s the unfortunate thing about Chris’s portion of Code: Veronica. Say what you will about Steve and Alfred, but at least Claire is interacting with them regularly throughout her portion of the game. Cutscenes can do wonders with breaking up monotony; without them, the game’s basically just all fetch quests. Honestly, while I do think it’s a shame that Chris only got one chapter in Darkside Chronicles, I understand why he was only give the one chapter: the meat of the story happens in Claire’s segment of the game. That being said, I do hope they would consider going with the second option before the first. There are characters Chris interacts with in the game; he just doesn’t interact with them enough. Wesker is more of a behind-the-scenes villain than Alfred, and Alexia sadly doesn’t really do much. Giving both villains more to do would greatly enhance Chris’s part of the story.

Now that the gameplay stuff is out of the way, it’s time to address the elephant in the room: Alfred. Honestly, I have no idea how they would portray Alfred in today’s political climate. I don’t really want them to hold back with him, because he’s basically a walking homage to classic horror villain tropes and he has the potential to be a very serious and dangerous villain, but I get the feeling that no matter what Capcom decides to do with him, either they’ll get a lot of backlash for transphobia or making the mentally ill look like Hitler, or they’ll get a lot of backlash for pandering to SJWs and making light of prison camps by pulling back their punches with the original Korekiyo Shinguji. I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking things, but I’ve been on Tumblr for a long time and I’ve seen some crazy shit on here (and Twitter... and YouTube... and 4chan... especially 4chan) over the years, so I can see literally any of these scenarios happening. Personally, though, I do hope their portrayal of him (including how the other characters view him) is closer to the Darkside Chronicles version than the Code: Veronica version, if only because I’d rather the protagonists feel bad for him than be like “Man, I know you’ve murdered a ton of people and might have a thing for your sister, but God forbid you crossdress, I mean that shit’s just fucking weird.” Yeah, that was pretty bad, not gonna lie.

Well, so much for keeping it brief. But that’s basically all I can think of off the top of my head for what I would like to see in a Code: Veronica remake. That and being able to see Rockfort Island in all its fucked up glory in fabulous HD and with a free camera, that’s be sweet.

[dxmedstudent]

On Thyroids and life plans...

In response to this ask post in which I talked about my health; specifically the potential for thyroid issues and their potential effects on fertility: garra-of-da-funk said:  Hope your health is okay! Don’t worry, you’ll find someone who loves you exactly the way you are!  

Aww Thank you! That’s very sweet of you to say.  I feel lucky; my health could be a lot worse, and the health issues I have currently are manageable if occasionally a nuisance. For the most part, I can live life as I want to, and that’s something I’m grateful for.  

This is rather a personal post, so it’s behind a cut because I’d rather the full post wasn’t reblogged (replies are fine).

My thyroid and its potential effect on my fertility  is really an issue for Future DX somepoint further down the line (and hopefully never!), and I don’t know what will happen with that; it’s the uncertainty sometimes that makes things difficult. Knowing something is definite means you can mourn it and then plan for it. Knowing something might screw up further down the line? Completely out of your control? I feel that’s harder for you to get your head around.

My family, rather sensibly, advise me to take one step at a time; there’s a good chance it may never even be an issue. They think I just need to focus on what I’m doing right now and see what happens when it happens; because after all, it’s not certain that my thyroid will mess up, or that my fertility will be affected; there’s a good chance that nothing might happen. But I’m a medic who overthinks things, and I always end up mourning things early. I think for me, acknowledging the possibility now was necessary for me to deal with it and make peace with the uncertainty, so that I don’t stress over this for the next 10 years. I’m feeling much better about it now that I’ve had some time to process things, and though it made me really sad at the time, it doesn’t preoccupy me at present. Thank you for your encouragement. It’s early days, but I’m seeing someone nice who so far is taking the whole dating-a-busy-scatterbrained-medic thing in their stride. He knows about the thyroid situation, and would probably give similarly sensible advice and be supportive if I talked about the potential ramifications on fertility (I touched on it, but haven’t discussed it in detail), because we’ve been supportive through each other’s ups and downs so far and he’s a kind person who cares about my feelings. But I just don’t feel that’s a topic to dwell on together, yet. It’s too theoretical and too far down the line to dwell on it this early on, given that we’re nowhere near a stage where having kids is even on the horizon. I wouldn’t want anyone dating me to feel pressured into having kids really early, and I myself don’t feel that I’d be ready for kids in the immediate future, anyway; I’d need to feel more settled at work, and I’d need to feel that I was with the right person and it was the right time. I’ve spent the past 17 or so years confounding my relatives by not rushing things, and I have no plans to make any panic-stricken decisions on the baby front. My implant buddy is staying firmly embedded in my arm until it’s the right time for everyone.

So the only thing I can really do right now is keep dating at a pace we both feel comfortable with, have fun and see what happens. I just have to make peace with the fact that taking my time to get to know people, and making sure I’m with the right person and have kids at the right time might mean that it doesn’t happen for me biologically. Life comes with no guarantees, for me or for anyone else; and that hurts and is scary to admit, but you just have to take things one step at a time. Right now, I’m enjoying where things are going, and I’m happy.

I touched on this in a conversation with a close friend today. But I think inherently part of the problem is that as medics, we see the worst. The rare cases where things go really bad. The cases where young people face things they shouldn’t have to face. We see bad things happen to good people, all the time. And it skews our perception of reality. I am inherently an optimist who wants to see the best in things. But my world is dark and full of scary things, and that means that sometimes life itself looks pretty scary.  So it’s not that I think I don’t deserve happiness, or that good things can’t come to me; I don’t think I’m undeserving or repulsive or unloveable. Logically I’m a perfectly average person with an average chance at being happy and there’s probably someone out there who could enjoy being with me. I don’t find that inherently hard to believe. I have friends who are happily married and lots of people out there seem to be happy. But though I’ve seen friends luck out in relationships, but I’ve also seen others struggle with problem relationship afte problem relationship, so I know that there’s no guarantee that just because things start off well, that things will continue nicely. I don’t relish the potental for getting my heart broken, but you can’t achieve meaningful relationships without that risk. To paraphrase a well-known quote, my heart may be safe as a ship in harbour whilst I’m single, but that’s not what ships (or hearts) are for. I’m surrounded by constant reminders that bad things happen, and therefore I can find it hard to believe good things will come my way, or bad things won’t happen, because so much of what I see is personal tragedy and hardship. I realise that I’m perfectly ordinary. And bad things can happen to perfectly ordinary people. Even if they work hard. Even if they are optimistic. Even if they try their best. I’ve had two cancer scares in the space of a year (both negative, thankfully), which is probably what’s set this off, because it only brought into relief that health is fragile, and none of us are guaranteed a disease-free life. So although it’s perfectly possible I stay relatively well, end up happy with someone nice and have kids and live a decent life in a specialty I love, it’s also possible that I come down with something dreadful, can’t find a relationship that works, or end up infertile before 40 in a specialty I hate. Logically, both aren’t equally likely, but because I see bad things happen to perfectly nice people a lot, I find it hard to put it into perspective because my experience is skewed. And although most of the time I’m good at grounding myself (the benefits of overthinking things your entire life) lately, with the health scares, it just got harder to think optimistically about my future.

I think I’ll need to work on a bit of CBT to put those thoughts into perspective and to focus on the positive things that might happen.

[ciathyzareposts]

Return to Zork

Where should we mark the beginning of the full-motion-video era, that most extended of blind alleys in the history of the American games industry? The day in the spring of 1990 that Ken Williams, founder and president of Sierra On-Line, wrote his latest editorial for his company’s seasonal newsletter might be as good a point as any. In his editorial, Williams coined the term “talkies” in reference to an upcoming generation of games which would have “real character voices and no text.” The term was, of course, a callback to the Hollywood of circa 1930, when sound began to come to the heretofore silent medium of film. Computer games, Williams said, stood on the verge of a leap that would be every bit as transformative, in terms not only of creativity but of profitability: “How big would the film industry be today if not for this step?”

According to Williams, the voice-acted, CD-based version of Sierra’s King’s Quest V was to become the games industry’s The Jazz Singer. But voice acting wasn’t the only form of acting which the games of the next few years had in store. A second transformative leap, comparable to that made by Hollywood when film went from black and white to color, was also waiting in the wings to burst onto the stage just a little bit later than the first talkies. Soon, game players would be able to watch real, human actors right there on their monitor screens.

As regular readers of this site probably know already, the games industry’s Hollywood obsession goes back a long way. In 1982, Sierra was already advertising their text adventure Time Zone with what looked like a classic “coming attractions” poster; in 1986, Cinemaware was founded with the explicit goal of making “interactive movies.” Still, the conventional wisdom inside the industry by the early 1990s had shifted subtly away from such earlier attempts to make games that merely played like movies. The idea was now that the two forms of media would truly become one — that games and movies would literally merge. “Sierra is part of the entertainment industry — not the computer industry,” wrote Williams in his editorial. “I always think of books, records, films, and then interactive films.” These categories defined a continuum of increasingly “hot,” increasingly immersive forms of media. The last listed there, the most immersive medium of all, was now on the cusp of realization. How many people would choose to watch a non-interactive film when they had the opportunity to steer the course of the plot for themselves? Probably about as many as still preferred books to movies.

Not all that long after Williams’s editorial, the era of the full-motion-video game began in earnest. The first really prominent exemplar of the species was ICOM Simulations’s Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series in 1992, which sent you wandering around Victorian London collecting clues to a mystery from the video snippets that played every time you visited a relevant location. The first volume of this series alone would eventually sell 1 million copies as an early CD-ROM showcase title. The following year brought Return to Zork, The 7th Guest, and Myst as three of the five biggest games of the year; all three of these used full-motion video to a greater or lesser extent. (Myst used it considerably less than the other two, and, perhaps not coincidentally, is the member of the trio that holds up by far the best today.) With success stories like those to look to, the floodgates truly opened in 1994. Suddenly every game-development project — by no means only adventure games — was looking for ways to shoehorn live actors into the proceedings.

But only a few of the full-motion-video games that followed would post anything like the numbers of the aforementioned four games. That hard fact, combined with a technological counter-revolution in the form of 3D graphics, would finally force a reckoning with the cognitive dissonance of trying to build a satisfying interactive experience by mixing and matching snippets of nonmalleable video. By 1997, the full-motion-video era was all but over. Today, few things date a game more instantly to a certain window of time than grainy video of terrible actors flickering over a background of computer-generated graphics. What on earth were people thinking?

Most full-motion-video games are indeed dire, but they’re going to be with us for quite some time to come as we continue to work our way through this history. I wish I could say that Activision’s Return to Zork, my real topic for today, was one of the exceptions to the rule of direness. Sadly, though, it isn’t.

In fact, let me be clear right now: Return to Zork is a terrible adventure game. Under no circumstances should you play it, unless to satisfy historical curiosity or as a source of ironic amusement in the grand tradition of Ed Wood. And even in these special cases, you should take care to play it with a walkthrough in hand. To do anything else is sheer masochism; you’re almost guaranteed to lock yourself out of victory within the first ten minutes, and almost guaranteed not to realize it until many hours later. There’s really no point in mincing words here: Return to Zork is one of the absolute worst adventure-game designs I’ve ever seen — and, believe me, I’ve seen quite a few bad ones.

Its one saving grace, however, is that it’s terrible in a somewhat different way from the majority of terrible full-motion-video adventure games. Most of them are utterly bereft of ideas beyond the questionable one at their core: that of somehow making a game out of static video snippets. You can almost see the wheels turning desperately in the designers’ heads as they’re suddenly confronted with the realization that, in addition to playing videos, they have to give the player something to actually do. Beyond Zork, on the other hand, is chock full of ideas for improving upon the standard graphic-adventure interface in ways that, on the surface at any rate, allow more rather than less flexibility and interactivity. Likewise, even the trendy use of full-motion video, which dates it so indelibly to the mid-1990s, is much more calculated than the norm among its contemporaries.

Unfortunately, all of its ideas are undone by a complete disinterest in the fundamentals of game design on the part of the novelty-seeking technologists who created it. And so here we are, stuck with a terrible game in spite of it all. If I can’t quite call Return to Zork a noble failure — as we’ll see, one of its creators’ stated reasons for making it so callously unfair is anything but noble — I can at least convince myself to call it an interesting one.

When Activision decided to make their follow-up to the quickie cash-in Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 a more earnest, better funded stab at a sequel to a beloved Infocom game, it seemed logical to find themselves a real Infocom Implementor to design the thing. They thus asked Steve Meretzky, whom they had just worked with on Leather Goddesses 2, if he’d like to design a new Zork game for them as well. But Meretzky hadn’t overly enjoyed trying to corral Activision’s opinionated in-house developers from a continent away last time around; this time, he turned them down flat.

Meretzky’s rejection left Activision without a lot of options to choose from when it came to former Imps. A number of them had left the games industry upon Infocom’s shuttering three years before, while, of those that remained, Marc Blank, Mike Berlyn, Brian Moriarty, and Bob Bates were all employed by one of Activison’s direct competitors. Activision therefore turned to Doug Barnett, a freelance artist and designer who at been active in the industry for the better part of a decade; his most high-profile design gig to date had been Cinemaware’s Lords of the Rising Sun. But he had never designed a traditional puzzle-oriented adventure game, as one can perhaps see all too well in the game that would result from his partnership with Activision. He also didn’t seem to have a great deal of natural affinity for Zork. In the lengthy set of notes and correspondence relating to the game’s development which has been put online by The Zork Library, a constant early theme on Activision’s part is the design’s lack of “Zorkiness.” “As it stands, the design constitutes more of a separate and unrelated story, rather than a sequel to the Zork series,” they wrote at one point. “It was noted that ‘Zork’ is the name of a vast ancient underground empire, yet Return to Zork takes place in a mostly above-ground environment.”

In fairness to Barnett, Zork had always been more of a state of mind than a coherent place. With the notable exception of Steve Meretzky, everyone at Infocom had been wary of overthinking a milieu that had originally been plucked out of the air more or less at random. In comparison to other shared worlds — even other early computer-game worlds, such as the Britannia of Richard Garriott’s Ultima series — there was surprisingly little there there when it came Zork: no well-established geography, no well-established history which everybody knew — and, most significantly of all, no really iconic characters which simply had to be included. At bottom, Zork boiled down to little more than a modest grab bag of tropes which lived largely in the eye of the beholder: the white house with a mailbox, grues, Flood Control Dam #3, Dimwit Flathead, the Great Underground Empire itself. And even most of these had their origin stories in the practical needs of an adventure game rather than any higher world-building purpose. (The Great Underground Empire, for example, was first conceived as an abandoned place not for any literary effect but because living characters are hard to implement in an adventure game, while the detritus they leave behind is relatively easy.)

That said, there was a distinct tone to Zork, which was easier to spot than it was to describe or to capture. Barnett’s design missed this tone, even as it began with the gleefully anachronistic, seemingly thoroughly Zorkian premise of casting the player as a sweepstakes winner on an all-expenses-paid trip to the idyllic Valley of the Sparrows, only to discover it has turned into the Valley of the Vultures under the influence of some pernicious, magical evil. Barnett and Activision would continue to labor mightily to make Return to Zork feel like Zork, but would never quite get there.

By the summer of 1992, Barnett’s design document had already gone through several revisions without entirely meeting Activision’s expectations. At this point, they hired one Eddie Dornbrower to take personal charge of the project in the role of producer. Like Barnett, Dornbrower had been working in the industry for quite some time, but had never worked on an adventure game; he was best known for World Series Major League Baseball on the old Intellivision console and Earl Weaver Baseball on computers. Dornbrower gave the events of Return to Zork an explicit place in Zorkian history — some 700 years after Infocom’s Beyond Zork — and moved a big chunk of the game underground to remedy one of his boss’ most oft-repeated objections to the existing design.

More ominously, he also made a comprehensive effort to complicate Barnett’s puzzles, based on feedback from players and reviewers of Leather Goddesses 2, who were decidedly unimpressed with that game’s simple-almost-to-the-point-of-nonexistence puzzles. The result would be the mother of all over-corrections — a topic we’ll return to later.

Unlike Leather Goddess 2, whose multimedia ambitions had led it to fill a well-nigh absurd 17 floppy disks, Return to Zork had been planned almost from its inception as a product for CD-ROM, a technology which, after years of false promises and setbacks, finally seemed to be moving toward a critical mass of consumer uptake. In 1992, full-motion video, CD-ROM, and multimedia computing in general were all but inseparable concepts in the industry’s collective mind. Activision thus became one of the first studios hire a director and actors and rent time on a sound stage; the business of making computer games had now come to involve making movies as well. They even hired a professional Hollywood screenwriter to punch up the dialog and make it more “cinematic.”

In general, though, while the computer-games industry was eager to pursue a merger with Hollywood, the latter was proving far more skeptical. There was still little money in computer games by comparison with movies, and there was very little prestige — rather the opposite, most would say — in “starring” in a game. The actors which games could manage to attract were therefore B-listers at best. Return to Zork actually collected a more accomplished — or at least more high-profile — cast than most. Among them were Ernie Lively, a veteran supporting player best known to a generation of ten-year-old boys as Cooter, the mechanic from The Dukes of Hazzard; his daughter Robyn Lively, fresh off a six-episode stint as a minor character on David Lynch’s prestigious critic’s darling Twin Peaks; Jason Hervey, who was still playing older brother Wayne on the long-running coming-of-age sitcom The Wonder Years; and Sam Jones, whose big shot at leading-man status had come and gone when he starred in the dreadful Flash Gordon film of 1980.

If the end result would prove less than Oscar-worthy, it’s for the most part not cringe-worthy either. After all, the cast did consist entirely of acting professionals, which is more than one can say for many productions of this ilk — and certainly more than one can say for the truly dreadful voice acting in Leather Goddess of Phobos 2, Activision’s previous attempt at a multimedia adventure game. While they were hampered by the sheer unfamiliarity of talking directly “to” the invisible player of the game — as Ernie Lively put it, “there’s no one to act off of” — they did a decent job with the slight material they had to work with.

The fact that they were talking to the player rather than acting out scenes with one another actually speaks to a degree of judiciousness in the use of full-motion video on Activision’s part. Rather than attempting to make an interactive movie in the most literal sense — by having a bunch of actors, one of them representing the protagonist, act out each of the player’s choices — Activision went for a more thoughtful mixed-media approach that could, theoretically anyway, eliminate most of the weaknesses of the typical full-motion-video adventure game. For the most part, only conversations involved the use of full-motion video; everything else was rendered by Activision’s pixel artists and 3D modelers in conventional computer graphics. The protagonist wasn’t shown at all: at a time when the third-person view that was the all but universal norm in adventure games, Activision opted for a first-person view.

The debate over whether an adventure-game protagonist ought to be a blank state which the player can fill with her own personality or an established character which the player merely guides and empathizes with was a longstanding one even at the time when Return to Zork was being made. Certainly Infocom had held rousing internal debates on the subject, and had experimented fairly extensively with pre-established protagonists in some of their games. (These experiments sometimes led to rousing external debates among their fans, most notably in the case of the extensively characterized and tragically flawed protagonist of Infidel, who meets a nasty if richly deserved end no matter what the player does.) The Zork series, however, stemmed from an earlier, simpler time in adventure games than the rest of the Infocom catalog, and the “nameless, faceless adventurer,” functioning as a stand-in for the player herself, had always been its star. Thus Activision’s decision not to show the player’s character in Return to Zork, or indeed to characterize her in any way whatsoever, is a considered one, in keeping with everything that came before.

In fact, the protagonist of Return to Zork never actually says anything. To get around the need, Activision came up with a unique attitude-based conversation engine. As you “talk” to other characters, you choose from three stances — threatening, interested, or bored — and listen only to your interlocutors’ reactions. Not only does your own dialog go unvoiced, but you don’t even see the exact words you use; the game instead lets you imagine your own words. Specific questions you might wish to ask are cleverly turned into concrete physical interactions, something games do much better than abstract conversations. As you explore, you have a camera with which to take pictures of points of interest. During conversations, you can show the entries from your photo album to your interlocutor, perhaps prompting a reaction. You can do the same with objects in your inventory, locations on the auto-map you always carry with you, or even the tape recordings you automatically make of each interaction with each character.

So, whatever else you can say about it, Return to Zork is hardly bereft of ideas. William Volk, the technical leader of the project, was well up on the latest research into interface design being conducted inside universities like MIT and at companies like Apple. Many such studies had concluded that, in place of static onscreen menus and buttons, the interface should ideally pop into existence just where and when the user needed it. The result of such thinking in Return to Zork is a screen with no static interface at all; it instead pops up when you click on an object with which you can interact. Since it doesn’t need the onscreen menu of “verbs” typical of contemporaneous Sierra and LucasArts adventure games, Return to Zork can give over the entirety of the screen to its graphical portrayal of the world.

In addition to being a method of recapturing screen real estate, the interface was conceived as a way to recapture some of the sense of boundless freedom which is such a characteristic of parser-driven text adventures — a sense which can all too easily become lost amidst the more constrained interfaces of their graphical equivalent. William Volk liked to call Return to Zork‘s interface a “reverse parser”: clicking on a “noun” in the environment or in your inventory yields a pop-up menu of “verbs” that pertain to it. Taking an object in your “hand” and clicking it on another one yields still more options, the equivalent of commands to a parser involving indirect as well as direct objects. In the first screen of the game, for example, clicking the knife on a vulture gives options to “show knife to vulture,” “throw knife at vulture,” “stab vulture with knife,” or “hit vulture with knife.” There are limits to the sense of possibility: every action had to be anticipated and hand-coded by the development team, and most of them are the wrong approach to whatever you’re trying to accomplish. In fact, in the case of the example just mentioned as well as many others, most of the available options will get you killed; Return to Zork loves instant deaths even more than the average Sierra game. And there are many cases of that well-known adventure-game syndrome where a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem isn’t implemented, forcing you to devise some absurdly convoluted solution that is implemented in its stead. Still, in a world where adventure games were getting steadily less rather than more ambitious in their scope of interactive possibility — to a large extent due to the limitations of full-motion video — Return to Zork was a welcome departure from the norm, a graphic adventure that at least tried to recapture the sense of open-ended possibility of an Infocom game.

Indeed, there are enough good ideas in Return to Zork that one really, really wishes they all could have been tied to a better game. But sadly, I have to stop praising Return to Zork now and start condemning it.

The most obvious if perhaps most forgivable of its sins is that, as already noted, it never really manages to feel like Zork — not, at least, like the classic Zork of the original trilogy. (Steve Meretzky’s Zork Zero, Infocom’s final release to bear the name, actually does share some of the slapstick qualities of Return to Zork, but likewise rather misses the feel of the original.) The most effective homage comes at the very beginning, when the iconic opening text of Zork I appears onscreen and morphs into the new game’s splashy opening credits. It’s hard to imagine a better depiction circa 1993 of where computer gaming had been and where it was going — which was, of course, exactly the effect the designers intended.

https://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/rtz1.mp4

Once the game proper gets under way, however, modernity begins to feel much less friendly to the Zorkian aesthetic of old. Most of Zork‘s limited selection of physical icons do show up here, from grues to Flood Control Dam #3, but none of it feels all that convincingly Zork-like. The dam is a particular disappointment; what was described in terms perfect for inspiring awed flights of the imagination in Zork I looks dull and underwhelming when portrayed in the cruder medium of graphics. Meanwhile the jokey, sitcom-style dialog that confronts you at every turn feels even less like the original trilogy’s slyer, subtler humor.

This isn’t to say that Return to Zork‘s humor doesn’t connect on occasion. It’s just… different from that of Dave Lebling and Marc Blank. By far the most memorable character, whose catchphrase has lived on to this day as a minor Internet meme, is the drunken miller named Boos Miller. (Again, subtlety isn’t this game’s trademark.) He plies you endlessly with whiskey, whilst repeating, “Want some rye? Course you do!” over and over and over in his cornpone accent. It’s completely stupid — but, I must admit, it’s also pretty darn funny; Boos Miller is the one thing everyone who ever played the play still seems to remember about Return to Zork. But, funny though he is, he would be unimaginable in any previous Zork.

https://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/rtz3.mp4

Of course, a lack of sufficient Zorkiness need not have been the kiss of death for Return to Zork as an adventure game in the abstract. What really does it in is its thoroughly unfair puzzle design. This game plays like the fever dream of a person who hates and fears adventure games. It’s hard to know where to even start (or end) with this cornucopia of bad puzzles, but I’ll describe a few of them, ranked roughly in order of their objectionability.

The Questionable: At one point, you find yourself needing to milk a cow, but she won’t let you do so with cold hands. Do you need to do something sensible, like, say, find some gloves or wrap your hands in a blanket? Of course not! The solution is to light some of the hay that’s scattered all over the wooden barn on fire and warm your hands that way. For some reason, the whole place doesn’t go up in smoke. This solution is made still more difficult to discover by the way that the game usually kills you every time you look at it wrong. Why on earth would it not kill you for a monumentally stupid act like this one? To further complicate matters, for reasons that are obscure at best you can only light the hay on fire if you first pick it up and then drop it again. Thus even many players who are consciously attempting the correct solution will still get stuck here.

The Absurd: At another point, you find a bra. You have to throw it into an incinerator in order to get a wire out of it whose existence you were never aware of in the first place. How does the game expect you to guess that you should take such an action? Apparently some tenuous linkage with the 1960s tradition of bra burning and, as a justification after the fact, the verb “to hot-wire.” Needless to say, throwing anything else into the incinerator just destroys the object and, more likely than not, locks you out of victory.

The Incomprehensible: There’s a water wheel out back of Boos’s house with a chock holding it still. If you’ve taken the chock and thus the wheel is spinning, and you’ve solved another puzzle that involves drinking Boos under the table (see the video above), a trapdoor is revealed in the floor. But if the chock is in place, the trapdoor can’t be seen. Why? I have absolutely no idea.

The Brutal: In a way, everything you really need to know about Return to Zork can be summed up by its most infamous single puzzle. On the very first screen of the game, there’s a “bonding plant” growing. If you simply pull up the plant and take it with you, everything seems fine — until you get to the very end of the game many hours later. Here, you finally find a use for the plant you’ve been carting around all this time. Fair enough. But unfortunately, you need a living version of it. It turns out you were supposed to have used a knife to dig up the plant rather than pulling or cutting it. (The question of how it should survive even this treatment, considering you don’t plant it again in a pot or anything — much less how you can dig anything up with a knife — goes unanswered.) Guess what? You now get to play through the whole game again from the beginning.

All of the puzzles just described, and the many equally bad ones, are made still more complicated by the game’s general determination to be a right bastard to you every chance it gets. If, as Robb Sherwin once put it, the original Zork games hate their players, this game has found some existential realm beyond mere hatred. It will let you try to do many things to solve each puzzle, but, of those actions that don’t outright kill you, a fair percentage lock you out of victory in one way or another. Sometimes, as in the case of its most infamous puzzle, it lets you think you’ve solved them, only to pull the rug out from under you much later.

So, you’re perpetually on edge as you tiptoe through this minefield of instant deaths and unwinnable states; you’ll have a form of adventure-game post-traumatic-stress syndrome by the time you’re done, even if you’re largely playing from a walkthrough. The instant deaths are annoying, but nowhere near as bad as the unwinnable states; the problem there is that you never know whether you’ve already locked yourself out of victory, never know whether you can’t solve the puzzle in front of you because of something you did or didn’t do a long time ago.

It all combines to make Return to Zork one of the worst adventure games I’ve ever played. We’ve sunk to Time Zone levels of awful with this one. No human not willing to mount a methodical months-long assault on this game, trying every possibility everywhere, could possibly solve it unaided. Even the groundbreaking interface is made boring and annoying by the need to show everything to everyone and try every conversation stance on everyone, always with the lingering fear that the wrong stance could spoil your game. Adventure games are built on trust between player and designer, but you can’t trust Return to Zork any farther than you can throw it. Amidst all the hand-wringing at Activision over whether Return to Zork was or was not sufficiently Zorky, they forgot the most important single piece of the Infocom legacy: their thoroughgoing commitment to design, and the fundamental respect that commitment demonstrated to the players who spent their hard-earned money on Infocom games.  “Looking back at the classics might be a good idea for today’s game designers,” wrote Computer Gaming World‘s Scorpia at the conclusion of her mixed review of Return to Zork. “Good puzzle construction, logical development, and creative inspiration are in rich supply on those dusty disks.” None of these, alas, is in correspondingly good supply in Return to Zork.

The next logical question, then, is just how Return to Zork‘s puzzles wound up being so awful. After all, this game wasn’t the quickie cash grab that Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 had been. The development team put serious thought and effort into the interface, and there were clearly a lot of people involved with this game who cared about it a great deal — among them Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick, who was willing to invest almost $1 million to bring the whole project to fruition at a time when cash was desperately short and his creditors had him on a short leash indeed.

The answer to our question apparently comes down to the poor reception of Leather Goddesses 2, which had stung Activision badly. In an interview given shortly before Return to Zork‘s release, Eddie Dornbrower said that, “based on feedback that the puzzles in Leather Goddesses of Phobos [2] were too simple,” the development team had “made the puzzles increasingly difficult just by reworking what Doug had already laid out for us.” That sounds innocent enough on the face of it. But, speaking to me recently, William Volk delivered a considerably darker variation on the same theme. “People hated Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 — panned it,” he told me. “So, we decided to wreak revenge on the entire industry by making Return to Zork completely unfair. Everyone bitches about that title. There’s 4000 videos devoted to Return to Zork on YouTube, most of which are complaining because the title is so blatantly unfair. But, there you go. Something to pin my hat on. I made the most unfair game in history.”

For all that I appreciate Volk sharing his memories with me, I must confess that my initial reaction to this boast was shock, soon to be followed by genuine anger at the lack of empathy it demonstrates. Return to Zork didn’t “wreak revenge” on its industry, which really couldn’t have cared less. It rather wreaked “revenge,” if that’s the appropriate word, on the ordinary gamers who bought it in good faith at a substantial price, most of whom had neither bought nor commented on Leather Goddesses 2. I sincerely hope that Volk’s justification is merely a case of hyperbole after the fact. If not… well, I really don’t know what else to say about such juvenile pettiness, so symptomatic of the entitled tunnel vision of so many who are fortunate enough to work in technology, other than that it managed to leave me disliking Return to Zork even more. Some games are made out of an openhearted desire to bring people enjoyment. Others, like this one, are not.

I’d like to be able to say that Activision got their comeuppance for making Return to Zork such a bad game, demonstrating such contempt for their paying customers, and so soiling the storied Infocom name in the process. But exactly the opposite is the case. Released in late 1993, Return to Zork became one of the breakthrough titles that finally made the CD-ROM revolution a reality, whilst also carrying Activision a few more steps back from the abyss into which they’d been staring for the last few years. It reportedly sold 1 million copies in its first year — albeit the majority of them as a bundled title, included with CD-ROM drives and multimedia upgrade kits, rather than as a boxed standalone product. “Zork on a brick would sell 100,000 copies,” crowed Bobby Kotick in the aftermath.

Perhaps. But more likely not. Even within the established journals of computer gaming, whose readership probably didn’t constitute the majority of Return to Zork‘s purchasers, reviews of the game were driven more by enthusiasm for its graphics and sound, which really were impressive in their day, than by Zork nostalgia. Discussed in the euphoria following its release as the beginning of a full-blown Infocom revival, Return to Zork would instead go down in history as a vaguely embarrassing anticlimax to the real Infocom story. A sequel to Planetfall, planned as the next stage in the revival, would linger in Development Hell for years and ultimately never get finished. By the end of the 1990s, Zork as well would be a dead property in commercial terms.

Rather than having all that much to do with its Infocom heritage, Return to Zork‘s enormous commercial success came down to its catching the technological zeitgeist at just the right instant, joining Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, The 7th Guest, and Myst as the perfect flashy showpieces for CD-ROM. Its success conveyed all the wrong messages to game publishers like Activision: that multimedia glitz was everything, and that design really didn’t matter at all.

If it stings a bit that this of all games, arguably the worst one ever to bear the Infocom logo, should have sold better than any of the rest of them, we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Quality does have a way of winning out in the end. Today, Return to Zork is a musty relic of its time, remembered if at all only for that “want some rye?” guy. The classic Infocom text adventures, on the other hand, remain just that — widely recognized as timeless classics, their clean text-only presentations ironically much less dated than all of Return to Zork‘s oh-so-1993 multimedia flash. Justice does have a way of being served in the long run.

(Sources: the book Return to Zork Adventurer’s Guide by Steve Schwartz; Computer Gaming World of February 1993, July 1993, November 1993, and January 1994; Questbusters of December 1993; Sierra News Magazine of Spring 1990; Electronic Games of January 1994; New Media of June 24 1994. Online sources include The Zork Library‘s archive of Return to Zork design documents and correspondence, Retro Games Master‘s interview with Doug Barnett, and Matt Barton’s interview with William Volk. Some of this article is drawn from the full Get Lamp interview archives which Jason Scott so kindly shared with me. Finally, my huge thanks to William Volk for sharing his memories and impressions with me in a personal interview.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/return-to-zork/

[pinpuku]

Team Request ~longer post~

Oh um! Hello! Firstly thank you for reading and doing all of these. 

I always forget what my MBTI is. Though I always find I’m smack dab between 4 types anyway. >>;; Though I can tell you I’m more introverted despite often running head first into crowds and trying to make friends. (On good days anyway. It’s about a 50/50 shot of that or clamming up)

I think with my gut and feelings more than not. I am prone to overthinking and going about things in a weird logical manner. Though when things happen more often than not. I throw it all away and just go with the moment. 

And I can’t tell you for the life of me the difference between J or P is. And it’s 2AM for me as I’ve been ping-ponging my way across this lengthy submission. So….I trust you to make the best call!

Western Zodiac: Leo  Eastern Zodiac: Sheep (metal)

My twitter, which might gleam more insight to me than I can ramble on…or at least give a glimpse to stuff I like.

I have a lot of favorite animals, so many! I also have like…always have a hard time picking a favorite pokemon. Though a few off the top of my head are Bobcat/Lynx. Coyote. Crow. Rabbit. Anything that’s kinda a “trickster” really. It’s because of that, that dark and electric types are easily my favorite pokemon types. Though really…I like them all. 

Colors I tend to mix between soft pastels and hard vibrant orange and blue. Though nothing neon. I like a lot of colors as well! I do have favorites, but I try not to dislike things if I can help it. I know it’s unavoidable, but I try to minimize it when I can. 

As for the hard part, personality of myself. I find it easier to describe characters I like better and what bits of myself that I see in them. Though I’ll try to keep it semi brief? Forgive me if it’s rambly and you wanna get to the good bits. I just tend to get super talkative when it comes to this kinda stuff!

I really like Naruto. I know it’s not really a great show or anything but It really resonated with me growing up since I kinda didn’t have many friends. I was always kinda weird so I hammed it up and played it and turned myself into more of the class clown until highschool. Where I finally made some friends that stuck. My biggest friend is someone I consider a sister at this rate. We’re still friends for over 20 years now. She helped me find my voice and made me who I am today. I was super shy and a big crybaby before I met her. Now I act pretty brash, obnoxious, loud, but on the inside I’m still super self conscious and scared. I’m still super scared and self doubt-y…though I try to push through my fear and make the world a better place. 

I know it’s silly but, I’m weirdly optimistic? I just want to make the world a better place. I kind of hope this could get submitted privately or something since I confess it’s a little embarassing to get this all down to have it be out and about! Especially on tumblr! Though that aside, I’m kinda optimistic and I wand to try and do the good thing. I want to be the hero when I can. I don’t go out of my way looking for it. But I’m always trying my best to help everyone I can. And I often get depressed whenever I can’t. Even when there’s really nothing else that can be done about it. I didn’t have the worst childhood, I didn’t have the best.

I’m kinda dumb, impulsive and stuff, but I always try my best to do the right thing. I’m okay with looking the fool as long as someone gets kinda a laugh or a good time out of it. My own kinda personal mantra is “I rather you laugh with me, but so long as you’re laughing!”

Other characters I like that run a semi- similar theme. Be it trying their best. Being scared. Or being…obnoxious. Hiyoko (Hatoful Boyfriend) Kazuaki-kun (Hatoful Boyfriend, Holiday Star), Midoriya Izuku from BNHA, Tai from Digimon 01, Davis from Digimon 02. Briar Moss from The Circle of Magic books. Akira from Devliman Crybaby, Yarne from Fire Emblem Awakening, Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening, Asriel Dremurr from Undertale, Nier (NieR Gestalt/Replicant)

OOF! That was WAY longer than expected! A-Anyway I hope you don’t mind this huge essay. ><; I hope the others aren’t as long as mine were! And thank you again! I know I rambled a lot and have a penchant for not actually saying anything so if you need more information. Just ask!

Anyway. I hope you have a nice day!

Hello! This was really fun for me to read!

I have a good team for you, I think!

♡ I think your Partner would be Whimsicott! It is a very mischievous pokemon, known for being quite the trickster! It has a jovial & carefree nature. It likes to ride the winds, and take its fun everywhere. It is known for many silly quirks, like sneaking into houses, moving important items or furniture, leaving cotton balls & surprising people & pokemon! It really just likes to play. It’s tricks are never anything to worry about. It’s actually quite happy doing this alone or with others. This is a Pokemon that does just as fine by itself as it does in a social setting. In a team, it can be very playful & will be the entertainer of the team. It will like to goof off with your other pokemon & it can “perform” just for the sake of having a good time with everyone. It might dislike the rain, mainly because it hampers its ability to fly & makes it very difficult to dry off. But it is also known to enjoy water from time to time, unlike Cottonee, if it’s able to easily dry off easily. Anything that is a is a possible form of play will be experimented by Whimsicott! It will most likely enjoy being outside on sunny days & nights with bright moonlight.

♡ Alolan Raichu, Pachirisu & Vivillion have a very similar temperament as Whimsicott, but they’re not exactly pranksters. 

♡ Elgyem is a very quiet & odd Pokemon. In the wild, they usually wander around alone. Although they have a more shy & reserved nature, they are gentle Pokemon & enjoy being around others, even if they aren’t the most bold characters. You might be able to understand its language of light after a while! At least a little bit. 

♡ Zorua is the 2nd trickster of your team! It’s fun loving, but it’s also much more introverted compared to the rest of your team. It will like to mess around, but it otherwise can be very shy & dependent on its team & trainer to feel comfortable. They are strong pack Pokemon, so while it may wander away if it knows your nearby, it will never stray too far on purpose. It might be a little bit more of a handful, potentially getting you into weird situations, but this is also a part of its charm! 

Hope you like your team~ ^~^

[insanetwocubes]

Okay can we talk about how I woke up today and Candy is lyke on a nickname basis with everyone?

Flare, do you love Candy more than me?

!Okay, if I gotta stop being rude to you, you gotta stop being rude to me?

Huh??? What did I say?

!Lyke... it's none of your business? Who I'm on a nickname basis with? So stop digging into my psyche? You overthink everything and it's kinda annoying.

I see you in both our psyches every 5 minutes lol (I don't mind, but you're being hypocritical.)

!*shakes her hands in annoyance* Can you just.... stop trying to control everything? (I almost want to ask what happened between you two that made you such joykills.) Just let it be how it is.

No lol wtf when you're a minoroty in this world, letting go of control isn't even an option.

!Stop. Victim blaming. There is no control to take hold of anything anyway.

*shakes its head* It's not that easy, Candy.

!Well squeezing everything out of its natural shape isn't easy either, I imagine. So I reckon you can manage.

No, I meant, it's not possible lol

!I know what you meant. I understand what's going on.

We're on the same page are we not?

!*nods*

Then help me.

!Help you?

Convince me, I mean.

!Uh... that's not my MO....

??? Do you even know if you're right?

!I just know that you're being kinda annoying.

Elaborate?

!What? How am I supposed to elaborate on you being annoying?

Try.

!Well. It's lyke... you take these morally neutral things and attach a "good" and "bad" to them.

Nothing is morally neutral when you're trying to take over the world.

!I thought-- you don't even like this world. Why are you still doing this?

I love myself and I love the system to a point where we need to create a conducive enviroment for us.

!I thought the environment didn't matter? It was about how you look at things.

Both are important.

!Yeah, but one is impossible to control.

I'm not trying to control it.

!You're two thoughts away from only using one pronoun for me. Something that you specifically don't need to worry about because I use every pronoun.

How is trying to normalize a certain pronoun a bad thing?

!Because you're spending all this energy creating a problem that doesn't even exist.

The problem does exist, though.

!Yeah... but... look at how little it will have an impact versus if you just stopped worrying about it.

You want me to stop worrying. About a problem.

!Well, you can't logically handle them all, right?

Yeah, but... if i don't...

!If you don't, then what?

How am I gonna love myself?

!I mean okay some thoughts are kinda dangerous. -

Definitely.

!-But sometimes you just gotta let it be. Y'know?

I want to love myself, Candy.

!The more controlling you get, the more it undoes the benefits.

... fair point. I'll think about it.

~Four

!Phew.

~Candy

[rumongray]

Eh.

As of late, that’s been...how I’ve been describing how I’ve been feeling. “Eh.”

I’m going to be up front here, I...haven’t been feeling well, emotionally, in the last few months. I’ve been obfuscating it in different ways. Being “active” when my “activity” was a hollow front. Smiling at things because I knew it made others happy, made them believe I meant it. I suppose I could chalk that up to tact, and good social graces, but the point of this is to be...honest.

Before I start, before people worry, a few things.

--I’m doing okay financially, not in a bad way or anything. --I’m not in any serious danger of any sort. --I’m physically, logically okay.

Where I’m at...let’s call it Death by a Thousand Cuts.

The purpose of writing this all out, admitting it, is to see it in writing for myself, while also explaining myself to you guys. Again, to be honest.

I have some serious insecurities that I wish I didn’t have. I’ve mentioned these things before, these...holes in that wall that keep the water from rushing in. Fear of abandonment, fear of being...ignored, fear of being boring... Fear of ostracization, which takes its form in many ways. I know that like...99.9% of the events that cause this kind of hurt...cause those holes in the wall to crack even more, are either unintentional, or just plain non-existent because of me overthinking things. Another problem of mine.

So over the last few months, whether they knew it or not, people were setting their chisels against the wall, and sometimes they caused more cracks, or sometimes they created new breaches entirely. That cold water seeped in, and before I knew it...I was in over my head.

I hit a pretty dark moment. I’ll get to that in a bit.

So what where these events? A number of things. I’ve pretty much transitioned from Discord to Telegram. I’m still on Discord, just...don’t talk much there I suppose.

And on Telegram, I joined a number of awesome groups of people with similar interests. Furry stuff, local communities and the like, a great chat for Scalies, it’s overall been a pretty positive experience. I met some amazing new friends on there!

But then there are days when it just...I dunno how to explain. I like to think of these groups as big...parties. And sometimes people will all be hanging out, chatting, and I’ll try to speak up, or ask something, or poke someone to say hi, and get...no response. And the thing is, I’ll try again, and again and again, and get no response...and it’s after like...9 tries that I start to wonder if I’m invisible or something. I’m not talking like “whoops it got lost in the scrolling,” I mean when I try many...MANY times. To the point where it seems like something is truly wrong.

...I also want to interject here and also admit that this part here? This bit of admission? I also feel so goddamn stupid for feeling it the way I do, because logically, I know there are simple answers to it, but my brain’s a goddamn idiot and wants shit to have a deeper meaning or some shit like that.

So yeah. My mood around these groups seemed to bounce up and down. One day I’m happy, chatting with friends, being all chipper and excited and hype! The next I’m just...down, and people are just chatting on, going on without me, and it just...ugh. It bugged the shit out of me. That constant climb and fall...I almost think it takes more of a toll on a person than staying in the middle. It’s like taking really deep breaths, in order to breathe it all out as hard as you can, then taking another deep breath in. It leads to hyperventilation, it fucks up your circulation and rhythm.

Then we have work, which...yeah.

At a point, I was working pretty much overtime every week. Get this...I trained -THREE- people how to close the store in my specific position. Three.

Then a week later, all three of them went to the management. “Uh...we can’t close, we have school.”

All of them. They all individually did this.

...

So I was doing overtime, closing every single day. Great for my wallet! ...not so much my free time or sanity. If you ever wondered “how could Ken stay at that job for so long?!”

Well the answer was job security. I have my own apartment, after all, which to some might not be much, but to others it might be the whole world. So I put up with the exceptionally rude and thoughtless customers, the management that doesn’t seem like it entirely gives a shit...among other things. I put up with it because I -can- endure it, for the most part, and it keeps a roof over my head.

On top of that were the ever-present nagging little fears, worries, and doubts. I’m 35 and work at a goddamn restaurant with no real career experience in anything more worthwhile, no college degree, nothing. I’m pushing toward 40 with a minimal amount of sexual experiences that I just recently started feeling a deep sense of regret and loss for.

And fuck...I’ll just admit it, I’m fuckin’ lonely. I miss so many things from the previous years. Voice chatting with people while Tomis makes funny doodles from the conversation, or talking about things with Sinquest and getting pumped up to work on stuff in that world! Everything just...fractured, and I feel like sometimes I watched all the pieces fall apart while I stood there, stunned.

So...between that and my limited free time spent on emotionally hyperventilating, I suppose it was only a matter of time before something broke the walls down. And like a lot of these sorts of things, it was something completely stupid.

A local group of furs that I’ve become a part of, they decided to all have a meetup out at a restaurant. But thing is, these things happen quite often, but they’re usually nothing too special or big. For some reason, this day, -everybody- decided to go. ...I found out about it about...five minutes before it started. I asked for a ride of some kind, got no response or “well we’re kinda already here” and the like. And it just...fucked me up. I just don’t know what it was, I think it was the idea of people not wanting to spend five minutes for a pickup, or just...I dunno. I found out later that even -more- of my friends went, friends who weren’t actually in the group, but were invited through PM’s and that kinda sealed the deal for me.

So i went to a dark place. I just kinda crawled into bed and sat there. I lay there for the entire day off that I had. I just glanced at my phone, bitter and angry, and at the same time guilty and ashamed at being bitter and angry at something that was innocuous and benign. Something that wasn’t “worth” being angry at, but there I was all the same. I felt like my chest was made of iron, weighing me down.

I started having thoughts like “...why do I bother getting out of bed at all? Why the fuck do I go to work? Why the fuck to I pay bills? What the fuck do I get from all this bullshit?“

It took me a couple of days to realize that it was the closest thing to a suicidal thought that I’d had since...well...maybe I’ll tell that story someday.

So I’d hit a sort of “bottom” I suppose. I was already headed there, honestly. I could see the signs before that day was even a blip on the radar. I had fallen off of my workout routine. I almost stopped playing games, I started losing interest in things that weren’t streams or Youtube. Not just for a couple of days, but every SINGLE day. Writing? Pfft, nope. Couldn’t force it if I tried.

“...Eh.”

My motivation was shot. It still is, but it’s clearly gotten at least better, since I’m taking the time to write all this out.

So why didn’t I really say anything sooner?

The answer is pretty simple: I was bitter. Very bitter. The kind of bitterness that taints the world around you, gives everything a...change in its color. I -knew- how I would react to the responses to this back then. I would smile a little, but then I’d start having those “they’re only saying it out of pity,” or some such nonsense. Ugly, sick feelings that weren’t true at all, but my perception would color them in such a way. It would be ugly and downright sinister.

And none of you deserve that. So I decided to hide it until I got to a place where I was comfortable in sharing.

Today.

Today I’m a little better, yes, but I’m nowhere near out of the woods. I managed to finally surface for a breath, and now I have to try to find the ways to solve the problem, to overcome and start getting back to treading water. To start putting that wall back up and make it stronger, somehow.

I had all these things I wanted to work on and get finished before the end of the year, but I don’t think they’ll be completed by then. I think the month of December will have to be for recovery and recuperation, loathe as I am to admit it. I hate feeling lazy, but I think it’s what I need to do right now. Honestly I think it would be for the best.

But to close this out, I want to focus on some of the positive things that occurred to me, or happened over the last few months.

--After sharing some of my writing with these groups I previously mentioned? I’ve had three separate people asking me if I took commissions. This meant the goddamn world to me, because as much as I’ve been wanting to open myself up to the idea, I’ve also had those nagging doubts that it wouldn’t be very...lucrative and that I wouldn’t get many takers.

--I met some amazing new friends through these groups, who have done some incredibly nice things for me. From Mero actually adding me to a commission of his for my birthday (HERE! :D), To Senjin-Seadog for showing me their writing, private or not. My friend Gyro wanting to hang out and we end up playing almost all of Super Mario Odyssey in one night, giggling. My buddy Eric coming over so we can watch The Room. (Oh Tommy Wiseau, you brought so much unintentional joy, ha-ha-ha) And on top of that, all the amazing people I’ve had heart-to-heart chats with over the last few months,

--Managed to have a chance to sit down with my restaurant manager about problems i’ve noticed, and holy shit he actually listened to me about a lot of them, and I’ve seen some serious improvements.

--I’m doing decently well as far as finances goes. Because of all that overtime, my bank account is a little bit padded, even after that recent money scare I had with my dad accidentally taking money of my account. (Paid back now thankfully.) On top of that, I was able to get approved for state food benefits again, which is another bit of help that I needed, which was taken away from me for stupid reasons.

--I’m slowly getting interest back in things that I previously mentioned that I had lost. I’m still not back on my workout routine, but I’m crawling back, little by little each day, and I’m sure I’ll get back there in time.

--I truly do believe that I’m very slowly getting better.

--I have amazing friends.

So where do I go from here? Well for starters, I’ve been writing a daily (private) journal of the day’s experiences, how they made me feel, and I’m trying to dissect why they make me feel that way. I’m making a more concerted effort to temper my emotions with logic, so that my mind doesn’t start immediately looking toward the dark corners.

I’ve also put the things I want to do into a list, both on my desktop as a text file and as a handwritten list, to cement these things, make them tangible in a way, in order to try to kick-start my motivation back into gear.

I’m also learning to forgive myself if I don’t do something in a particular day. Like I said, I’m taking this month to recuperate, there’s no sense in blaming myself for being “lazy,” as that would just be shooting myself in the foot.

Whew.

This went on exceptionally long, sorry about that. If you made it this far, I appreciate it, and know that I love you, and all of my friends dearly. I don’t have anything else to really add I suppose. That heavy feeling is still in my chest, I still feel like I’m under the waves, and that I’m still recovering from my emotional hyperventilation. I’m still...”eh.”

But hopefully that will get better.

Thank you for your support. Take care of yourselves.

--Lizard Dad

[blankvirtue]

August 23, 2020

- 3:20AM -

I felt the urge to write on this blog again suddenly remembering it after being forgotten for over 2 months now. Yet after reading my last entry I find myself facing the same problems funny enough. A writer’s block from hell tagged along with the thought of needing to be accepted by the music community. Coincidence? I think not. The advice I took from Ed Sheeran’s analogy with water coming from the facuet feels like it can be applied as quick way to mentally trick yourself into writing music, but you don’t really address the root of the issue. Which is an artists dependency on acceptance from their audience to write music.A problem I’ve seen surface among famous artists, a feeling I have when writing myself. The pressure of it all can weigh down on someone, I know I feel that all the time. I’ve been feeling that a lot lately actually. A lot of self pressure saying that I’m not doing enough, or what I’m doing is not good enough. Reflecting more on my thought, I guess I just feel like I have a lot of pressure since this is my debut EP. I want it to be good of course, and first impressions really count. It’s challenging to write a full on EP with a concept. Logic quit making music and cried out of relief on stream the day he quit because he can finally escape the limelight and the criticism. The fact that I could write music and that I am able to create something makes it my music. Who is say what is music and what is not. Who is the judge of all music that declares what music is. It’s all subjective at the end of the day. Eye of the beholder, or ear in this case. If I love it, then it is just right. Period. If you’re really fucking good at what you do people will recognize you for it. Plain and simple. After watching an interview compilation of David Grohl today, my eyes have been opened to this great perspective. Writing music for yourself is the only way to write music. It’s authentic, and it’s only way to stay sane. Otherwise you’ll cloud your judgement with all the negativity and critiques of random people and apply it to please them. Thus affecting your outlook when working future productions, when in the end you don’t please anyone at all. You might as well be selfish, you won’t have any regrets that way, hopefully. Right now I’m arranging this Justice sounding track that I’ve made. The bassline gave me a Justice vibe right away. After listening to their music from what felt like awhile ago and making a comparison, It sounded similar yet my arrangement was unique in its own way. I think I’m trying too hard to be someone I am not. I am not Justice, or anyone else. I am me! Something I should take to heart. A thought that’ll help me just write without overthinking things. The idea is that it’ll keep me from wasting time asking myself whether people will like this or not. I just ask myself if I fuck with this or not? Straight up. It’s natural to seek acceptance from other humans, to belong. It’s natural to question if one is enough to achieve greatness. It’s how we solve and face these natural inclinations. With boldness and confidence in oneself and one’s beliefs. With self love and honesty so brutal that no one will stop you from making music you love. I think that’s what it means to be a genuine artist. Pretty moving stuff to be honest. I am was really blown away by this video a fan put together of interview clips. David Grohl is a true legend. Today I also managed to listen to the Cross album by Justice again among other music for the first time in a bit. I found some cool songs by SebastAin that I really liked. Listening to all of this music made realize what kind of genre this is labeled under and lead me to similar sounding songs of course. A genre where a lot of my favorite artists fall under. Daft Punk, Justice, SebastAin, Madeon, Oliver. Future Funk/Nu-Disco/French House Crazy right? I have this natural attraction to this sound. I’ve come to realize it today after really looking at all of my favorite music that I’ve listened to over the years. They all have similarities. It was really cool to discover that today. The sound I really enjoy has labels that I wasn’t aware of all this time. With everything that I’ve come to learn today in mind, I won’t try to mimic someone or fit into a genre. I will just make a song that I find great. Knowning this I’m not convinced it’ll as simple to apply this realistically in the moment. Tomorrow I’m gonna give that a go. Until next time . . .

[littlewitchystar]

Hello! How's your day so far? I was wondering if you have any advice regarding the development of intuition and divination (I own a pendulum, no tarot decks unfortunately) Thank you for your time!

Hey there! I am doing pretty good :) I hope you are having a lovely day as well! 

So developing intuition is a huge challenge! Especially with a pendulum where its so much easier to doubt yourself (”did my hand move or did that happen naturally?”). It’s so easy to doubt our intuition because let’s face it, there’s nothing really backing up our gut feelings, it gets even harder when you are a very logical person and are looking evidence that our intuition is ‘right”.

My biggest advice is to just practice trusting your gut. It seems kinda obvious and not very helpful but the more you just listen to your intuition the stronger it becomes. It’s like any other muscle it needs to be exercised to become stronger (and to have a more prominent place in our lives). When you are first starting out it might be hard to know when your intuition is trying to talk to you. It might feel like a teeny, tiny barely noticeable poke.

 When you do notice it, it’s important to listen! Then after you listen make note of the result, even if it seems kinda silly. It might look something like this “Felt like I needed to go for a walk today (intuition) so I went for a walk (listened to intuition) and met a cute dog on the way which made me happy (result). The thing here is that intuition isn’t always this big important thing! Sometimes its just a nudge to make your day a little better :) Keep a little notebook with things you think your intuition tried to tell you it might help!

Something I struggled with when I first started working with my intuition (and still do struggle with actually) is that I felt intuition would be this profound feeling that would only come when I was grounded and calm and listening. I would do grounding exercising and ask myself “what is my intuition trying to tell me now”. For me, this never worked. In fact for me my intuition pops up as that initial gut feeling that seems like an impulsive first thought. It disappears just as quickly as it reappeared and if I try to question that’s when I ended up messing up somehow because I overthink things. A lot of the time when I’m listening to my intuition I seem impulsive. I’ll do something and someone will ask why and my response is “i’m not sure, I just have a feeling this needs to happen). Its cool in a witchy sense but a lot of the more mundane people in my life don’t get and keep asking why.

Last piece of advice provides a more concrete way to practice using your intuition and it utilizing an app! Are You Psychic is available on both android and apple and it’s based on the Zener test. Now don’t let the name fool you, this app isn’t actually test your psychic ability, the name is a gimmick. This app has a bunch of different test where there are somewhere betwen 4 or 6 different symbols (or colors, landscapes,etc depending on the test you use) that appear on the card before you. You have to choose which symbol you think is on the card. You do this 25 times. When you are done, the app rates how well you used your intuition (by telling you whether your correct number of guesses was in the probability of chance or higher). It’s really cool and it’s really helpful in learning how your intuition manifests for you!

Some people on ig (i’m sorry I can’t remember who) also post intuition exercises where they post a card and ask if it’s major or minor arcana or 3 crystals and you have to pick which they are reaching for. I might start doing something like that here because I get a lot of intuition questions.But finding things like that would help to because you get an answer of whether you were right or wrong.

Sorry for the really long answer but i hope it helped! Best of luck to you!

[ajokeformur-ray]

 @shinigami-ahri

Ok my description was too long to send to the ask box so instead of spaming yoxur box with 20 asks i just figured i would send it all in one here. If something isnt clear just let me know...i hope it all makes sense haha Thank you so much! If you don't mind, could you throw in Naruto and the Hobbit too? I'm trying to get into Naruto but I've got so many others that I've been trying to catch up on and I haven't really seen many blogs that write for the Hobbit. If it's too much though don't worry about it you can just stick with Black Butler and Bleach (; lol I am female and I would like a male matchup please! My interests are really anything fantasy related, I love role playing games and things like that so pretty much anything creative. I'm interested in a lot of things like exploring different cultures and foods, traveling and usually if it has to do with anything nerdy I'm down. (I'm actually trying to get a group of friends together to play Pathfinder or D&D haha) My hobbits (I see what you did there (; ) include writing, drawing, playing video games or reading manga...I try to read like "real" books but it will take me 3 months to finish one book mostly because I can't read one at a time so I'll be reading 4 books at once throughout the month...It's very hard for me to stick with one thing for a long time I find myself jumping between stuff a lot. I like inside activities most. I don't really enjoy being outside a lot and I don't at all consider myself the physical type. I really enjoy tea, I buy a lot of different flavored tea and I bet I could start a small shop with how much I have at the moment. I do enjoy cheesy puns and lame jokes very much and I somewhat consider myself as the "comic relief" in my family since I try to pull out jokes to lighten the mood when things get kinda bad... though it doesn't really work most of the time...I don't like outside activities unless it's a little more on the cool side with a slight breeze...more like fall weather. I get really agitated and grumpy when I get hot and sweaty so I try to hang out where it's nice and cool. I don't like bugs either and cleaning...I really hate cleaning... I look for someone who will be able to take care of me. Someone who is not only physically strong but mentally strong too. Someone who won't mind my creativity and ideas but who will also keep me grounded so that I don't get too lost in them. I tend to be very passionate and strong willed when I have an idea in my head of what I want so I need someone who will be honest with me but won't get angry when I have to find out for myself if I can do it or not. Sort of like an unspoken "go ahead, I warned you what will happen so don't come crying to me when you find out it's not going to work." I need someone who isn't afraid to say they are sorry and someone who will come to me when we've had our fights or disagreements (If it's their fault) because I can sit around all night and be super salty until they tell me they aren't mad anymore or that it's going to be ok. I also tend to overthink things too and I look for someone who would be willing to reach out to me helps me understand that everything truly will be alright. At the same time though I don't want them overly comforting. I have a lot of room to grow myself and I'm rather timid when it comes to speaking my mind so I need someone who will challenge me from time to time and help me develop a thicker skin so to speak. I'm not good at confrontation and I fit into more of a submissive role so I also look for dominate personalities though, I find a personality that is calm, collected, rationality, with an unspoken arrogance more attractive than a brash, spoken arrogance, and irrational. I enjoy someone who is spontaneous and a bit difficult to read or people who are otherwise often misunderstood.

Sebastian

- Oh man, Sebastian has everything you like tucked away in that expansive brain of his. Different cultures, their origins, their developments into what they are today, their recipes handed down through the generations and altered to fit the modern day, or not as the case may be. Their legends and myths... Any culture you can think of, I can bet you that Sebastian has enough knowledge about it to fill an entire bookshelf.

- I can just see Sebastian cleaning out the library again because Ciel is sensitive to even the slightest bit of dust, and you’re sat on the couch reading some manga drinking some of the finest tea you’ve had for a while because of course Sebastian made it, and he’s telling you stories about a culture you’re curious about while you read. When there’s a bug, he quickly disposes of it discreetly, not bringing it up unless you’re the one who spotted it, in which case he makes a show of saving you from the ‘hideous monster’ as he gently teases you for the moment of weakness.

-  Sebastian would definitely take care of you. He would likely discipline you much like he does Ciel. You’d have a wake-up time, a bedtime, he’d help you with anything you ask for help with, but only if you tell him that you want that. He’d hate to impose his will on you without your consent. Your creativity would be one of his favourite things about you and he’d always want for you to push your creativity, to see just how far it can go and where its’ limits are. Then again, you decide the limits of your imagination. 

- If you set your mind on something that Sebastian knows will end badly, he’ll tell you but will otherwise take a backseat and watch the events unfold. He’ll be amused the entire time and will be smug when you find out just how wrong things turned out. You’ll get no sympathy from him at all, so don’t expect any. He’ll pull you back too when your thoughts start getting out of control. He’ll sense it and will get you to tell him everything you’re thinking, and in one or two sentences he’ll completely shut you down with logic and common sense. He’s good like that.

- Sebastian can be comforting but only when he chooses to be. For the most part, he’ll take the proverbial backseat and be there for you only when you expressly ask for him to be.  He’ll definitely test you and challenge you, usually in terms of patience, but he’s, for the most part, everything you ask him to be as he has no real personality of his own.

- He’s not misunderstood as such, but he’s definitely a challenge to all those who know him as no one can truly read or get to know a demon as intimately as one can come to read and get to know a human. So, for sure, if you’re more of a submissive in a relationship, he’ll take the dominant side in his stride and do it fabulously, like he does everything else. He is, after all, simply one hell of a butler.

Byakuya

- While Byakuya isn’t as well-traveled as Sebastian, he’s definitely just as educated. If he lacks the knowledge you're after, he’d likely do some research in the Library and come back to you with an answer that he feels is adequate. As far as creativity goes, he’ll supply you with papers and pens, pencils and charcoals etc. to support you in your creativity.

- His Manor and office are kept immaculate at all times, and any bugs that come through would only be in the warmer climates. He’d likely have someone on call to remove any bugs that cross your path. He’d huff and be outwardly annoyed, but on the inside, he finds it adorable and has to bite his inner cheek to stop himself from teasing you with a cheeky grin. 

-  You’d be more than welcome to keep him company inside while he fills out paperwork, just so long as you’re relatively quiet. He’d show affection during these times by getting up and refilling your teacup temporarily, his hand briefly resting on the crown of your head as he passes you.

- Byakuya is one of the strongest people in the Soul Society and he doesn’t take abuse from anybody. There’s no way he’d ever allow anyone to treat you wrongly, not even yourself. He’d do his best to keep you grounded, always knowing what to say or do to keep you from bubbling over or retreating back into yourself a bit more. Your strong will may annoy him every now and then but he’ll just shrug it off and watch you make a mistake. He won’t give you sympathy or empathy, he’ll just look you over with a quirked eyebrow and a, “I warned you. What did you expect? Next time, you would do well to listen to me.” and he’d walk off, leaving you with nothing but your thoughts for company.

- However, arguments are few and far between. He’ll always walk off during an argument, not wanting to say those few words that would completely destroy the relationship. He has an incredible cruel streak and he tries his hardest to not expose you to it unless he absolutely has to. He’s usually the first to apologise, though, wanting to keep the peace. Life is hard enough without tension between him and his dear one.

- Byakuya is definitely the more dominant one in this relationship and the two of you are together but actually, lead very separate lives. That’s not to say that you get lonely, it’s just that you do the most important thing in any relationship, which is to retain your own identity while being with the other person. It makes the two of you stronger, especially as he’s quite closed off emotionally from people. You help him to break out of his shell a little bit more every day, something he’s grateful for.

Sasuke

- Sasuke is an Uchiha and as such, he received only the finest education before the massacre, plus how much attention he paid in the Academy, Sasuke has quite the knowledge. As a shinobi, travel is a given and I think when the mood strikes him; though it’s rare, he may tell you about some of his missions. Don’t interrupt or ask too many questions though, he’s still going to be impatient with you. he won’t become a fluffy bunny just because you’re his s/o. He may cook for you sometimes, not wanting you to live on ramen like Naruto does. He cooks a lot of tomato based things because he loves tomatoes, but if you’re allergic or dislike them then he’ll adapt his recipes accordingly!

- Bugs don’t bother him at all. He just doesn’t give a flying monkey as to whether there’s a spider crawling on his face or not. You do, though, so he’ll huff and grumble but will otherwise dispose of the creepy crawly or spider for you if only to get you to leave him alone about it. He secretly finds it adorable though he’ll deny it categorically if you ask him.  He’s an Uchiha so again, clean freak. He does what needs to be done when it needs to be done, and if anything he takes on the domestic role of the household pretty quickly. Gender roles mean nothing to him, they’re stupid.  He’s a grumbly-guts in the heat too so you may argue a lot in hotter weather. It’s not personal though, just the two of you having low fuses because of the heat. 

-  Sasuke is pretty chilled tbh, he’s very relaxed in the relationship because he trusts you, I mean why else is he with you? Like duh! He’s fine with letting you do whatever you want to do. If it’s not a good idea, then it’s whatever, he’ll warn you but won’t stop you. Then when it all goes wrong and he watches the mess unfold, he’ll be there for you after he’s done the whole, ‘I told you so’, and ‘you should’ve known better, stupid’ speech which lasts about five minutes before he gets bored.

- You’re both strong willed so you might butt heads often, but you make up quickly as it always comes from a place of concern. Sasuke isn’t a comforting person by nature so I think the most you’d get would be a muttered, “Hn.” with his hands in his pockets, a quick glance and then a soft hug. The tighter you squeeze him, the more he’ll grumble, but it’s only because he doesn’t know what to do with you. He gets the hint and holds you just as tightly eventually, though, usually when you’re pulling away he’ll realise he wants that hug after all. 

- Sasuke will keep you grounded without you realising it. A glance here or there, a shake of the head from the corner of your eye, a mood wherein he needs a little more attention than usual when he notices you slipping... it’s all very subtle ways to keep you out of your own head when he knows it’s not good for you on that day. In return, you do the same to and for him, though it’s more obvious and of course slightly more annoying for him, though he understands your position.

- It’s a very separate relationship and you work as a unit, the way it should be. There aren’t many rules or expectations, just being yourselves is good enough. Reassurance is rare because Sasuke’s with you, so what more reassurance do you need? He tends to take the dominant position only because it’s natural to hm as an Uchiha. Just don’t expect a fluffy Sasuke, he doesn’t work like that. When he’s tired though, it’s a different matter. Talk about an affection monster!

Thorin

- Assuming that you’re a human here, Thorin would have plenty of stories to tell you about his travels before and with the Company, as well as a multitude of dishes you could taste, and he’d be willing to educate you on dwarven customs and the language, too.  Then, in Erebor, there are libraries you’re completely free to explore as you wish to. The two of you would swap stories over the fireplace about your different species, cultures, etc. He’d be fascinated and could listen to you talk for hours with the softest look in his eyes. He’ll pretend it’s a reflection of the fire, but it’s not and you both know it.

- Thorin would know of your dislike of bugs and would flick off any insects or spiders that dare to grace you with their presence. He’d do it discreetly and without your noticing. He’d flick off insects, spiders, get bugs out of your hair before you even know they’re there. He’d pretend he’s just brushing your hair from your face or that you had dust on you. You’d know the truth but would appreciate it nonetheless. Kiss his cheek in thanks and you’ve got a blushing Thorin.  He appreciates your light humour; fitting right in wih the rest of the Company. You’re often the cause of diffused tension and he couldn’t be more grateful to you. He dislikes the heat too, so luckily, Erebor has a rather cold climate.

-  He’s the King so discipline is obvious. You would have certain expectations, as the s/o of a King, and any bending or outright breaking of the rules would result in firm discipline from Thorin; namely a lecture that he later apologises for. He’s also busy so you’re generally expected to do your own thing, and to do it well. You’d likely have your own job in Erebor so you’re rarely together. The nights are yours, though, so use the time wisely ;)

- He’ll definitely keep you grounded, though sometimes he’s the one who needs grounding. Anything that you want to do that he knows is a bad idea will be met with stony silences and side-glares. He’s told you his point of view and you did it anyway, so he expects you to accept full responsiility for whatever went wrong. You’ll get no sympathy or wise words from him, though he would tell you to learn fro your mistakes otherwise it was a wasted experience.  He sees it as you directly disrespecting him too, so it’s likeyl that you’d have an argument or you’d receive the cold shoulder from him until you’ve made up with him to his own standards. 

- Thorin is comforting, to a degree. Sometimes he has the words and actions you nee from him, and other times he’s just holding you and feeling helpless, berating himself for not knowing how to help you.  Sometimes he’s the one who needs comfort though; it’s not easy being King. Either way, it’s pretty balanced and you pull through together with whatever issues are currently at hand. 

- He’s definitely a dominant personality so I think the two of you would slot perfectly together. You look out for each other and support each other, which is what it’s all about. He can be a bit too gruff and so he sometimes hurts your feelings, but he makes it up to you in whichever way he can. 

This took me just over an hour so I hope you like it xD

[behindthespotlightfic]

unfinished songs - a josh x zara one-shot

This time, I’m taking a break from my own story, to bring you all a really special thing I wrote. Today, March 25th 2017, is @bemygetawayjz‘s birthday, and I tried to pay a tribute, a homage, to her characters, her writing, her story and to her in general. It was a wonderful coincidence to stumble upon her, to get to know her, and to have her now as a small but meaningful part of my life.

So I borrowed her characters for a day, and wrote a piece from Josh’s point of view. If you haven’t read all the chapters of her fanfiction, you may encounter spoilers along the way, so be warned! Otherwise, I really hope you, @bemygetawayjz, enjoy it. I’m so thankful for knowing you. I hope you have had a really great day! May happiness walk with you each and every day <3

“I’d have followed her anywhere she asked of me. I’d have thrown myself to the wild for her.”

(Dove Hands, by Elizabeth Hewer)

---

I really, really didn’t think I was gonna get interested in Zara.

Now don’t misinterpret me, as that sounded quite pretentious. I didn’t think I was gonna get interested in her, but that’s because I didn’t think I was ever gonna get interested in anyone. I was twenty-eight back then, and I had had some hookups, but none gave me enough motivation to actually pursue love. I guess I had other things running around my mind, mostly music.

That’s the reason why I was kind of shocked when I surprised myself sitting at her table the day after I had literally bumped into her. If this were a cheap romantic paperback novel, the author would have made me say that “I had seen something in her that made my heart race”. But it’s not a cheap romantic paperback. So I’ll be honest: it was purely the fact that the two of us were in the background in that tour. Obviously, at least I got to be onstage each night, but people wouldn’t ever come to the venues because of me. Neither would they come because of Zara. So even if John and I were really close friends, we were on different levels. And some times, even if I usually like being alone, I felt lonely.

“Damn, Klinghoffer”, I heard myself thinking, while dangerously approaching her table, “now she’ll think you’re stalking her.”

The real Klinghoffer, though, didn’t listen and said something quite different.

“Hey! How you doing?”

Did that sound faked? I can’t remember. Anyway, she eventually felt a bit more at ease having lunch with this dork here, also known as me, and she ended up inviting me to come with her to the Guggenheim Museum the day after… so I guess that was a good start.

I won’t lie: with Zara, there were lots of awkward moments… especially in the beginning. Everything was awkward in the beginning. But we somehow overcame it all, and what seemed would be just a shallow acquaintance ended up being a close friendship. And yeah, then a full-on relationship. Much later, she told me she had been overthinking it all as much as I had been. Both of us wondered if the other was in a relationship, if the other felt the same, if we had misinterpreted it all and thought it was something more than friendship… we had been thinking about the same things, a few hotel floors apart in a different city each night. It would take the record store in Chorzów, Poland, for us to finally share it all.

I had been trying to send her some signals, just in case, just so she could know I wasn’t thinking of her as just a friend, but obviously, I wasn’t very good at it (I’m not very good now either, I believe). So I took over the situation and made the first move. Who would have known? I’m sure it would have been her if she had been a bit more sure of my feelings, but I didn’t know how to flirt in an elegant way so I had been quiet since I started liking her, which was shortly after I met her, shortly after that first lunch with her. Maybe it was at the Guggenheim when she took my picture? No one will ever know.

Well then. That first kiss in Poland, oh my god. Bonding over a Fleetwood Mac record, that first kiss was something I couldn’t have ever expected. That first kiss with Zara McAleese was like walking a new path for the first time, like the rush of adrenaline one gets when improvising a fast solo on the guitar. I’m not really one for metaphors, so just think about something new, intense, addicting and fascinating. When our lips touched, it was like meeting Zara once again, like starting all over. It was something I felt proud of afterwards, and have been ever since. And from then on, it all went uphill.

We slowly discovered each other, and so we also discovered we had more things in common than what we initially had thought. Our relationship allowed me to know that Zara used to play the guitar and sing a bit, that her hair wasn’t that blond when it wasn’t summer… Zara loved leather jackets but was a bit ashamed of the whole “killing-animals-to-make-leather” thing, Zara would unconsciously choose songs made at least ten years before the moment she listened to them, Zara had had a really emo band called “Grand Theft Autumn” when she was younger. Zara loved watching the New York Yankees play baseball, Zara was about to start an internship. Zara didn’t really care about sexy lingerie. Zara liked stealing my beanies, Zara slept on the left side of the bed. Zara liked neck kisses, jaw kisses, intimate kisses. Zara… Zara was an aspect of my life I had to pinch myself often about, as it was something so new and so wonderful, I might had been dreaming all that time.

So yes, it went uphill like a rollercoaster. And, just like a rollercoaster, it went downhill too.

I had been too careless about all of it. I thought that just because I had been dating PJ Harvey for a few months (and we were apart from each other) I would know how to make it work. But I didn’t. And as the tour came to an end, she felt she needed more than an abstract promise. I was offering her a runaround, I was unconsciously putting it off.

So one day, she realized she had had enough. And I told her it would work out, but not how it would work out. What was wrong with me, I don’t know. Maybe the thought that I could lose my best friend at any moment, maybe the fact that John didn’t want to be with the band anymore. Whatever it was, I just couldn’t bring myself to fight for her. And I should have, I should have tried to reassure her, but it all backfired on me and I ended up getting angry with her, asking her to leave… adding up to the sadness and the fight and the frustration and the feeling of failure each one of us felt, apart again just like we were in the beginning of things. I was still in love with her. More than ever. And she was in love with me too. But we didn’t know how to handle it.

And each and every night, I went to sleep thinking of her, cursing myself for not having been strong enough. She usually haunted my dreams, and when I woke up I didn’t really know if I was ecstatic or devastated for having seen her again. My birthday without her was a highlight of those gloomy days: I could do nothing but spend the day listening to music: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and each and every song we had shared. The Smiths, Blur and Oasis, Eric Clapton’s Layla… My sister visited me to have dinner together, and when she found me in such a situation, she went and hid my vinyl player somewhere, to try and snap me out of it. She ended up spending three days at my house, and that was kind of a relief, but I couldn’t get Zara out of my head.

Of course, being the jerk I think I was, I couldn’t help it and I wrote to her, several times. And afterwards I sunk, thinking I was a complete asshole (“You are so stupid, thinking she will give you another chance… she won’t want to hear of you by any means”), but feeling the need to do it again. To show her I still cared. To show her the only thing I wanted to do, more than putting together my own band, much more than playing with the Chilis, was to travel wherever she might be and hold her in my arms again.

Years went by, and my first record with the Red Hot Chili Peppers came out, but I barely knew about her. And that love, that passion, that infatuation was still stabbing me, but I learnt to conceal and ignore it, and so things didn’t hurt as much as they once did. I never lost my love, but I definitely lost hope. We talked once or twice, but as friends, and it was always kind of cold, like a distance had gotten between us (both a literal and metaphorical distance, actually). I thought I would take my devotion to the grave.

But following the logical sequence of events, after the new album there was a new tour, and I hadn’t forgotten for a second what I had promised to Zara: I would get her tickets for my first solo show with the Chilis in London. The I’m With You World Tour was in its beginning, and I was doubtful about it all: Would she remember? Would she think I was trying too hard? Still, I sent her the tickets. And she attended the show… with a guy.

“Of course, you dumb one, of course she has someone else now.” I was with someone too, but because it wasn’t really serious, I assumed she had stayed the same way. Later on, I got to know he was just a friend, they didn’t have anything going on… yet. I felt she would end up with that guy, but I didn’t say a word about it when I met her the following day for coffee. And that was it.

Or so I thought, because, ironically, just when I had made up my mind to not pursue her anymore, she shows up at one of the Dot Hacker shows in 2013, and she gives me a vinyl, Elton John’s Blue Moves. My favorite album. And it all comes back. The breakfast in Bilbao, the Polish record store, the Fleetwood Mac record… and the kiss. All of this, mixed with the alcohol we drank after the show, couldn’t be any good, and made me dizzy in some weird kind of way. But, surprisingly, I got to hide it all away. Seems I got better at pretending I’m fine.

I thought I could say the same about Zara: she told me about Daniel, his boyfriend, and she seemed to be keeping her composure perfectly fine… until she blurted out an unexpected “I missed you”. Apparently there was more going on under her skin than what she showed.

And that was the last straw. A torrent of emotions flooded me back, something really familiar I knew I had kept captive all these years, and, helped by the alcohol, I told her I was not over her yet. There was an obvious tension, and I tried to take it all back, to apologize, but somehow, when I left her at her hotel, something made it really hard to break apart again. I guess it was the fact that I knew I had her near me, the fact that I had a tangible proof of my weakness embodied in her body, that glorious, splendid weakness that made me want to be a better person when I thought of her. And that time, I felt she hadn’t got the courage to walk away either.

So in a violent flood, everything started glowing around me, my vision blurred, my heart started racing, and I found myself with her, within her, her hair caressing me, his lips drawing me to her in a black hole of passion and longing that I knew would hardly ever happen again. That night, I felt like nothing that happened afterwards could ever compare to it, like every moment after being with her would make me sad because nothing ever would be as intense as what we shared that night. It was impossible to describe, at least not accurately.

I can’t remember much of those moments, nor the trip back to San Francisco I insisted on doing, returning her home, except for the way it ended. She cried. I tried to get away from there. I didn’t want to be with her in that exact moment if it wasn’t to stay with her forever. I knew I couldn’t help crying too if I stayed longer. She told me it was impossible, I had hopes and she crushed them again. And she was right, she was probably wiser than me back then, but I still thought something could change after our impromptu meeting. And still, she ended it all telling me she loved me. What a wicked way of doing things. What a brilliant, wonderful, perfectly wicked woman she was in that specific instant. But I went away. And she went away too. And we were crushed again.

That time was definitely the last. Things had gotten to a point where neither of us could imagine facing the other again, or at least I was feeling that way. I was so ashamed of the way I let her go the first time and the subsequent times I saw her along the years, that some part of me felt safer without seeing her. The other part of me, of course, still longed for her touch, for her words… for Zara. What can I say, I must be an old Romantic guy from the 18th century… the thing is, years passed again, and by the time the eleventh Chili Peppers album, The Getaway, was done, I wasn’t done with her at all. That was barely a few months ago, but we started the tour and I guess I could distract myself enough not to think of her. Plus, I started dating a hot chick from a reality show, and I didn’t even like it that much, but she was a good distraction.

But last night… last night she showed up at the Belfast concert. And I swore to myself I wouldn’t let her play with me again. (Like she ever played with you, Josh. It was both of you who made it impossible.). I swore to myself I would give her one last chance. One last chance to talk about all of this, about us and our time together and our feelings. And after that one chance, everything would settle, whether it was for good or not. If we ended up getting away from each other again, then alright, good for us. If we didn’t get away, though… I didn’t want to think about that option. I wanted to get ready to be shattered again, so it wouldn’t hurt that much if it really happened.

“Can we talk?” I asked yesterday, backstage before the show, when she came to greet us, dragged behind her cousin and Justin, Chad’s son. She wasn’t really sure about it, but I got her to agree on meeting after the show.

And so we met. And I apologized. I faced my fears about talking to her, and I tried to act as humble as I could. I also brought up some writings she had let me read back then, some things she had written while in university. It was my personal shield to avoid being irrational and open myself once again. It turned out to be a weak shield, as something inside me cracked when I saw she was getting married. I remembered a song from I’m With You, a song named Police Station, and I repeated the lyrics to myself, like a silent mantra, while we talked about her future, and my current love life.

“I saw you in the church and there was no time to exchange… you were getting married and it felt so very strange. I guess I didn't see it coming, and now I guess it's me who's bumming. Dreaming of the golden years, you and I were mixing tears; not today, not for me but someone… I never could get used to, so now I will refuse to.”

Anthony must had been a clairvoyant or something: it’s like he wrote this song for me, about me. I broke down again. I couldn’t be as strong as I promised myself. I told her all again. I apologized for not fighting enough. And she left, once again.

Then why am I here with her, three days after, sitting in a London bench? It’s all because of her. I wouldn’t have made a move. Never again. Not after what happened. Not after all we’ve gone through. I couldn’t have stood it.

Some times, a melody gets in my head and I can’t forget it. But words don’t come out easily. As a musician, it’s harder for me to write lyrics than to write chords and notes. And so there have been songs I have had lingering around for more than ten years, unfinished, missing something. Now, after all I’ve said, it’s hard to find more words. It’s hard to finish this song I’ve crafted with so much thoroughness and care, it’s hard to string together this last melody of events.

John Frusciante, a good friend of mine, once wrote a song called Regret, in which he said to himself again and again that he “regretted his past”, that he should “stay alone”. I tried telling myself the same all this years, and failed. I’ll never regret my past. I’ll never regret stumbling into Zara, fearing I would have broken her iPod. I’ll never regret meeting her, I’ll never regret kissing her in Poland, I’ll never regret any of the things we did together. I won’t even regret being an asshole and running away from her, because maybe we needed that pain. Maybe we needed to endure the distance, maybe we needed to learn from our experiences, maybe we needed time and age to know what we wanted.

I’ll never regret anything about Zara. I’ll never regret the chances I gave her, even if she didn’t return the affection, and it’s useless lying about it: I would give her another chance, another and another, endless chances. I’ll be forever thankful for whatever it was that brought us together. I’ll be forever grateful for her way of talking to me, for her way of looking at me, for making me a better man, for freeing me of constraints and letting me be myself and whoever I wanted to be when I was with her.

But still, I can’t let myself slip this time. I’m just protecting my own heart. One thing is to be willing to cross oceans for her, another is to be suicidal. I couldn’t stand it if this last time I got out of here destroyed, so I’m trying to minimize the impact. This is another shield I’m building, a shield made of stoicism and sunglasses, just to hide away my eyes, my too-sincere eyes.

“I am sorry I broke your heart. Not a day goes by when I don’t regret it.”

Somehow, this time is different. She’s talking in such a different way. You would be surprised if I told you how have my days gone by, regretting everything too, ever since we messed this up, girl. But I say nothing. I look away.

“Josh, I let myself be consumed by fear, I was immature and scared. I could not fathom that you had those feelings for me. I broke your heart and I broke my own. I am mortified by the thought that you may never, ever forgive me. I’m sorry I walked away because I didn’t want to lose you to someone else. But in some strange way, right now, more than ever, I feel I’m losing you for good.”

You’re scared you’re losing me? I thought it was me who was scared of losing you. You’re so far from the truth, Zara.

She’s having trouble speaking, although words keep coming out of her mouth like a river running wild. Is she crying? Is that why she wore sunglasses as well? Oh well, what a shame we think so alike.

“And I know, J, I know I have no right whatsoever to say that. I know we both moved on. I know you’re in a relationship…”

What? Does she really think I’m taking this seriously? Maybe she’s more innocent than I thought, or maybe she’s really, really respectful of whatever I may decide to do in life. I can’t help but chuckle, a half-sceptical, half-sad laugh. I’m also surprised she knows, but much to my annoyance, everything’s on the internet, as she points out. Especially given the addiction the girl I’m with has to social media. I should have known…

She’s afraid I’m turning into someone I’m not. She thinks she’s losing me.

She’s not losing me. She won’t ever lose me. But it’s surprising, what a coward heart is capable of doing. She may not know what a beaten-up, tired and desperate heart like mine is capable of doing.

Now it’s me who finds it hard to go on, who finds it hard to breathe. After a few sentences, a silence sets between us. She’s the one who breaks it, taking off her glasses and revealing her face, shining because of the tears running down her cheeks.

“The reason I needed to talk to you today is… Josh, I am in love with you. I will always be.”

I can’t buy it. I can’t believe this is happening. I get angry with myself for believing, for a single second, she might be serious about it. Did you forget that Daniel guy, Josh? I feel like I want to slap myself in the face.

But she said it.

“Zara…” I begin. I’m still avoiding her eyes. I can’t stand the thought of believing everything can be okay again and then losing her. “You’re getting married.”

“I… I am willing to leave everything behind, this life and those plans that will not make me entirely happy. I am willing to start all over with you. The true love of my life. No fear, no buts, no excuses, no conditions. Not anymore.”

I raise my gaze. She’s on the verge of tears, and she looks more beautiful than ever. Maybe all this is truly happening. Maybe. But I can’t bring myself to say anything. I’m still afraid it might be a dream.

“If you don’t want to, I will completely understand. There’s no reason whatsoever why you’d take me now, after what I did to you in the past.”

I would take you. Now, tomorrow, after a million years. I could never reject you, not anymore. “But if you do take me…” She smiles a delicate smile, and I feel my heart breaking. No shields, no armor, nothing could save me from her. “I will dedicate my entire life, every minute, every second, to loving you and adoring you… as I have done since we met, as I do now, and as I always will, no matter what.”

Zara pauses, and gets closer. She doesn’t try to decipher my eyes, she’s only giving herself to me, body and soul. “This is my heart, right here, in front of you.”

She’s not expecting anything. Anything. She only waits for an answer. She’s ready to smash herself to the ground if I decide I don’t want her. Just like I am ready to smash myself to the ground if this ends up being a dream.

“Are you finished?” I ask, a last check because I’m too scared.

She gasps. This is not a dream.

I’m not turning around this time, I’m not looking back.

I take her by the chin and I join our lips. And then, I drown in her blue sea.

---

There are always unfinished songs. There are always things I won’t ever bring to a close. But I swear, this won’t be one. Zara won’t be an unfinished song. Zara is here, I’m here, and we’re together. And as much as I won’t ever regret my past, I won’t linger on either. I won’t stay in the past. We’re here, and this is our future. Here she is, here’s my future.

And these are the lyrics of our completed song.

[she-shall-conquer]

Suspension of Disbelief

temporarily allow oneself to believe something that is not true, especially in order to enjoy a work of fiction.

(upon the viewing of Collateral Beauty) 

When I was turning 15, I was thrown my first surprise party. It’s always something I secretly hoped would happen at some point or other, but being the designated planner, I was normally the one organising for everyone else. I am also generally good at finding out what’s going on, so this makes it rather impossible. So the weeks went by before hand and the week leading up to it, there were hushed murmurs and odd looks, pretences of engagements and everything else – I left it be, I wanted a surprise, I didn’t want to figure it out. In the back of my mind I knew and suspected it, but I “suspended my disbelief”, in that  I knew it was happening but I pretended that I didn’t know so that I could be surprised – so that I could let the universe tell it’s story in it’s own way.

i managed to keep this going up until the actual day. It was a horrible day at school; all my friends were on camp and we had a PhysEd class for which I had forgotten to pack sports clothes, forcing me to do it in my school dress. At the end of the day while waiting to be picked up, a girl from my youth group came up to me and nonchalantly asked:

“Are you going to Jay’s surprise party tonight?”

Rage filled me and I tried to regain any form of calm and focus left in me when I asked back:

“You know my name is Jay right?”

“Yeah” She replied, still oblivious to her cruelty.

“And you know it’s my birthday today right”

“Yeah?”, she said perplexed by the obvious irritation in my voice.

I paused, hoping that the pieces would fall into place – which they didn’t. So I continued the train of logic she was obviously missing.

“Well you don’t think that maybe it’s my surprise party seeing as there are no other Jays?”

Realisation eventually came over her face and she realised her blunder quite unapologetically which enraged me even more. I then had to pretend that it was a surprise that evening when I walked in.

The point is this: I had suspended my belief through much effort and she had sabotaged that, with no care or second thought and thus sabotaged my story.

So it goes in the movies too, you get a special kind of annoying where people try predict the ending, when the movie isn’t a detective movie, or a thriller, or one where the man characters are trying to guess what’s happening – if the main character is doing it, you can do it, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works… As a patron of the arts (including the art of life) part of your job as the audience is to play along in the story, and while sometimes the fourth wall is broken and you are allowed to return back to the place where you are a person watching a make-believe play, as soon as you walk in those doors and sit down, you are a part of the story, you are a bystander in whatever world and reality the story exists in and you have given over your control of yourself and sometimes even your ability to think and placed it in the hands of the story tellers, it’s so vitally important for the audience to understand this.

We know the hero will overcome but we “suspend belief” when he is encountering adversity, because we are being taken on his journey – when he hurts, we hurt – and so we endure a greater loss if the hero dies or does not succeed, because we take that upon ourselves. The truth is, while the art of telling the story lies on the performer and the story itself, there is a responsibility that falls on the audience, which any performer can attest to. The performer needs your trust, your suspended disbelief and your vulnerability to take you on the journey of this story. Many of the prologues in Shakespeare do exactly that, they ask for your trust and establish a rapport and understanding, and when it feels betrayed such as in tragedies like Romeo and Juliet, the epilogue consoles and puts all the pieces back together again. Audiences are no longer what they were and the arts are no longer the same. Audiences have become selfish and cold and miserly in their trust and vulnerability, which is all but encouraged through going to the movies. As you sit alone, or with company, but yet still alone without talking in the large comfort-oriented seats, perhaps in an empty cinema, and watch the projection on the screen, it is easy to forget that the images and people up there beg for your trust and attention, and its even easier not to give it because it’s not a real person in from of you and, well, you may not be cultured enough to be aware of this.

As a child, I was sucked into worlds and stories and let them captivate me. Perhaps it was the nightly readings of Narnia, or the adventures of King David that spurred the wonder and awe in my heart for a story, a hero, and a gripping tale. I remember the disappointment I felt the day I asked my mom to tell me another parable, and she said there were none left.

When I watch a movie, I don’t just watch a movie, I become a part of the movie and the movie becomes a part of me. Because of the way our health insurance worked, when I was a kid, I could go to movies for free before 7pm, and so I went, regularly, often by myself, because really it’s hard to go with someone else – not everyone will allow themselves to trust the story, and so it really is more like a television, where they are casually observing a piece of something while remaining in their world (I guess that’s how I feel about most sport). At some point this became a problem, because I would take on the emotional problems of the characters and their struggles, and so, my greatest challenge often remains finding myself again after watching a movie. Even in drama class I had to stop, I kept taking on the emotional baggage of the characters I was playing, and it became too much at some point.

One of the biggest offences when watching a movie with me is if you try and predict what’s going to happen before it happens, especially when it’s not that kind of movie. You are entitled to your suspicions, but you should know that firstly, I’ve probably already thought about it and then pushed it aside to exercise my suspension of disbelief, because it brings me more joy to stay in the story with the character, and while the clues are put out there, if the story hasn’t told me, then I have no right to know until it explicitly says I may, much like I would have no right to ruin an engagement by predicting it to the person in question as it violates trust. What I hate most about LalaLand is that it not only breaks trust by having a sad ending, but it then goes on to rub that sad ending in your face with no resolve, a slap in the face for trusting the story.

Could it be that we have fostered a dangerously bitter relationship wit our suspension of disbelief, could it be that this mechanism which we use to enjoy stories told to us could also be instrumental in our faith?

Faith could very literally be described as the suspension of disbelief, of trusting despite what we are seeing and encountering in the circumstances where we find ourselves, and on the back of Tolkien’s beautiful essay on the human necessity for fairytales, do we not need stories to teach us this suspension of disbelief (or faith), that we use when we exercise and we don’t see muscles the next day, when we put hard work in and face our own adversities in good faith for favourable results, and even when they don’t come, we know that we are the main characters of of our own stories and so we hold out faith for something better and actively pursue it.

It could also be argued that this is altogether wrapped up in faith in God, where we trust Him as the teller of our stories, and that while we may not understand presently, that there will be good in the end. This can be monumentally hard sometimes, for the pain that comes in life is often unbearable and far beyond what we ever imagined. How then can we still trust? When we are so utterly betrayed?

Well. We have stories, and while it does not make it okay, it does not take the darkness and hurt away, but it does remind us that in time, the darkness may not be as heavy as it is currently and that there is more and far better that lies ahead. This disbelief caused by our circumstances can be suspended temporarily till the light comes.

In stories such as the Life of Pi, this feels utterly abused, as at the end of the story it is revealed that not only has the entire story been a suspension of disbelief, but when the truth is given, the audience, or reader is invited to sustain their suspension of disbelief as they already to with whatever religion they subscribe to, because religion is ultimately just a candy coating to help us better deal with the true story. This being contrary to the the theological understanding that earth is the more temporary and that the afterlife is the greater place to live for, to live from and to experience in this life, thereby adding and enriching, not making up a story to pretend life is better than it is. Faith is insulted and patronised.

All things  considered, could it be suggested that perhaps loss is most difficult for us, and denial is sometimes the first reaction (before the shock sets it) because of our suspended belief mechanism, where we can endure temporary hardship because of the better ending, and when loss occurs, we lose the ending we were looking forward to (which again could be argued to be the result of trying to overthink the ending and that a good ending may not look like we originally expect)?

I know that recently, after loss, my first reaction was that surely there must be something that can be done, something else, and so the bargaining of grief begins and we rack our minds trying to find some other alternative, anything that can be done. We become numb because the pain is so great that it becomes too much to  deal with, and so we suspend our pain until we feel with have capacity and safety to begin dealing with it.

Humans aren’t made for goodbyes, we are made with eternity in mind; immortality etched on our hearts and transcendence, the gleam in our eyes. Shaped and formed in the likeness of the the Eternal, and yet we do not trust, we cannot trust, we have seen too much, fallen too far, and like Habakkuk, our plea for justice and an end to violence and wickedness rings out and tires our weary hearts. Gently He comes and lifts our eyes, to see what He sees, to look above and beyond, to view in a new perspective – a perspective where He is King, where He is sovereign, and where we are the audience, we partake, we trust, we follow, and we act as He tells His story. When we remember that we don’t know everything, when we stop being angered by the story being ruined, when we can stand in awe and put our trust in the Master Storyteller, and be content to be a part of the solution and the answer, even though it may not look like we thought it did, then can our hearts be at peace, and so we can, like Habakkuk say that all we know and are lies in ruins, and yet we still trust, we can push aside our disbelief, because the story of which we are a part of is so much greater.

And so faith is in someways so much more simple and natural to us, for it us allowing our stories to be told by Him who began it. And so that as with a suspended chord, we hold onto our faith when the music changes and persist till the recapitulation and final cadence commences.    

[longboner]

toxic infatuation

Just got back from a wedding today. It got me feeling the full spectrum of emotion with only a downfall at the end, similar to the high of being on ecstasy followed with the deadly “come-down”. Unfortunately, this come-down is a lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to.

It comes to no surprise that I’m incredibly lazy. Even when things are vital to my future, I’m known to slack hardcore, so it somewhat makes sense that I haven’t put too much forethought to my current situation. I’ve come to hate my life. Before I really felt it now, I’ve only ever used that phrase ironically. I hate this place, I hate my housemates, and I hate myself. Hate, hate, hate. I can’t even find things to enjoy anymore.

Being in a new environment felt invigorating at first, mostly due to a sort of honeymoon phase. It quickly came down. My roommate is a complete weirdo who also stinks and overall lowers my quality of life. I actively despise his presence because his existence just worries me. Another Chinese fob housemate is incredibly annoying too. He’s always so nosy and goes out of his way to bother me.

Sure I haven’t done anything to completely mitigate his annoyingness, but for my roommate, I’ve gone through hell just to get this guy to a seemingly normal state of being. Just the act of replacing a towel took over a week to solve. The inner machinations of this guy’s mind is an enigma.

Amazingly, these housemate problems are only icing on this shitty cake I call life. I’m in the worst spot of my life. Or at least that’s how it feels. Every year feels the same to be honest. I’m always stuck in this shitty hole. My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I look in the mirror and I hate the person I see. Every time I look at a picture of myself I physically wince.

There was a time in my life where I thought I was somewhat attractive. It even came with the perk of not having to know how to socialize with people because girls just came to you! Delusions get you pretty far. All that self-confidence went to shit over time, as I started packing on the pounds and caring less about maintaining my appearance.

It all really leads to now. I feel like such a piece of shit. Like how did I become such a huge piece of shit. My life just feels meaningless. I don’t remember any phase in my life where just thinking about being alive would almost jerk tears out of my eyes. To die or cry, I can’t decide if I want to do one, the other, or both at the same time. I have so many things I want to happen, but I don’t have the confidence to do anything. I want to fall in love and be loved, I want to be smart and sociable, I want to enjoy my life; I want and I want and I want.

I can’t even talk to people normally without feeling self-conscious about being awkward, weird, or just plain out uninteresting. It’s fine to tell someone to be themselves, but if they’re just an uninteresting piece of shit then who would want to talk with them? Sure you could make the argument that everyone is a piece of shit in their own right, but you can’t help feeling how you feel about yourself. Kinda flawed argument because you can gain self-confidence, but you get what I mean.

Talking to people legitimately depresses me. The moment the excitement in their eyes from meeting a new person disappears gives me such a deep sinking feeling of depression that I’m scared to talk to new people. The constant conflict between my fear of rejection and my yearning for companionship defines me.

And speaking of companionship, the one thing I love writing about is girls. When I was younger, middle school for example, I put girls on an incredibly high pedestal. Talking to ugly girls, piece of cake, maybe even add a little sprinkle of disgust in there too. But talking to girls I thought were attractive was a big no from me. I felt a massive divide between these two types of girls, and I immediately felt intimidated by them. It surely explains my storied history of relationships, seeing as, romantically or not, I’ve never approached any girl I’ve liked.

My life is built upon a growing list of unrequited infatuations. I never even saw them as human. To a spectator, it would look like girls were pretty much angels descended from heaven from how I treated them: untouchable and revered. Fuck, I had a huge crush on this girl I met in kindergarten that lasted the majority of my life. I barely even talked to her, it was too frightening. It was easy to just watch from a distance, I never had to do anything. Just her presence was enough to make me feel happy to be alive. After all, my mind literally couldn’t fit anything else but her.

Somehow, I didn’t learn about the merits of expressing your feelings until the end of high school. I had a group of guy friends and one thing they used to talk about was their relationships and others’ relationships. Needless to say, I was living under a rock. People were fucking each other left and right. Sure that sounds completely normal, but these were people that I actually knew. I never knew that people I knew were capable of this shit. Makes sense that I was living in a fucking cave if I thought people weren’t doing anything. I’m a human, and my desires could be shared with many, many others.

Actually, one of the guys in this group went out with that girl I’ve liked for over a decade at that point. Fascinating to hear about that person in your mind that you’ve put on a pedestal as some saint getting her ass plowed every Tuesday. Heart-breaking wouldn’t be the right way to put it, I’d say it was more of a soul-twisting, enlightening experience.

The real hard hitters are when a girl likes you and you completely fuck it up. In my senior year, a girl I knew in middle school messaged me. It was the old, “hey I used to like you” kind of spiel, so you already know she was looking for something here. My decline in self-esteem was already nearing its peak by this point, and I ruined everything that could have happened by making explicit the fact that I’ve become this empty shell of a human being.

And this feeling of mutual interest is something I find intoxicating. In high school I never really checked out girls because I was too obvious about it, and in high school, everybody knows everybody. I already put names and stories to these faces, and it was hard to sexually objectify them unless their bodies were fucking insane. When I met new people, I do that stupid movie shit where you’re always trying to steal glances from a girl and haha yes we met eyes hahahaahhhahaah. It’s a nice connection before you actually talk to a girl, since you almost entirely get rid of the initial factor of whether or not she finds you attractive.

The fear of rejection comes in many forms, so even after that preliminary ritual, I’m faced with the decision of approaching this girl. At this point, I’ve checked things off my inner list: she’s cute, she’s obviously interested in me, and I’m interested in her. All I have to do is talk to her, so why not? Well first of all, I’m a fat piece of shit. Every time I’ve talked to someone new, they almost immediately lose interest. And what if she’s not even interested in me in the first place? What if I’m misinterpreting these signals? God I’m so conceited to even assume someone as cute as her would even think to find someone like me attractive.

After a pep talk like that, it’s hard to think I wouldn’t approach her. I had that happen at the wedding. I noticed a girl there that was really cute, but I didn’t pass the initial ritual. Hell, there were near zero signs pointing to yes, but I thought she was cute so why not? Give it a go. But it got me thinking, I’ve already failed the ritual, so I don’t even have the comfort of that going before I go for it. Not to mention my hair is complete shit since I didn’t shower in the morning on top of my hair product being trash from Target. I’m a complete mess in a suit and tie without even a belt to hold my outfit together. God when I look in the mirror, some ugly fat disheveled retard is looking right back at me. At the end of this stupid monologue, I told myself I already failed. Every single time this happened in the past, I always ended up doing nothing and it all was stupid overthinking, and it just happened all over again.

Long story short, I thought she was too cute for me to approach. What kind of girl do I think I deserve? If I “settled” for a girl, wouldn’t that be disingenuous? I keep beating myself up for just existing and thinking I deserve someone that I like. Not to be that kind of guy, I see plenty of ugly guys going places and getting girls way out of their leagues. Logically speaking, they gotta work for their pay, so they’re doing something right.

Leads me to think that there’s some form of merit to being a fuckboy. Living solely to put your dick in some vagina could produce some results. It’s like bruteforcing; you’re mindlessly practicing over and over just to get some result that has no emotional significance to you other than sexual gratification. Maybe if I became a fuckboy, I’d get friends, albeit they’re like-minded in that they’d be fuckboys too. Maybe I’d be more confident, well, hopefully since at that point I’d be telling myself I’m confident everyday until it became reality.

I had a conversation with my cousin who told me, in short, that I just sound like I’m bored. I lose interest easily because it’s hard to stay interested in people. He told me to at least act interested, and act like I care. Fake it til you make it right? At that point why not be a fuckboy? But honestly there is merit to that advice. Nobody wants to talk to a wall, but if I’m forcing myself to be interested, would it make me happy to push this relationship further if I’m just going to continue to force myself to act like that? Maybe I’m being a hypocrite with that other shit I have going on.

Anyways, tired. Dunno how to end it, it’s gotten super long. This is something I think about a lot, so I’ll be writing the heck out of it.

[dhj8735]

KIP

Well, lets get started.  My research is about, humans and monsters.Why are Humans more afraid of monsters that do not exist, when they should be more afraid of humans. From my understanding is that people are afraid of the unknown, and to those young minds, their imagination may end up being vivified, causing fear of monsters. -(Omar de Icaza ). Now humans should be feared the most than monsters. One, have you seen a monster? NO? Well you see humans right, and do you know what is in their mind? No? Some people are psychopaths, murderers, rapists, Sadists, etc. And guess what, there is 7 Billion people out there. And some keep their desires in closed curtains.As you all know, we humans are afraid of the unkown. This should be already apperent to all of you. Trying to find out why people. Or mostly teenagers are afraid of these mythical monsters. I for one may have been araid of monsters. Well. I still am, yes I am old but throwing the rubbish at 12 am in the night isnt really a walk in the park. Just thinking of something that might come and scare me arojnd the corner scares me. Maybe that could be the reason as to why we are afraid. We over thibk things to a certain degree to the point of where our imagination just beckmes the superior emotion than common sense. Horror movies do not help, the human mind is quite complicated, and in some cases naive. Like a simple boy meets a nice girl, she treats him nicely and wants to be friends. The girl only wants to be friends. But the male counter part interprets it very very differently. They think that its some sort of way of flieting from the female. That she wants to hit on said boy. Again two very different and distinct ways of thinking. So are monsters. But maybe there are monsters in this world. And its the people around you. RATIONALE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY Why is looking through this beneficial to us, ill tell you why. Have you ever stopped and though about what someone has done, something unforgivable, look around you. Do you know what that person has done. Do you really know the people that are close to you. I'm not saying you should question everyone, but don't be surprised when they have a secret you didn't know. The people that are close to me, I know their true intentions, and they know I know. Also why do we overthink? Our tendency to overthink everything holds us back from doing something productive. Thinking too much about things isn't just a nuisance. It can take a serious toll on your well-being. Research says dwelling on your shortcomings, mistakes, and problems increases your risk of mental health problems, I guess I over think also, and in that we think irrationally and do things that we will regret. LITERATURE/ PAST RESEARCH REVIEWThe news. That is my Literature. Love is something that makes others blind, to what really lies between someone. I'm not saying everyone is bad but they have some things deep down, just be cautious. An Article:   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wife-and-son-murdered-husband-for-inheritance-698.html It claims that the wife of a wealth businessman, plotted his murder with her son because she wanted his money without the trouble of a divorce. Which is sickening. The mans wife, wanted his money. True intentions lie beneath the skin right? Cults.https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/the-5-scariest-cults-in-modern-history/ This I guess is a scary subject, there are still cults that exist today that sacrifices humans. I needn't explain myself, since it is already there, but it still is worth reading no doubt.Also religion.I would consider myself to be christian, I guess, I have sinned, greatly, I mean we all sin. But its religion that people should also fear, the extremists that take it to far, such as ISIS, terrorists and such. They scream out praise god while killing people, but we Christians aren't so different back then, the crusaders used this as an excuse to remain calm, it is okay to kill someone because god said it was. And you know I'm right. RESEARCH QUESTION/ DESIGN/ PLAN OF THE STUDY AS for my for my Kip project, I would say its research, because I do not see how I could experiment, homicide, murderers, fetish, crime and such. Doing a survey is a waste of time, because people wouldn't tell others about the dark things in their minds.I presume My research will be about the statistics of crime around New Zealand, just to be specific. My goal hopefully by the end of this hopefully will convince you, and or others, to open your eyes and also be cautious with those around you. Do not make the same mistake that I did. Foolish Naive child I was. I'm not sure if I am even doing this research right. But at least I get to share my cautions. Now my first Idea was to make an actual survey to the people around my block, which is... pretty dangerous. Hehe. I for one am entirely unfamiliar with the Laws and crimes in New Zealand. So with my unbiased logic of others, I am some what confident at how some people think, all it takes is to just talk with them, learn how they talk, and move, and I guess, read them. But back to the reason as to why I didn't or might not want to do a survey is because, two reasons, Firstly, I am shy,  and I do not want to talk to strangers. Secondly this survey would be a big hit and miss, people could lie, about their crimes or what not,  and lie that they have never done anything wrong, and also, security and privacy, I couldn't just stand there and ask them what illegal things they have done. There are some people that are nice out there. But in a survey, the assumption to think that it would be fines is flawed. First of all, people assume anyone would volunteer to speak out. The truth is, people like to keep their privacy in check, even though they themselves show their faces in the internet, I know one person so far who wants to keep his privacy, and that person, does not use Facebook, Instagram, snap chat or any of that, just messages. And he himself agrees with the way I think about others. "There are a lot of $#@&^$ up people out there." He himself understands the flaws in humans, desires. Most people will fall into peer pressure, many would prefer to keep their desires a secret, or carry on with their lives. So with the assumption that they are there willingly to talk with me, is slim. There is no possible  way for them, to volunteer themselves for the position where they can speak out their secrets. But I wont do my research face to face, ill do it online, just to see what it may be like, maybe some people will open up, since they can't see me, and they may feel safer at their own homes. I have sent my incognito email into the web in hopes of finding anyone willing to open up. ETHICSNow my research may or may not hurt someone mentally, as it may bring back past memories that they are trying to forget, but still had the courage to open up to me. Now I know this may be unreliable and a lie, but its still a much safer way, and I guess new way of doing things, making sure that we understand the new generation.The only problem is damaging them mentally for bringing unwanted memories. Same thing had happened. A man had entered a studio in California TV Station, on Tuesday, and revealed a shocking confession: he was involved in an unsolved murder 25 years ago, and finally wanted to do the right thing and turn himself in. "Every minute of every day has been a nightmare. It's kind of weird,@ Is what he says. So if There were a survey this may bring unwanted emotions to arise. Resource and budget.The only budget I would be concerned about is the electricity bill and internet bill, haha. And I am using my PC as my source of research. All kidding aside, Well my research would require human individuals, online, or someone that I am conversing, with. I will just ask them questions and I shall see as to how far it will go. Location.Location would be around the world, previously I had said New Zealand but there are not much people that I could converse with online or at face to face.Also Gmail, and or YouTube. Timetable for completion.Around 8-9 weeks of questioning others, and hopefully not doing anything illegal doing this. Risk and limitations. The only risk is personal space, and mental damage, I will not force them to talk nor will I beg, they have a choice, and Bluntness will help. I will record these by via photos, and screenshots of the people I will talk with online and converse with. References. By Ian Herbert, North of England Correspondent, Thursday 7 April 2005 23:00 BST. WIFE AND SON MURDERED HUSBAND FOR INHERITANCEhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wife-and-son-murdered-husband-for-inheritance-698.html   Cheryl Eddy, March 14, 2016, 12:00pm. THE 5 SCARIEST CULTS IN MODERN HISTORY.https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/the-5-scariest-cults-in-modern-history/ Billy Hallowell, Senior editor.January 15, 2018.MAN WALKS INTO NEWS STATION AND MAKES SHOCKING CONFESSION TO COLD-CASE MURDER. http://www.faithwire.com/2018/01/15/man-walks-into-news-stations-and-makes-shocking-confession-to-cold-case-murder/