#I think I started writing this post around 45 minutes ago

[quibbs126]

I made a second flavor swapped Cookie thing, this time with seamoon

I again just needed something to draw. I was originally planning to draw berry flavored Dark Cacao, possibly with Dark Choco, but I couldn’t figure out what to draw them doing. I mean I could have just done head drawings, but the first one had an actual pose/scene going on, and so I wanted there to be an actual pose. Then I started thinking about maybe drawing a swap seamoon kiss

I was trying to figure out what other Legendaries I could swap them out with, and I thought of Fire Spirit and Wind Archer (or more accurately, their elements), and I was wondering if that might have some Icarus elements to it, and I got excited with that and other potential ideas and went for it

I was thinking of fire for Moonlight with the idea that the Wizards was using fire as their basis of research rather than the night sky. I haven’t entirely figured out whether Moonlight would be representative of the sun (would work for the Icarus idea), or if she was born out of the core of a volcano. I’m leaning more towards the latter though. As for Sea Fairy, I thought that the sky would be a suitable substitute for the sea, as they’re both large parts of the world and have various creatures associated with them. And again, possible association with fire/the sun. And possibly also because firewind

I definitely took more liberties with their designs than I did last time. It was likely in part because I was more focused on the elements than the specific characters these swaps were based on. Sea Fairy was more a mix of Wind Archer and Sugar Swan, with the design being more Sugar Swan and the colors more Wind Archer. I may be a known griper of Sugar Swan Cookie’s design, but she does have a deity look to her

The first thing I thought to do with Moonlight was to have her hair floating upwards, since she’s made of fire, and also it’d look good for the drawing. I didn’t draw her hat because I originally had forgotten about it, and then I thought that the hat would interfere with the hair. I did keep the bottom part though, and I guess it’s like some sort of tiara now. I think it looks good. I also added a cape because Fire Spirit has one, with it taking the place of her bottom half frills

I’ll be honest, some of these changes were just because I didn’t want to draw certain parts of the character, like Sea Fairy’s coral and such. I don’t think it looks too bad though

Yeah I guess I might make this a series then? I just make flavor swapped Cookies doing stuff? It’s not that bad a concept, and maybe it frees up my creative space from the perpetual fankid struggles. Also it could be better practice for posing and drawing characters together. I just have to be careful when swapping some Cookies though

(By the way I still want to draw berry Dark Cacao, but I still don’t know what to draw him doing, so you know. If you have ideas. Dark Choco can be in there too)

[myfaveficrecs]

Remember This?

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Reader

Word Count: 2,011

Warnings: Smut, unprotected sex, dirty talk, mentions of injuries/medical procedures

AN: I am dipping my toes back into the writing world for @roosterforme​’s #love is in the air tgm challenge. My song is, “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men. Hopefully this isn’t a flop! Happy Valentine’s Day! XOXO

You enjoyed your job immensely. Helping people had always been something that was extremely important to you, and you were lucky enough to be able to do what you were passionate about. You finished medical school 3 years ago and now you were employed at your local VA Hospital part time, your other half being on base with your husband, Bradley. You had been high school sweethearts and you were still going on like it was your honeymoon.

You were overjoyed when you learned you were going to be able to help soldiers from all branches from all over the country. You helped veteran soldiers with rehabilitation mostly. Post war injuries that needed extra help and attention when they were able to come back home. 

Bradley and his squadron were all in the Navy. Fanboy and Halo had done 3 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan while Bradley had done 2 recently. Hangman was almost killed in combat 4 days before he was due to come home from his last deployment. The others had thankfully come home in one piece, only minor scrapes and injuries from their time overseas. Bradley hadn’t been as lucky. 

Bradley had been shot once in the chest inches away from his heart, and shrapnel had sliced through his face, neck, and arm. He was lucky to be alive but thankfully the doctors he had were good at what they do. They were able to save his life but not without complications. He had severe nerve damage through his left shoulder and bicep and his collarbone had been shattered and completely reconstructed. When he was sent home, he started showing up to the hospital you worked at for his physical therapy, often riding home with you at the end of the day.

You had just finished with a patient when you were heading to your office, passing by the nurses’ station on your way. You dropped the patient’s chart off at the desk but before you could start heading in the direction you desired, your charge nurse, Rebecca, stopped you with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“You have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

She just shrugged her shoulders noncommittally with a smirk, walking away from you to continue your filing.  Looking at your basket you noticed you had no patients waiting and walked to your office wondering who could be waiting for you.

As soon as you walked into your office your face broke out in a large smile. You knew it was your husband without a doubt. His 6’1” frame standing in front of your large window overlooking the city, broad shoulders, long legs, tight little ass, and hair with perfect curls for pulling.

“Well, this is a pleasant surprise.” You smiled while shutting your door, taking off your lab jacket and throwing it over the back of one of the chairs in your office. He turned around quickly and smiled at you, holding his arms open wide for you to walk into, bringing you into a warm and tight embrace.

“Yeah, I had my last appointment today and thought I’d come up and see you.”

“How’d it go?”

“Good. Almost as good as before.”

“That’s awesome, honey.”

“You don’t have any patients do you?”

“No, I think my next appointment is in another 45 minutes, why?”

With a mischievous look and a flick of the lock on your door, Bradley looks towards your desk and says, “Hey Alexa! Play my baby maker playlist.” You couldn’t help but laugh, burying your face in his chest as “I’ll Make Love to You,” starts to echo in your office.  

“Haven’t heard this song since the night before my last deployment...you remember that night?” He smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

“Of course, I do! But Roo, we can’t do that here!”

“We can. I locked the door. C’mon baby, I thought we could celebrate a little early.” He could see the slight crack in your resolve and pounced on the seconds of vulnerability, the pride. “Besides, Rebecca is probably listening right outside the door right now anyway.:

Close your eyes, make a wish And blow out the candlelight For tonight is just your night We're gonna celebrate, all through the night Pour the wine, light the fire Girl your wish is my command I submit to your demands

Bradley wrapped one hand into your hair, gently pulling your head back, tracing his nose up your cheek. Pulling back slightly he hovers his lips over your own, a little quirk to his lips when he pulls millimeters away when you try and connect. Once, twice more before he lets out a breathy chuckle at your frustration, finally crashing his plush lips to yours in a passionate kiss. His other hand pushing into your lower back and pulling you flush against him, swaying to the harmony of the song. When he pulled away you were both breathless and dizzy. Desire had pooled in your core, and you could feel an impressive bulge digging into your stomach. “You gonna let me love you like it’s that night all over again? Right here, right now?”

He didn’t give you any time to respond before he crashed his lips back onto yours once again. This time the kiss was all tongue and teeth. He loved to bite on your lower lip when you kissed, and it always managed to send shivers down your spine. As soon as you let out a moan, he knew he had you right where he wanted you and he smiled against your mouth. He quickly picked you up, digging his hands underneath your ass cheeks and plopped you unceremoniously on top of your desk, pushing everything out of his way to give you enough room to lie down. Your movements were frantic, knowing time was limited, ironically the same as the night before he left. 

I will do anything, girl you need only ask I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby, all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

Bradley was usually a rough lover, but he always managed to make you feel loved and protected, no matter what you were doing, and the sex was no different. His touch held a tenderness; a reaffirming touch that he would always be there to care for you.

You quickly pulled his shirt off of his broad shoulders and pulled it up over his head to reveal his chiseled chest and abs. Reaching up you pulled Bradley down toward you, kissing over his scars from the old wounds, shrapnel, and surgeries. This was something you always did, letting him know you were thankful he was alive and in your arms. The reminder that he was still beautiful in your eyes.

Girl relax, let's go slow I ain't got nowhere to go I'm just gon' concentrate on you Girl, are you ready? It's gon' be a long night Throw your clothes (throw your clothes) on the floor (on the floor) I'm gonna take my clothes off too I've made plans to be with you Girl whatever you ask me, you know I can do

Bradley pulled your hair and moved your head back far enough to stretch your neck long, licking a broad stripe and ending with a quick nip underneath your ear. You let out an obscene moan making him pull back from you and stand up as straight as he could while leaning over your desk for support. “You gotta be quiet, baby.” He practically ripped your scrub pants and panties off of you in one quick pull, your shoes flying off along with them from the force of his tug. He placed your feet wide along the edge of your desk, opening yourself up to him. “Fuck Y/N…you’re already soaking wet.” 

“I’m always wet for you, Bradley…now are you just going to stare or are you going to make love to your wife?” 

I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby, all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

Bradley’s demeanor instantly changed. His eyes quickly shot up to yours, narrowing into slits. He clenched his jaw making it tick, and he snapped his belt open, never once taking his eyes from yours. The intensity bringing a new wave of slick rushing out of you. There was no reply from him, his face telling you everything you needed to know. He was most definitely going to love you, and he was going to make sure you remembered it. 

Pulling his jeans and boxers down just below his ass, his erection sprang free. It was long and thick, steadily leaking drops of precum. He wrapped his hand around the base, slowly stroking upwards, giving you a show. With a smirk he wrapped his hand around your thighs, pulling you down until your ass was flush with the edge of your desk. 

Baby, tonight is your night And I will do you right Just make a wish on your night Anything that you ask I will give you the love of your life, your life, your life

No warning was given before he thrust into you in one slow and measured thrust, filling you to the brink, and trusting your body to accept him as it has hundreds of times before. Your eyes rolled back in your head and your mouth opened wide to let out a sound you had never heard yourself make before, not that you could bring yourself to care. 

“I said,” he pistoned into you quickly, “be quiet. You don’t want those coworkers of yours getting too curious, do you?” You shook your head, biting your lip hard enough to draw blood in an attempt to muffle your noises. Bradley set a punishing pace knowing time was not on his side. His hips quickly meeting yours, the sound of slapping skin loud enough to echo throughout your office over the music. He pushed your scrub top up and over your breasts, pulling the cups of your bra down, and started to roughly caress your breasts with his left hand, his right holding tightly onto your hip to keep you from scooting across your desk from the power of his thrusts. The cold metal of his wedding ring made your nipples harden to tight peaks, the sensation running like a lightning bolt to your clit. “Fuck…Roo…please.” 

He didn’t need to ask what you needed, knowing your body better than you did after all of these years. He quickly put his body flush with yours, chest to chest, intertwining your hands together beside of your head, and slammed his lips onto yours once again, tongues battling for dominance and attempting to muffle the noises trying to escape. The new angle caused him to move even deeper inside of you, completely bottoming out. The feeling of being so full and the delicious friction his pelvis was giving you by rubbing against your clit sent you over the edge. 

I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

You arched your back and wrapped your legs tightly around his waist. The tight fluttering of your walls sending Bradley into his own orgasm, giving a growl you felt deep within his chest as he released himself inside of you. The sound of your intercom on your office phone went off, Rebecca’s voice floating through the room. “Your last appointment of the day just cancelled. See you tomorrow, Dr. Bradshaw!” 

Both of you were still breathing heavily, interlocked together to the point you couldn’t tell where you began, and he ended. “Thank God because I don’t think I can walk after that.” 

You both broke out into laughter, ready to go home. Bradley knew he had that record on the bookshelf in his office...round 2 is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you do not wish to be tagged, please let me know and I will remove you! If you do want to be tagged, please let me know.

@roosterscock​​

@roosterforme​​

@endofdays56​​

@bradshawsbitch​​

@jupitercomet​​

@seresinhangmanjake​​

@wildbornsiren​​

@babyrooster​​

@ohtobeleah​​​

@oncasette​​

@topguncortez​​

@topgun-imagines​

@roleycoleyreccenter​​

@cherrycola27​​

@thedroneranger​​

@notroosterbradshaw​​

@almostgenerallyalways​​

@roosterbruiser​​

@teacupsandtopgun​​

@mak-32​​​

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #1:

Neil Young's Neil Young

My buddy Greg asked me last weekend, very earnestly, why Neil Young? Why is he your favorite artist? Why?

Greg likes Neil. But he doesn't own 38 different Neil records which are what he'd grab, along with his kids and, I guess, the cat, if the house was on fire; nor has he temporarily and blissfully lost all sense of hearing after seeing Neil in concert eight glorious times, once driving 7 hours each way on a work night to do so; nor did he sing each of his safe-from-the-fire kids to psychedelic sleep every night of their childhoods with a steady diet of Powderfinger (my son always insisted the first line was "look out Momma, there's a white bird coming up the river"; if I sang boat instead of bird he'd sit up in bed, his doll Carson cradled in his arms, and howl in indignation), Lost in Space and Little Wing.

(By the way, that fire scenario really happened: long ago, when the kids were still little and there was no room whatsoever left in our tiny home, all my records were stored in a family cabin in the woods; one time I watched the backside of the ridge behind that cabin going up in flames and then rushed home to get everyone, and all of my Neil, into the car so we could get the hell out of there. Everyone/thing made it out just fine.)

In other words, Greg's not me. Plus, he grew up a Pearl Jam guy so we were listening to Mirror Ball as a common ground of sorts when the question, Why Neil Young?, was asked. At that point Neil was hollering about the place called downtown, where the hippies all go, so my first, slightly inebriated, explanation - "dude, I don't know, he's just the best" - didn't really fly. After all, the hippies were dancing the Charleston; they were doing the limbo.

Greg's question is a good one. What attribute can you insert after the statement "Neil Young is the best _____" that adequately describes his odd and supreme genius?

"Poet" doesn't work. Sure, Neil can write about roads stretching out like healthy veins and wild gift horses that strain the reins, but he can also dedicate a ten minute song entirely to describing one person's surplus of mashed potatoes.

Nor can you get away with "he's the best songwriter" when he's released at least 6 different versions of the song Dance, Dance, Dance and much of his oeuvre from the past 10 years spews hot, Promise of the Real sized chunks.

Even Neil's newest robot will probably concur: there isn't any single thing that Young is the stand-alone-best at. (Well, maybe he is the best at screaming into his guitar's pickups...)

And yet, for me, the truth has never been in doubt since I first heard Side 2 of On the Beach over thirty years ago: Neil Young is, and always will be, my favorite musician.

So I think it's about time this blog started wrestling with Neil "Shakey" Young himself. That's why I'm kicking off this weekend with the first of many Shakey Sundays: I'm gonna write about every one of Neil's studio albums, in order.

Those of you who only show up to see if I have more to say about John Darnielle's cooking skills: relax. I'll continue to post Dollar Bin posts on other artists alongside this new project. I promise. But be warned, Young currently has 45 studio albums to his name and I have a ton to say about all of them. So this will take awhile.

I'm not making any promises of the real here: I'll surely take some Sundays off, these posts will often appear, like this one, in truly Shakey fashion, on the wrong day of the week, and I may keel over or get a life before I ever write about Storytone or Fork in the Road. But it's time to give this Neil Young thing a shot, a shot that will ring all around the border, like a venom in the sky. Will we make it? Hey, who knows where or when. But let the Dollar Bin's Shakey Sundays begin.

Here we go:

Neil Young did not yet know how to be NEIL YOUNG in 1968. When putting together his debut solo album he:

Overdubbed instruments and vocals alike instead of leaving everything as live and raw as an octopus that's just been tossed up On The Beach;

Brought in ace session musicians and back up vocalists instead of the wandering cast of reckless, drunken fools who he's been working with ever since;

Boxed up (nearly) every raggedy edge of his sound into tiny, bite-sized morsels instead of pummeling us into submission;

Bounced around from one real studio to the next over three months instead of doing it all in a barn or in front of a crackling fire in the night;

Waffled between, and deferred to, three different producers instead of ordering everyone around like they were his private army of Jawas; and finally,

He recorded while sober.

And yet the end result is a lovely, under-appreciated record, one you're fairly likely to pick up in any Dollar Bin to this day. I suspect a lot of casual collectors have bought Neil Young in the last 55 years based on the twin false assumptions that Joni Mitchell painted the cover (she didn't) and that it'll sound, you know, like Heart of Gold. Lucky for you, those buyers listened to the album once, understood none of it, then chucked it. So go get it already.

I remember picking up my own copy for a buck or two. It was the summer of 1992 and I had a bus ticket to take me from my grandmother's house in North San Diego all the way to my buddy Ned's parent's house in Coronado. I was 16 and had the day off from my summer camp job. Every cent of my huge $46/week salary was in my pocket and I had zero bills to pay nor any responsibilities to speak of. That sounds so awesome.

Anyway, there I was on the bus, feeling groovy. I'm not too spontaneous a guy but I saw a record store along the way and got out; there was yet another shop across the street. Encinitas, CA, was a cool place to be 30+ years ago; today I'm sure those store fronts are both dedicated to the kind of high end vegan yoga wear I'd need to take out a home loan to get into. But oh boy, just imagine how good I'd look...

Neil Young was included in my Dollar Bin haul from that afternoon, as was Time Fades Away. Who knows what else; who knows why I remember any of this.

Then again, I know exactly why I remember this: it was one of the funnest days of my life. I showed up at Ned's a few hours later and showed off my new records to a pretty big swath of 16 year old boys. No one was impressed; at that point Neil's only real claim to fame with grungy white kids was that Sonic Youth had opened for Neil the previous year. No one really cared about Sonic Youth; they only cared that Nirvana had once opened for Sonic Youth.

Poor Kurt was still alive and well at that point; he was the most famous musician on the planet. Everyone wanted to talk about him, not speculate with me about the fact that one single song seemed to take up nearly all of Neil Young's B Side.

So, instead of talking about Shakey, we spent the rest of the day, and night, driving from one 7-11 to another all over San Diego county, hunting for the most mythical of Slurpee flavors: Cinnabomb. That's a quest that I suspect a lot of 16 year old boys could still passionately get behind. Sadly, we never found Cinnabomb, but I did learn how to jump out of Ned's Vanagon with everyone else at red lights and make a lap around the car while screaming.

Good times. No, Great Times.

At that point I liked Neil but was still a year away from lifelong devotion. In a future post about Weld (uh oh, maybe I will need to do all the live records too?) I'll describe what it was like seeing him live for the first time a year earlier; I think it permanently altered the shape of my face. But I was too young to really know it yet.

After 31 years of pretty regular listening to Neil's debut, I'd argue that it demonstrates just how many different paths were open to him as he transitioned away from what was essentially a big deal boy band, Buffalo Springfield.

Neil Young opens with The Emperor of Wyoming, one of the most unique tracks Young's ever produced. As the strings play toss with Neil's slick guitars, opening a comfortable prairie scene to the sun, the wind and to our cheerful gazing eyes, we're given the immediate sense that Young could have wound up becoming a proper musician: scoring films, producing for others, you know, making music for normal people.

Missing entirely from the track is any sense of underlying menace, and menace is always a hallmark of Young's best work. Rather, it sounds as though the fine people of Wyoming are all holding hands and working together to build their Emperor a lovely barn, a barn no one will ever convert into a recording studio. Rather, everyone will have access; the people's grain will be safe and the Emperor will bestow handfuls of flowers upon every last one.

It's an instrumental track, and how many of those are on all 45 of Neil's albums? There's all of Dead Man, of course, but that's a soundtrack album. Side 2 of Neil Young opens with another instrumental, as well, one that he seemingly had absolutely nothing to do with. And I think that's it! Neil put this great track together, then never made music like this ever again. Wow.

But there's a back story of course: I think The Emperor of Wyoming is a sequel of sorts to a track Young didn't release, in his classic, mercurial fashion, for another 40+ years. Take a listen to Slowly Burning, recorded under the Buffalo Springfield moniker a year earlier. In actuality it's Young in the studio with session musicians, teaching himself how to make beauty.

Next up on Neil Young is The Loner, and we start to hear the Neil Young we know. There's plenty of that menace I was talking about in the song's titular character: this guy is watching you, probably right now, and if you get off the train at your station alone, he'll know that you are.

But Neil wasn't ready to unleash such menace sonically: every sense of the chaos he'd tapped into on Mr Soul a year and half earlier is immediately strangled off on The Longer, leaving room for full strings. Young was ready to sing about creeps. But he had not yet decided to sound like one.

The drums suck on this track; the guy responsible would go off and found the band Poco, together with the album's primary bass player, Jim Messina, who is the sole member of Buffalo Springfield that Young welcomed into this project (and Messina was barely a member of the band, only playing on their last record). My famous brother will probably soon tell me that Poco is a a big deal band I ought to get into. He's wrong; I know this even though I have never listened to a Poco record; I simply have intuited that they are un poco terrible.

But back to Buffalo Springfield. I debated starting this entire project with their first record. After all, that's the first thing Neil properly released. That record is great for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it demonstrates that Stephen Stills, at least for a moment, didn't suck. But Neil Young is where we're starting!

The most important hold-over from the Springfield era on this record is producer and pianist Jack Nitzsche, one of Neil Young's three outside producers. Nitzsche is a figure of significant folklore: he's like Phil Spector's mini-me: almost as prolific, almost as genius, almost as nuts. There'll be more to say about Jack on future Shakey Sundays. For now, suffice it to say that he was once arrested for chasing his, and Neil's, former lady friend, Carrie Snodgrass, around her home with a handgun. And then, years later, he and Snodgrass got back together.

Nitzsche seems responsible for much of the greatness within the very best song on Neil Young, The Old Laughing Lady. Every version Neil's ever done of the song is wonderful. He hypnotized himself and every one else present with his coffee house version, busked it incognito on an Amsterdam street corner, rewrote it almost entirely for his 76 acoustic tour, complete with train effects, and laid it down in isolated, after hours perfection during the credits of his otherwise dull concert film Heart of Gold. Next up I hope there's a children's choir involved, singing through his vocoder.

Neil Young's studio take of Old Laughing Lady is a masterpiece. Nitzsche's piano lines are subtle and deft; his production corrects the amateur flourishes that undercut the previous year's Broken Arrow: everything is dense and sparse at once, and the backing vocals, led by the incomparable Merry Clayton a year before she laid down some of the best vocals in any rock song ever on Gimme Shelter, are a surging, moaning pulse that's, once again, unlike anything else Neil would ever put on tape.

But arguably the best thing of all on the song is the bass line. Take a listen.

That's not Jim Messina. It's Carole Kaye, the only female member of Phil Spector's studio band, later known as The Wrecking Crew. Light years ahead of her time, Kaye is responsible for a bunch of the best notes in all the 60's. She's the bass player on Pet Sounds and Smile; her playing there reset the entire way Paul McCartney played bass. She's on La Bamba, I Hear a Symphony and Love's Forever Changes, plus hundreds of other songs we all know from the late 50's and 60's.

So why don't we talk about her all the time? Sexism people, sexism. The poor woman was abused by her music teacher when she was 13 years old and wound up marrying him and having his child at age 16. Somehow she rose above this all and broke just about every barrier you can imagine in the studio. And good for her: she bailed on the whole hideous scene two years after playing on Neil Young. Now the internet is filled with sweet images of her like this one:

But why doesn't she play on all of Neil Young? After all, she was in the sessions a year earlier that produced Expecting to Fly and Slowly Burning.

I'm guessing that a) she was too expensive for Neil (she once claimed, without bravado, that she made more as a session musician than she would if she were President of the United States), and b) Neil was already realizing that he's happiest and most successful when surrounded by lesser musicians. No offense Jim Messina, but you didn't freak Neil out with your mad skills. Carole Kaye did.

Much of the rest of the album is filler, stuff Young wrote to flesh out the record and stuff he largely has not returned to since. But most of that filler is great.

Take I've Been Waiting For You. If you set aside Young's uptight, anodyne vocals and the fact that this song is little more than a chorus and a guitar riff, you'll discover that Neil was well on his way to Prince-like studio skills. He stacks up his own organ, piano and guitars atop drums that don't suck. The whole thing, even the unfunny Ha's! in the intro, swings.

But we've got to end this first Shakey Sunday by taking note of the most important relationship Young began during the record. Indeed he says it was one of the most important relationships in his entire life. Supposedly, Neil was hitchhiking in Topanga Canyon at some point in 68 when a guy even crazier than him, David Briggs, picked him up. I guess we'll buy into that story and wonder if we would have stopped for Neil in 1968. Before you jump to any conclusions, remember what he looked like at that point.

I don't know about you, but I'd have left his ass on the side of the road.

Briggs had no real qualifications for producing Young or anyone else at the time. But he quickly supplanted both Nitzsche and Ry Cooder in the production booth and helped Neil make more than half of Neil Young. Briggs had exactly what Neil was looking for at the time, and he's still looking for it now: sublime amateurism, both from himself and from his contributors.

Maybe Briggs taught Neil how to run around the car screaming at red lights during their first drive together; maybe not. But either way, he made Neil happy, and he started to get him truly comfortable in front of a microphone for the first time.

Thank God they found one another. Yes, some of what they made on Neil Young is mediocre for Young, and the album's never-ending final track, Last Trip To Tulsa, is one of my least favorite Neil Young songs (except when the Stray Gators are tearing it into wonderful pieces), but most of the best things we'll talk about in these upcoming posts came from the partnership between Young and Briggs.

And so I hope you're out there right now with a similarly sweet partner of any kind, digging your Shakey Sunday.

[yourfellowhuman07]

Where Do We Go Now?

A She-ra: Princess of Power 2018 fanfiction

The war is finally over. Prime is dead, the hive mind is broken, and everyone is reunited with their loved ones. However, there are some questions left unanswered. What will be the fate of Catra and Hordak? What are these new memories Wrong Hordak has? What is Etheria's place in the wider universe? Where do we go now?

___________________

Ladies, Gentlemen, and nonbinary friends chapter 22 is finally here. This has been a slog to write, but I persisted. I was on my last brain cells writing this so I hope it is good. Also, grab your snacks and tissues because this chapter is 45 words short of 1.5k words. Please enjoy and have a wonderful day.

Also as of right now the poll for the weekly upload date for my new fic still has five hours left to vote on. So if you really want, please vote.

Also, AO3 has caught up with Tumblr, so this chapter will be posted there tomorrow. However, you can only access it if you have a registered account because of precautions regarding the whole AI situation. Sorry in advance.

___________________

Chapter 22: Project Orion

Once again, rain battered the windows of the Crypto Castle. A blue fire crackled within the fireplace that housed all the… guests. On one side of the room sat the Alliance; on the other side sat Hordak’s brothers and the former horde soldiers. Right in the middle sat the former warlord upon an armchair, his fists balled into his pants. Entrapta sat on the arm of the chair with her hair wrapped around Hordak’s bicep. He cleared his throat.

“Now, I am under the impression that you all know why you are here. I would like to first apologize for my outburst yesterday. It was inappropriate of me, and I should have acted more rationally.” After a moment, Hordak looked at Entrapta. 

“Do you recall when I told you where I came from?”

“Yes.”

“That was partially a lie. I am not a clone I am the actual biological child of Horde Prime.” Hordak glanced down at his fists as everyone reacted with varying levels of shock.

“Why in the world would Prime want a baby?” Mermista expressed.

“He never wanted me. I was an accident my mother insisted on keeping. According to him at least.”

“Mother?” Castaspella inquired.

“Yes, I had a mother who is the only reason I am still alive. According to Prime, when my mother found out she was pregnant with me she insisted they kept me. Prime agreed as long as I was not a distraction.”

“If it is not too personal, could you tell us what she was like?” Castaspella inquired.

“I think we crossed the line of personal business a while ago.” Catra retorted, gaining a glare from Adora and Glimmer.

_______________________________________________________________

Orion sat reading on a big chair in his bedroom connected to his parent’s room. Despite being only four years old, he was very proficient at reading and had already begun reading novels and scientific articles. Like many rooms in the Velvet Glove, it was a blinding white with black accents and smelled strongly of bleach.

Orion looked up to the sound of the green barrier dissolving. His mother stepped through the door.

“Alright, star sweeper time for bed.”

“What! Please five more minutes, mama.”

“No, buts star sweeper, it is already past your bedtime.” She took the book from his hands, careful to mark Orion’s place. She started to usher him to bed as a thought popped into his head.

“Mama, why did you name me Orion?”

“Well, when I was giving birth to you, the Velvet Glove was passing right through a constellation named Orion by the local beings. Legend says he was a giant who was a mighty warrior and a huntsman that was immortalized in the stars.”

“Will you stop filling his head with that nonsense?” Orion’s father, Horde Prime stood at the door.

“Darling, it’s only a story.”

“A stupid one at that,” he looked to his left. “Is that my book?” He stomped over to the armchair, swiping the book and ripping out the bookmark. “Tell your child to stop taking my things.” He stormed out of the room, closing the barrier between the two bedrooms.

“I’m sorry,” Orion whispered, balling his fists into the bedsheets.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Your father is just having a bad day.”

“He’s always having a bad day.”

“I know.”

“Can you sing that one song for me again?”

“Anything for your star sweeper.

La la lu

La la lu

Oh, my little star sweeper

I'll sweep the stardust for you” She tucked in the white sheets of his small bed.

“La la lu

La la lu

Little soft fluffy sleeper

Here comes a pink cloud for you” She pushed his unruly indigo curls out of his face.

“La la lu

La la lu

Little wandering angel

Fold up your wings, close your eyes

La la lu

La la lu

And may love be your keeper

La la lu

La la lu

La la lu” She kissed him on his forehead as his eyes fluttered close.

“There now, little star sweeper. Dream on.” She turned out the lights and left the room.

__________________________________________________________________

“Ok, what I don’t get is how we and none of the other clones knew about her?” TD asked, leaning forward in his seat.

“Prime never let anyone see her. He never told me, but I figured her wanted her all to himself and didn’t want anyone else to touch her. Which is probably why he wasn’t too fond of me when I came around.”

“Why would Prime even want a wife to begin with? I thought he only loved himself.” Frosta inquired.

“Another thing I am not fully aware of. My best guess is that he liked the attention and affection a wife could give him. A type of adoration clones could not provide.”

“Whatever happened to your mother?” Micah asked, crossing his arms.

__________________________________________________________________

Just like his mother had told him to do, Orion hid in his closet as his parents screamed at each other. He didn’t know how it started he just knew it was about him. It was always about him. 

Maybe Father is right. Maybe I am a nuisance.

He could never figure out why his father detested him so much. Maybe it was his appearance. While he looked more like his mother there were some staggering differences in looks. For one, his eyes were crimson red when his parents were electric lime green. His hair was also different, with his being navy blue, short, and curly while his parents were white, long, and straight.

At that point, his parents were close enough to the door that he could make out what they were saying.

“I just don’t get the obsession you have with that thing! It was bad enough you wanted to keep it, but spending almost all your time with it!”

“First of all, that thing is your seven-year-old son, whom I am trying to raise by myself since you have put absolutely zero effort into even being nice too!”

“That’s another thing! With every passing day, you become more and more defiant! It has gotten out of hand!”

“And I apologize for that, but I just want you to be involved in raising the child you helped create!”

“When the universe implodes, I will be involved.”

“You are such a…hmm”

“Go ahead. Finish what you were saying.”

“Fine. You are a cold, narcissistic, uncaring man who has never given a single thought to anyone but yourself! You are a terrible father and a terrible husband that sucks the life of everyone around you!”

“There is no hope for you after all.”

__________________________________________________________________

“I do not exactly know what happened after that. All I heard was her screaming grow quieter as Prime drug her away. I never saw her after that night. The next morning Prime handed me off to a couple of clones and sent us off to some unknown plant where I was educated about almost every subject and how to fight. At the age of 25 my cybernetics were implanted, I joined the hivemind, and became his general.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Castaspella whispered, covering her mouth.

“Please, the very least you can do is not pity me. Is there anything else you all want to ask or are we done here?”

“No there isn’t,” Glimmer rose from her seat. “Thank you for telling us this and we are sorry we put you in this position. Guys let's go.” At her command, the Alliance filed out of the room leaving Hordak, Entrapta, and the five brothers in the room.

Hordak slumped down him his seat. Groaning as he buried his face in his hands. He looked up at his family.

“I am sorry.”

“For what?” Entrapta asked, wrapping her hands around his bicep.

“Lying to all of you about everything.”

“HK, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re ok.”

“I’m fine. It happened a long time ago.”

“Still, if there is anything you need we are all right here.” Entrapta placed her hand on Hordak’s shoulder, receiving a small smile from the former warlord. “Come on,” she rose from her seat, “it’s past lunchtime and I know you haven’t eaten anything.”

__________________________________

As the Alliance boarded Darla Sea Hawk pulled Bow to the side.

“What’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong. After today I want to join you on your quest to befriend Hordak. Today has made me realize how hard he has had it, and maybe, like Catra, positive relations could get him on the straight and narrow.”

“That’s great! I’m glad someone finally gets it. My only problem is breaking the ice. I tried to talk to him once, but he was so dismissive. We need to get him in a place where he would be willing to socialize.”

“How about… a boys' night out?”

__________________

Can you all tell me what Disney movie I watched before writing this?

I also found a video that perfectly encompasses this chapter:

[fictional-men-have-my-heart]

Day 27

Hello all! Welcome to day 27! One more day closer to the end of the month. Thank you for all the love on my posts so far even if they're just musings produced from my brainrot of the 141, Los Vaqueros, and Konig. I came across the prompt "Write about a time you were lost (figuratively or literally)." And I wanted to put my own spin on it. So, we look at how the 141, Los Vaqueros, and Konig may handle you getting lost with them when a mission goes awry.

Price:

The mission split your group, and you knew from the check-ins from the others they were safe, but alone.

You had been lucky to find the Captain quickly, stumbling across him in an alley where you nearly shot each other.

When he passed you a map and compass, you bit your lip.

"Sir, I haven't navigated in a while, maybe you ought to lead this."

"You'll be fine." He dismissed. You knew you were screwed.

After an hour of hiking through the backwoods, you broached it again.

"Sir, I think I've gotten us lost..." You all but force the map in his hands.

"Surely not... ah, well I'll be damned. I'll take it from here." He concedes, taking the lead with the map.

Ghost:

You could easily tell your Lt. wasn't happy at having to hike out of a mission gone wrong, let alone with you in tow. You had silently handed him the map at first, and he shoved it back into your hand.

"You nav, I'll keep an eye out for the others."

"Ghost, you really should-"

"Start moving kid, this isn't a discussion." You decide on a path you thought was moderate enough for you two given your mild injuries.

Too bad the map didn't account for damaged roads and washed-out bridges. When you came to a section you'd either have to wade through a knee-high creek or go back the way you'd come he turned to you.

"Where the fuck are we kid?" He growled, holding his hand out for the map. His glare was enough to make you hand it over and then quickly retreat from him.

Silence.

"I see. Look, how about you take over looking for signs of the others, I'll keep this..." He nods, eyes simmering down from the boil they'd been a moment ago.

"Yes sir."

Soap:

He hadn't taken you seriously. You realized this now.

"Soap, I barely passed navigation in basic and haven't tried since, now isn't the time to test it."

"Nonsense rookie, you'll be fine."

You were not. He seemed to recognize this too after an hour of walking.

"Hey, let me see that..."

A few minutes of searching later, he sighs heavily.

"You weren't kidding, were you rookie?"

Gaz:

Gaz seemed okay with the longer route home. He was reassuring you it was fine.

"Look, stop apologizing, alright? I should have listened to you."

"Still, after that horrid experience, I'm sure we'd both rather be at the safe house, not still walking around, I'm sorry."

"Well, I should have taken you seriously. We got into this together eh, let's get out of it together now." He'd smiled. You grinned back, nudging his shoulder as you walked.

"Thanks, Gaz."

"No problem, now let's go."

Alejandro:

The man seemed more concerned with putting distance between you guys and the currently imploding plan you'd been trying to make work.

"Sir, I really can't navigate too well, maybe you should-"

"Let's get out of here first. We can find our way back when we aren't being shot at."

It was about a half hour of briskly dodging any noises before he turned to you again.

"Okay, I think we're good, now... where the hell are we?"

"I don't really know, I tried to warn you, sir." He nods, looking around before digging in his pack for a map.

"We'll be alright, out this way I think we can cut a path through..."

Rudy:

Honestly, he was amused after you were both out of harm's way.

"How about we pretend this didn't happen?" He asked, passing you a canteen as you walked. It had been about 45 minutes since the last check-in, so you knew you two would be the last to arrive.

"Why? I think the massive delay in time will tell them we got lost."

"Nah, we'll tell them it was just a detour..."

"...Alejandro will never let you live it down, will he?" You'd grinned.

"...No, no he won't." He laughed. You shook your head.

"Lead the way home then, 'cause I sure as hell don't know it."

Konig:

The man's silence made you a little hesitant to ask him about the map you currently held. He hadn't raised any questions yet so far.

You two had ended up separated from the main group when an unexpected patrol came by in the midst of a recon op.

The goal was to be at a rendevous point by now, but it was dawning on you you had been walking in a path that was increasingly leading you away from the rendevous at about a 45 degree angle on the map.

"Um, Konig?" You'd murmured, halting where you were. He turned to you, staring.

"We need to alter our course. The rendevous is about a mile east..."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't realize, I'm sorry..."

"Let's just get going, they're likely waiting."

As you walked in your new direction, he spoke again.

"It happens to all of us, at least this is a calm time." You nodded.

The worst time I got lost anywhere was on a group trip to Yellowstone national park. Our group was split between two cars and we got separated after nightfall. At 18, that experience was absolutely terrifying. Almost hitting bison who were just chilling in the middle of the roads only made it worse.

TLDR, I do not recommend staying in Yellowstone past dark, shit gets scary fast.

Edit, posted after midnight, I'm sorry. Formatting is a bear sometimes.

[citroenaficionado]

Blog post 2023

One year ago, at the end of 2022, I created a time capsule in video form. About 15 minutes ago, when I was lying in bed hoping to fall asleep early in order to not lose too much sleep tonight (as I will most likely want to wake up extremely early in the morning), I decided to make a blog post this year, at the end of 2023 (cutting it extremely close mind you, which is typical of course).

So much has happened and so much has changed this year, I can't remember al of it. I can't even remember most of it. I've spent an abnormally large amount of time the last few months thinking about what happened when and what started when and trying to get a grip on a timeline in my head.

Of all the things that changed, I might have changed the most, giving much more significance to my 18th birthday than most. Of course it wasn't a sudden change, although it did feel quite sudden. I was a buildup of tons of vicious cycles and time itself running a young boy around. I'm still a young boy on the inside for the record, and I'm sure I still don't look like a man on the outside yet (no, thank you).

There actually was a moment, a moment I had planned, from which things could have changed very sudden, if I had let it happen, if I had made it happen. But I'm glad I didn't, in hindsight.

Woah- Deja vu... I have a feeling I wrote something like that before, with Tumblr being the colour scheme it is now (canary, because lemons), and me deciding to click off and discard the draft. Possibly that happened in a dream?... Deja vu is still a mystery to me.

The moment (that didn't happen, for the record) is quite personal to me, so I doubt whether I should put it publicly on the internet for everyone to see. It was that exactly one year after I asked a group of friends to form a - "student group" shall we call it? - with me (which ran it's course and was disbanded because another took its place), I would ask that group of friends whether they wanted to be friends (with me) again.

In hindsight I think that gradually entering that circle of friends was a better option than dramatically asking to. And so that is one of the few occasions for which I'm glad I only speak out if I find the perfect moment, a character trait which often is unhelpful when you want to be social, by the way.

I didn't want to start the blog on that moment actually, I wanted to either attempt a chronological list or talk about recent events, as in the past three days. I don't know how long it took you to read until here, but I started roughly 45 minutes ago. I'm slow like that.

In the month of my birthday there was a sports day I have a fond memory from, I don't remember the exact words that were said but they made me feel helpful and I liked being helpful and the memory is something I've referenced before (not on this blog obviously).

Around that time was when I really started wanting to break from the cycle of every day feeling the same without progress towards anything. I asked for a notepad and pen(cil) for my birthday that I was planning to bring with me from then onwards to write stuff in. Those who know me well know which little book I'm referring to.

Though I don't remember any example right now, I was starting to try to be more social around that time. Then the summer holidays happened. And something weird happened. From the past holidays (before that summer) I had concluded that I did not like traveling and going on holiday. And I really didn't want to go anymore. But against better judgement I went anyway.

And looking back I'm definitely glad I did. Because I learned that I strongly dislike physical labour when money is the only goal I am working towards. And I learned that there are people out there who I actually really like being around. 'Introvert' and 'extrovert' have become meaningless to me, because it depends entirely on who I am around and how I am feeling.

The end of the summer holidays, although I slightly doubt it, might have been the first time I actually had the feeling of "I'm going to miss this person" aimed towards a human being. Before then I had always been more of an animal person. I remember that at the start of the summer holidays I had already changed, because someone who knew me well mentioned it.

I tried to bring this social change with me back to school, but failed horrendously, getting hit with all of the problems being in the last year of highschool gives you. I don't remember exactly what happened, probably because not much out of the ordinary happened, but after a couple of days I gave up. And I gave up hard.

I decided to stop trying. And to just focus on school. This is getting personal again and it is getting late (22:22 ha) so my brain is slowing down, sorry for any inconveniences caused. I have written about this before, in a script for a video I never finished, so I want to keep this relatively short.

Everyday, I would come into class, sit alone in the front, be the first to leave when the bell rang, and I would not go to the aula in the break. Instead I would wander round the building or go to a study area or something. Being in the aula became overwhelming and the noise scared me away. Only in two lessons would I sit next to someone, and only then because I didn't want to make my old friends worried about how I was.

After five school days of keeping this up I started wearing a paper bracelet to school on which I kept track of how many school days I had been like this. I have also referenced to this bracelet before. I still have this bracelet on my shelf beside me now, the numbers on it span from 6 to 15. It was hard to know when to stop.

After an Earth science project that I was looking up against included a nice conversation with a friend and a trip home with four people that I wanted to be friends with (taking that ferry instead of waiting for the one after was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I didn't hesitate to take it too when I saw them actually boarding it), I took off the bracelet. I hoped it was the end. Of course the next school day went badly again so I kept it on for a couple of days more, but it didn't take long before I- forgot to put the bracelet on one day. And to be perfectly honest, that is a perfect ending to the whole thing and a typical example of me, really.

Then (or around that time) Operation Friendship started (yes I called it that). I gradually started sitting next to people in lessons instead of on my own all the time. I made a list of everyone who I wanted to become friends with or get to know better (writing this makes me feel so embarrassed) as well as ranked them on how much I had talked to them or how well they knew me so far. It lasted a surprising two months before I finally wrote down in my notebook that OpFr was discontinued in order for me to focus on the friends I already had at that point.

Do not make the mistake of thinking I never questioned what I was doing. There are plenty of times that I wondered whether what I was doing counted as something a psychopath would do. And there were plenty of times where I was tempted to shut OpFr down before I finally actually did.

Anyway, one of the people whose name I wrote down but never actually got to talk properly with is someone I'll call target Kela. The reason I bring Kela up is because of the first half of 2023, before the summer holidays. I kind of feel like that storyline is unfinished though, if you know what I mean? Maybe I still find it too personal to talk about Kela...

I'll move on to recently instead. In the beginning it was really hard being part of two friend groups, every time I moved from one to the other it felt like I was abandoning one for the other. Now it still feels off, but it's tolerable and I don't think anybody judges me for it. That's one of the things that changed over a smaller vacation.

The other thing that changed is how I perceive the world, which suddenly changed back to how it was before I merged into a "new" friend group and only then did I realise that how I felt had been different in the first place. Suddenly I was back to my old socially scared self, but then with more friends and with memories and pre-made plans for me of who to befriend next (/exaggeration).

It's been weird, thinking about the past and where I am now, but I need to wrap this up now as in less than fourty minutes it will be 2024!

A couple of days ago was my first time playing D&D, which is notable because I have been interested in D&D for almost a year and ten months. Afterwards I was frustrated with myself for how it went, but I've already vented those feelings so I won't do that here. Yesterday I was still in a really bad mood so even walking for two and a half hours and having a house to myself didn't change anything.

Today we did the floor of my room, in one day instead of two, even though I was tired the whole way through. And tonight I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep early so I could wake up after the fireworks and be mentally active at three in the morning. But then I got the idea to do this!

I guess that means that my idea hyping brain is working again, so that's good. I originally had the idea of reacting to my time capsule video from last year and turning that into a video of it's own, which I could still do, but there is so much I could still do, and there is so much I should still do.

There is probably a ton of stuff I forgot to say and a ton of stuff I will remember not long after having posted this. But if you read all of this, first of all, who are you? and second of all, why did you just read *that* much text willingly?

-Aaaand my sibling just came in and completely halted my train of thought. Happy 2024!

Edit 1 (at 00:33): I completely forgot to say that part of the reason I got the idea to do this is because I realised when I was lying there that I missed people. And I really didn't often miss people in the past. Talking to a friend in a voice channel helps a lot temporarily, but I generally dislike holidays nowadays because I rarely see friends during them.

Second thing I completely forgot to mention is the memory right before the summer holidays of being at the graduation ceremony and seeing the people of the "student group" (who now I would say are my friends) being super happy in a group photo together. I stood and smiled from the sidelines. :')

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I hit about eight different topics in this post. All related to various comedians. It's been a while since I've done a post in which I just start writing and then let myself go, if one thing I write reminds me of a different thing I'll start writing about that. There's no plan to this post. Adding a cut for people who (justifiably) do not want to go through something even more rambly than usual, for me. I'll say at the outset that there's nothing particularly deep or insightful here.

Just finished listening to the podcast episode to go with the new Taskmaster, and it was quite good. Solid insights from Ivo Graham, as I’d have expected. I missed this podcast, since they stopped putting stuff out every week. I realized I’ve missed hearing Ed Gamble – I do like him enough to enjoy hearing him talk for 45-ish minutes per week, which I learned from the several years he spent doing the Taskmaster podcast with very few weeks off, and I miss it now that it only airs while Taskmaster (UK) is airing.

If only I hadn’t spent years in a sport that forced me to track my weight so meticulously that I am now incapable of seeing food as entertainment, ruling out getting into Off Menu. If only I didn’t have a combination of hypochondria that mainly manifests as fear of developing cancer and/or diabetes, and fear of needles, along with a specific fear that I’ll develop diabetes and then have to have needles for the rest of my life, and the way I manage to go through life instead of being constantly paralyzed with anxiety about this is by avoiding thinking about the existence of those things as much as possible. I can think about if I’m absolutely forced to, but at the very least, I’m unable to derive enjoyment from thinking about them. So Ed Gamble’s stand-up might be great, I don’t know, I haven’t sought it out.

I have a disappointing amount of reasons to avoid listening to his stuff, given how much I enjoy hearing him talk. Maybe I should get into his radio show, I like Matthew Crosby. And every once in a while I think of how the side of Ed Gamble I like least is the way he’s a bit too TV polished sometimes, so clearly the solution to that is to get into the Peacock and Gamble stuff.

Anyway, it was a fun episode. The more I think about it, the more excited I am for Taskmaster season 16. That first episode was so good, one of those things that’s so good I just want to go over and over it, so I enjoyed hearing Ed and Ivo do that.

I remembered today that a few months ago, I was hanging out with my brother, and I told him I’d bought tickets to see Tom Ballard. He didn’t know who Tom Ballard was, I said he’s an Australian comedian, my brother said he didn’t know as much about Australian comedy as he should. Then we both started naming other Australian comedians, to see if we have any knowledge of them in common. He didn’t know any of my names, until I asked him, “Do you know Sam Campbell?” and he said yes. I asked him if he likes Sam’s comedy, and he said that actually he’s never seen Sam’s comedy.

“But you said you know him,” I said. My brother said yeah, from when he lived in Melbourne. I often forget that my brother lived in Melbourne for a year, in about 2015-ish. He also lived in London for a year, around 2011. Did some comedy in both those places. Anyway, he told me that one time when he lived in Melbourne, he was at a party, and one of his comedy friends introduced him to a guy named Sam Campbell. “I haven’t seen him perform, but he was a nice guy,” my brother said. I told him we are working with different definitions of what it means to "know" a comedian.

I think this might be the first time I’ve been two handshakes away from a Taskmaster contestant. I can get three away from plenty of them – I’ve met someone who’s met someone who’s met them. Three away from Mae Martin in plenty of ways, I think, and not even just through my brother, now that I’ve spent some time with other local comedians. A bunch of those local comedians, including my brother, have worked with some of the comedians who were on LOL Canada, a fairly bad… okay less bad than you’d expect given the premise but definitely not great… comedy-based reality show that I watched this summer entirely because it had Mae Martin on it. Mae Martin’s pretty good in that, by the way, for the information of anyone who’d like to know that. By which I mean, if you happen to just really like watching Mae Martin do anything, that is a show on Amazon Prime that features Mae Martin doing some stuff. Mainly trying not to laugh at Tom Green.

 So I can get three away, but I think Sam Campbell is the first Taskmaster contestant my brother, or anyone else I know personally, has actually met. I mean, technically I’ve now met Josie Long and Grace Petrie, and they’ve met lots of Taskmaster contestants. Technically I’ve been one handshake away from a Taskmaster contestant, as Josie Long was an original champion (well, second after Wozniak). But I think in this case, I’m defining “handshake” as working with someone or seeing them socially. It counts if you only worked with or met them once, but it has to be work or social, not just accosting them on the streets of Montreal and asking them to sign a tour poster from over ten years ago.

 Though my meeting with Grace Petrie has turned out to possibly be slightly more significant than I’d thought at the time. I haven’t been able to find my wallet this weekend, and the last time I definitely, 100% had it was when I took it out at the merch table at her concert and gave her money for a CD. I think I remember having it when I got home from the concert, but I can’t be totally sure, and I can’t find it anywhere in the house.

I was an incoherent mess when I met Grace Petrie at her merch table, I remember shaking and stuttering a bit as I spoke to her and trying to remember what I wanted to say, and I definitely don’t remember keeping track of anything. It is absolutely conceivable that my flustered state from meeting Grace Petrie led me to forget to pick up my wallet when I left the table. Again, I don’t think so – I think I would have checked for it before leaving the venue at the end of the night. But the more I search this house and don’t find it, the more likely it looks that the “too excited to meet Grace Petrie to remember to grab it” theory is exactly what happened. So basically, my current working theory is that Grace Petrie stole my wallet.

It'd be good if Sam Campbell won Taskmaster, not just because I called that the moment the cast was officially announced so now I have to back him like he’s a sports team because I like being right. But I’d enjoy being two handshakes away from a Taskmaster champion.

My brother does have a few “meeting now-famous people” stories about his time doing the comedy circuit in London, which I would like credit for not having posted here. Last year he gave me some entertaining gossip about British comedians, and I have refrained from mentioning that on my blog about British comedians, and I just want people to recognize the restraint I showed. In case anyone’s concerned, since “there’s a story about a famous person” so often means bad things, it’s nothing like that. All stories with tawdry parts in them have been entirely consensual. Though I will say that one time last year, my brother and I were in our parents’ living room and he told a story about Daniel Sloss that resulted in us having to explain the concept of dick pics to our mother. That is fine to say because it’s not putting any previously unknown gossip out there, as Daniel Sloss’ most recently released filmed special has a whole routine about how there are lots of his dick pics out there and one is bound to get leaked at some point. And I said “Yes, so I’ve heard.”

My brother told me at the time that he didn’t particularly like Daniel Sloss’ comedy, but I’m pretty sure he hadn’t actually seen it, and this was just one comedian automatically disliking another comedian who had started around the same time as him but become much, much more successful. Though to be fair, I have seen the DVD Daniel Sloss made when he was 22, and it’s fair to say he was not always the deep and complex comedian he is today. There is some bad stuff in his half man/half x-box days. And even recently, I don’t think everything he’s done is great. His latest special was fairly uneven and I do get sick hearing him call himself a dangerous an edgy comic, even though I know that’s just normal marketing. But I think he’s made some legitimately great things.

My brother told me more recently, however, that he had watched Daniel Sloss’ Jigsaw for the first time and loved it, that it’s exactly how he feels about relationships but hasn’t seen someone put it so well into words before. And he sent Jigsaw to his friend who’s in a bad relationship, saying this might encourage her to get out of it. I said I know what he means, that Jigsaw put into words a bunch of stuff that I also think about relationships but couldn’t articulate as clearly as Daniel Sloss did in that show, and I’ve also used it to show other people what I think. For example, I said, when I was early in the process of dating my most recent ex-girlfriend, it was going really really well and we were both talking about how we liked this but had agreed at the outset that neither of us were looking for a serious relationship, I sent her the Jigsaw show as a way to explain why I don’t do serious/traditional/committed relationships, but I really like her so can we keep seeing each other anyway? And of course about three weeks later we decided we had fallen in love and would therefore make an exception and use the word “girlfriend” and call this a relationship properly. I told my brother this, and he said… “No, that’s not the same thing. I sent Jigsaw to a girl I like because I hoped it would make her break up with her boyfriend. That’s what you’re supposed to do with that show, use it to break people up. You’re not supposed to send it to a girl you like who’s already dating you, as a way to start a relationship with her. Do you think it might have been a bad sign that you started a relationship by showing her that strongly anti-romance comedy show and saying this is what you think?” And I said I don’t know, fuck off, and yeah, probably.

It is nighttime and I have to get up for work tomorrow but I can't sleep, so I thought I'd just start writing some stuff and see where it takes me. Obviously it took me here. I started writing about the Taskmaster podcast, and I ended up writing about why my relationship fell apart last year. I'm doing fine. I need to go to sleep. I also need to find my fucking wallet. Just my luck, having Grace Petrie steal my wallet.

[nancypullen]

Thursday Night

The mister has gone out to take some night photos of possibly creepy places, so I’m at home watching Dateline.  I made big salads for dinner and then we ate coconut ice cream bars. Those two sentences sum up our Thursday night.  This is retirement, folks.  I actually spent a good fifteen minutes watching the sprinkler today.  A couple of weeks ago we raked up the three inch layer of small landscape rocks that the previous owners used for their fire pit.  It was right off of the patio, they hadn’t used any sort of weed cloth or barrier, and it was an awful, messy, weedy spot.  Once we got the rocks up, Mickey spread some dirt and grass seed and now we’re babying that little patch to make sure the grass grows.  That’s why I spent fifteen minutes watching the sprinkler today - that actually sounds better than I was watching grass grow. I’ve been foofing up my little spot on the porch.  It’s quickly becoming my favorite hangout.  It’s shaded, hidden from the street, and has views of all the gardens.  I found a cheap metal table that was sort of an ugly putty color, and painted it white and red.

I slapped a placemat on it and then added a little pot of lobelia.  

Presto change-o!

You know how much I love red gingham. If I can squeeze it in anywhere, I will. So I did.

That wreath may need a birdie on it or something.  I need a second pillow too.  Maybe a pale green with roses? 

Eh, maybe not.  I’ll dig around and see what I’ve got and go from there. Probably should have used red flowers in that pot, but lobelia is what I had. This is all subject to change but it’s a nice space for now. I love sitting out here in the morning, listening to the birds and contemplating the day. What’s that poem about birds singing despite the world being a wreck?  I can’t think of it, but I appreciate their songs in a world gone mad. We thought about driving over to Rehobeth Beach this week, it’s only about 45 minutes away and there’s a mile-long boardwalk where we could have lunch and check things out.  The days got away from us and tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, maybe next week.  We did snag tickets to see/hear David Sedaris at the BrowseAbout Bookstore there at the end of May.  That’ll be fun.  He’s always entertaining.   Aside from watching grass grow and painting anything that doesn’t run away from me, It’s just been cooking and cleaning. We did run a couple of errands earlier this week and made a pit stop at  the Ridgely Pharmacy lunch counter for a sandwich.  They have the best chicken salad in three counties. I finally worked my way through the delicious crabs our neighbor brought over.  I used the last bit for breakfast.  A toasted sandwich thin, a mound of crab, a little gouda and a generous sprinkle of Old Bay made my mouth very happy.

I don’t normally eat breakfast, but I’ll make an exception for crab.

I’m itching to get into my craft room and do something creative.  I’m overdue.  I’m hoping that tomorrow’s rain will give me the time at my desk that I’m craving.  I haven’t touched clay or even paper for over a month.  I get cranky when I don’t have that time. Mickey moved my cabinet into place for me and I put my Cricut on top which frees up loads more work space for me.  I mostly use the Cricut to cut out my dead people, and I need to commune with them soon.

It’s a perfect fit for the space and the storage is wonderful.   It’s calling to me. Pray for rain so I can play inside.

This blog post is a discombobulated bunch of nonsense.  No one wants to read this boring stuff.  I started this little corner of the web back in 2007.   Can you believe it?  It used to be a hoot.  I had great material - kids, animals, my job in the school system. My stint with Clinique was blog-worthy too. The many, many years where I was on my own while the mister traveled every week - I got up to all sorts of hijinks that were worth writing about on Tumblr.  Now we’re just a couple of old fogies who think it’s a big deal to stop for a chicken salad sandwich. Help.  I’m five months from turning 60 and I want my life to be funny again.  I’m staying busy making this house our own, but if I buy much more spray paint I’m sure I’ll be on some sort of DEA watchlist.  If we’d moved somewhere that I could go to water aerobics or craft fairs, I’d have made friends by now and had some adventures.  We’re almost at the one year anniversary of our move here and I’m still counting my once-a-week grocery haul as an outing. Help.  I have no girlfriends to talk to (I just offended the cats by saying that), no one to meet for lunch.  Where are the fun ladies of Denton?  There’s no jazzercise or Zumba classes, where am I supposed to meet my people?  The nicest person (and the most fun person) I’ve met so far is the program director for the Caroline County Arts Council.  She’s an absolute delight.  But she’s also very young and is busy with a young person’s life. I’m looking for someone with some mileage who knows how to talk about perennials and peri-menopause. Who am I kidding? Full blown menopause, I just liked the alliteration with perennials. So there you have it, I’m home alone and watching Dateline, missing my sweet friends, and thinking that I’d better go take a bubble bath and lose myself in a good book.  Tomorrow I hope I wake up to rain and spend my day creating some silliness.  Maybe even something worth sharing here! Until then, stay safe, stay well, and take good care. XOXO,

Nancy

[markliebrecht]

0001 - 20230725 | 25°C 🌓 | Status: 😴  

I haven't been writing lately.

Once a week I’ll write a newsletter at https://www.morningcoffeecomics.com, but aside from that I haven’t done any of the actual writing I planned on doing this year. I blame a lot of that on getting a day job when I was trying to buckle down and be a full time writer. I got scared that I wasn’t good enough and that we wouldn’t be able to pay the bills. I should have just got a local part-time in the neighbourhood. Instead, I took the first job I was offered. That was a mistake on my part. Now I spend 45 minutes in traffic in the morning, eight hours at my desk and then 55 minutes driving home. Usually, I’ll take five minutes just to rest my head on the steering wheel and question why I’m doing this to myself. Then, I’ll get myself together and make my way to my apartment to see my family.

I’ve been applying for jobs closer to home. Some I am way too overqualified for, but I think that’s what I want for the next year. Just something to keep me busy, food in the fridge and the rent paid on the first of the month. With baby 2 on the way, I want to be near by in case my wife needs support. I may even start freelancing or doing commissions so I can work from home again.

Also, by not wasting about two hours in traffic everyday, this will hopefully afford me the time & energy to do my writing again. My goal is still to self publish a novel and a comic book in the next year, so hopefully I can get that done.

In Other News 🗞️

We called in sick today. After that issue with the fire alarm at 1:30am, neither of us were rested well enough to be useful at work. After I made that post, the fire alarm went off again at 3:30am. We didn’t get back to sleep until some time around 5:30am or 6am. I woke up at 8:15am, made the kid some breakfast and texted my boss so she’d know I wouldn’t be in.

I applied for four new jobs today, plus three yesterday. I even reached out to a previous employer to see if I can do some work for them one a one year term contract. I’d like to spend some time with my kid this summer, but I’d still want to have a new job lined up by September 1st. Because my wife will be starting mat leave around that time, I’d like to know we still have some income rolling in.

I picked up my old drawing table a couple weeks ago, and now have a comic page taped down to it, ready for ink. I wanted to do a comics experiment with watercolours, but I think it will need some help from Photoshop.

[ahoneesan]

ATHLETICS TRACKING - 5/9/23

Subtitile: HEY I USED TO MAKE POSTS ABOUT THIS

hi! its been a bit. i dont think ive made any posts about this particular subject on this particular blog. not the long form effort posts like these, at least. there have been some fairly major developments here so i figured it was as good a time as any to log them here. and maybe get into the rhythm of writing regularly about this again? dont get your hopes up. but maybe more regularly than Not At All. anyways!

so thanks to having a job i have a gym membership now! that means i can lift Actual Weight instead of being trapped at 40lbs due that being all my at-home dumbbells can do. its nice! i've been progressing through my 5x5 workout without any real trouble so far. except for my overhead press. i literally cannot even begin to finish my 5 sets there, at the suggested introductory weight of 45lbs. its kinda baffling, i wish i knew why exactly i had that one hurdle. but i was barely making 5x5 on 40lbs either so, naturally 45 would be tougher! i should probably deload down to, idk, 35 or something and work my way back up but man. cmon! lets frickin go!

the rest of my numbers (which ill list down below) are doing well. i think, at least. steady gains (though they are "newbie gains") through and through, if i stay consistent on em ill be squattin 100 byyyyyy monday after next. which would be pretty cool! i guess! i havent encountered any real hurdles yet (apart from the OP i just mentioned) so its hard to get motivated by goals. im in this for like, the thrill of the lift. again: i guess!

cardio has been fine, though due to workin out preshift i dopnt have time to just like, run forever on that. maybe i only go in early for weights n leave cardio for after? maybe i cardio by running around the block at home then bus in to work like usual? maybe i just crank the speed and hope for the best? ok i did try that last one and it fucked my knee up just a bit lol. ultimately cardio is a supplement to the weight training for me so, afaik, its more important to have that elevated heart rate sustained for longer and longer periods of time than to be trying to make a like 8 minute mile. ill keep at it for now, probably try to ramp the speed up a lil more slowly than I did but as far length of workout i kinda dunno what to do. im still kinda entranced by the treadmill i now have access to so, probably keep on that for a while longer.

as far my body numbers go, theyre more or less unchanged from where I was when i started doing all this like, a year ago. which is part of Why im not so motivated by goals n such. but thats of course still on me. havent had my diet right, wayyyyy too many breaks n off days, no ability for actual Progression until just now. hopin i can start to turn this dang machine into some fucking muscle soon. i think i can! maybe! AUGH!

NUMBERS

SQUAT - 70

BENCH - 60

ROW - 80 (pulled my back just a lil on this last time, lol.)

OVERHEAD - 45 (cant even finish this weight lol)

DEADLIFT - 105

CARDIO - 4.5mph(?), 45min

WEIGHT - 160

BODYFAT - 24%

[hollyjollybaby]

October 3, 2022

Phew, I always say this at the start of my posts, but I seriously don’t have time to write down everything I want to write down. I think I need to get more comfortable just jotting down little bits here and there instead of trying to write down every detail of everything that I want to say 😂

Last Monday was my mom’s birthday and she took the day off work. She picked up donuts, orange juice and champagne in the morning and came over to my house. We hung out and played with Holly until the afternoon, when Jake came home a few hours early so we could go out to the winery. We had a really nice afternoon, wine tasting and then getting a couple bottles and some goat cheese and bread and having a little picnic by the pretty pond. Our winery is on the absolutely most gorgeous property. Jake left his engineering job for one year from 2018-2019 and worked there, but when I got pregnant at the end of 2019 he went back to his old job. Not that the pregnancy forced his hand- there were lots of reasons the job wasn’t a good fit. aaaanyways lol.

Tuesday was my first day being the parent participator in Holly’s preschool class. It was fun. It was awkward at first to be on a playground with my child and a bunch of other kids and be expected to like walk around and interact with the other kids, and not just play with her, but I fell into the groove of it pretty quickly. And it reminded me of when I worked in daycare except for less stressful. Holly did a really good job at sharing her mommy all day and didn’t get jealous or upset like I thought she would when other little kids wanted to sit near me if I was reading a book or something. It was interesting to see more of the personalities of the other kids in her class. They’re mostly sweet little kids, but there is one with an attitude that I am not a big fan of and some behaviors that I hope she doesn’t teach my kid haha.

Wednesday wasn’t a school day for us, but preschool had their first field trip out to an apple orchard about 45 minutes away. “Field trip” in quotation marks because parents were responsible for driving their own kids there, which was a little annoying since it was a 90 minute total drive. It was cool as far as apple orchards go, they had a playground and a little store where I bought the absolute best pumpkin roll I’ve ever had in my life (it was the first pumpkin roll I’ve ever had in my life) but I wouldn’t necessarily drive 45 minutes for it again. My child is so flipping cute though and once I showed her how, she had a fun time picking apples off the trees and riding in the wagon.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to watch the new Dahmer show but after a few days of friends talking about it, I decided to give it a try last week and I binged all of it in like three days. I definitely could’ve watched it all in one day if I didn’t have a husband and a child lol.

One of my best friends who moved to Louisville a few years ago, came to visit over the weekend, and even though it was only a 24 hour trip we squeezed a lot of fun into it. We colored with chalk outside with Holly and Jake grilled us some delicious chicken. Saturday evening, we got reservations at a cool new bar in town. It’s styled like a speakeasy and it’s literally hidden inside the walls of another bar. There’s a light outside the door and it turns red when they’re at capacity and turns green if you can come in. It’s kept kinda dark and lit with warm vintage lights, the music is quiet and everyone talks at like a regular speaking level. They encourage you to dress nice and they have rules including no hitting on strangers! They have classic cocktails and then they also do the fancy smoked drinks and whatnot. It was a really fun experience and I want to go back with Jake. We barhopped a little the rest of the night, but got home around 10 (👵🏼) and drank wine and watched Netflix. Holly kept calling her “natty” (her name is Maddie) which was really cute.

Just gonna bury this at the bottom here but I have officially lost 45 pounds and gone from size 17 jeans down to a 12 and I’ve actually ordered some 10s because the couple pairs of 12s I just got last week are feeling loose already.

[official-rolli-und-rita]

hey, you posted brioche you made a while ago, do you maybe have the recipe for that? no worries if not or you dont feel like copying it!

Yes of course! I used this french recipe, which i will translate bc i don't think i have that many french followers lol. (also to my non-metric followers here are converters for ml/oz and g/lbs, hope this helps)

Also quick disclaimer: Hervé (who made this recipe) mentions a kitchen aid machine, which i don't have, and as a result ended up almost making my shitty 14.99€ hand mixer from Rossmann catch fire. i had to take a 30s break every minute so it would stop smoking and making a weird noise. it took me a very long time to knead it and i wasn't super happy with the results, but i think that was just my fault bc i know for a fact that Hervé's recipes are on point. i'm done talking now here's the recipe

Ingredients: 500g flour, 200ml milk, 80g of butter, 80g of sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 20g fresh baker's yeast or 10g dry baker's yeast, 2 tbsp. tablespoon orange blossom water*, 2 eggs + 1 for the glaze

Recipe: Whisk together milk, sugar, salt, 2 whole eggs at room temp, then add the orange blossom and the flour and start kneading until it's combined (doesn't have to be very long). Now add your yeast**. whisk for 6-7 minutes on low (a setting which my mixer doesn't have lol), and then continue on a high setting for 5 minutes. add your butter (room temp, cut up into smaller pieces), and keep whisking for 8 minutes. you can see why Hervé uses a kitchen aid. this recipe will cost you your arm but it will be worth it. Unstick the dough from the sides of the bowl and let it rise for at least 1 hour. when it's done, punch out the air and put the dough on your work surface. cut into three identical long pieces and braid them. i did not do this. i was tired and my dough was too sticky. but i will try to do it properly next time. put your braid into your loaf pan and let it rise for another 45 minutes***. Preheat your oven to 180ºC (356ºF, 453.15ºK, 815.67ºR), brush the top of your brioche with a beaten egg and a bit of salt. bake for 25 minutes, and let cool. then eat!

*i'm gonna be real with you, i have no idea what "orange blossom water" is, and i know i probably can't get it where i live, so i just skipped it. didn't even substitute it w anything. i'm wild like that. do whatever you want. cheers.

**idk why the yeast is added so late, that really confused me, but every brioche recipe i could find said to do this. also i recommend granulating it if you're using fresh yeast, that will make it much quicker and smoother

***the recipe does not say to use butter or baking paper in your pan, but i recommend baking paper, as it might be difficult to remove your brioche after baking

ok WOW this post has been in my drafts for like a year and my ahdh ass didn't get around to finish writing it bc i think i wanted to proofread it fist??? so i'm just going to post it now and if you have any questions feel free to ask! (although i might not know the answer bc it's been so long that i forgot how to make brioche) <3

so sorry lol hope you're still interested in the recipe!

(also i did end up finding orange blossom water recently, but i haven't used it yet)

[of-twilight-and-moonshadow]

Well, I started the day out writing. But that went out the window real quick

Personal post below;

Tw: death of a pet, seizures, Injections, blood

My dog, Spike, who was 8 years old, had to be put down today.

He had been sick the last 2 months; started out he would not eat-- anything. He got so lethargic and skinny. Bones showing, skinny. Then he would slowly eat little by little. A piece of lunch meat here or there. But still no energy.

We took him to the vet a few weeks ago, they gave him a steroid shot, to see if it would help or not.

And it did.

Spike began to eat-- 5-6 pieces of bologna in a sitting, 3-4 hotdogs, a can of ravioli (please keep in mind- we were giving him *anything* that he would eat, just so that he would eat *something* )

At 5:30 am on the 23rd of December, Spike suffered a seizure. His very first one, ever. Lasted about a minute or 2; he was a little out of it after, but seemed fine as the morning went on.

Then at 4 pm, the very same day, he had another. This time, along with the foaming at the mouth, he also coughed up blood.

Our usual vets office was closed, so we (my parents and I) called around and found an emergency vet, open 24/7, and drove the 45 minutes to get him in and seen. We arrived there just before 5 pm.

At 7:45/8 pm, the vet came in and told us the hard truth.

They could do this or do that, give us this medicine or do a certain procedure. All of which may or may not work. Upon scanning his stomach, they found he had a cancerous tumor on his spleen, which was causing a low red blood cell count. That in turn was affecting his breathing (the past 2 months he had been hacking like something was stuck in his throat, but nothing ever came up- and he would weeze like he needed air at times).

So we could do the possible help, or we could let him go.

We made the painful, heart wrenching choice to let him go. It was the best option for Spike, he's not in any more pain. I stayed with him to the very end, past the time we knew we was gone. I held it together, through my parents breaking down, until the moment they began to inject him. It hit me like a freight train then, and I know at some point I'll break down fully, but... I think a part of me is trying to resist? In denial? Trying to be strong for my parents? I dunno.

So my Dark Angel updates are gonna be pushed to the side for a bit, sorry y'all.

[racingtoaredlight]

Goodnight, Sweet Prince

Disclaimer: You don't want to read this...it's brutal. I won't take offense if you don't read, but please keep unrelated comments on the Open Thread that will post shortly.

***

This is my 4th attempt at writing something that Willie 100% deserves, but I keep breaking down and I just can't stop crying. I loved him so much, it's just ripping me apart. I loved him so goddamned much.

I was so proud to be his owner. I fucking hate that term, I just don't know what else to use.

I took him everywhere I could. Everywhere he went, he drew people in...this isn't hyperbole, at least once per week I'd be stopped by someone driving and spend a minute or two chatting about him. He was everything I ever wanted in a dog...from his athleticism to his personality to his sense of humor.

Every day I'd get in my car to go home from work, I'd excitedly start my car and say "I'm comin' Willie!" But now he's gone. He's not there to come home to anymore. I walk around my house looking for him and he's just not there.

***

My past four months have been a form of hell, and I've tried really hard not to bring it here...but it's just really hard when that's all you can think about.

I've known my father was going to die since his two heart attacks on the same weekend seven and a half years ago. Those heart attacks happened a month after my beloved grandmother passed away.

I've talked about my issues with manic depression in the past, as well as openly discussed that I've been a danger to myself in the past.

When I was on that edge, my first thought was "if I die, nobody will take Willie, and he'll end his life in a shelter waiting for anyone to adopt him." How could I do that to him again? Despite the shitstorm going on in my brain, even in that state, thinking of him cut through it enough to bring me back.

I don't say this lightly...if it weren't for Willie, I would not be here.

***

My father is in hospice and will likely pass within a week or so. The past four months have featured numerous trips to the ER, doc visits, tests, you name it...pretty much all week, every other week as the doctors kept trying their best to keep a man with a 6% functioning heart and 11% functioning kidneys alive.

The easy parts were running to his place to water his plants. Or coming over in the morning to make him a milkshake while we listen to music. The hard parts have been hanging up the phone or leaving his place, and the first thing that runs through my mind is "will this be the last conversation we ever have?"

The medium hard parts were running to the grocery store or the pharmacy in between meetings. Or preparing him 3 days worth of food in the 45 minutes I had before a guitar lesson. And 1.5 of those days I'd be throwing out the next time I stopped by.

The hardest part was wondering who'd go first.

I never complained about any of this. I'd do it again for the both of them without a conscious thought because I love them both so much. But it wears on you. Month after month does a toll.

***

I've been doing all of this, on top of an insane pace at work, on almost no sleep.

The vet told me to keep a diary of his health throughout all this. You notice a string of bad days, but the first good day and a half and all of the sudden that concern washes away. Keeping a diary allows you to get a relatively objective look at your dog's health, and notice long-term trends.

Unfortuantely...as I've known with my dad's heart condition, sleep is a big factor...I tracked Willie's sleep and got a wonderful look every day at how little I'd gotten over months. Months.

And I knew I lied in the diary. I didn't want to admit to myself that Willie's condition was getting so much worse...even if I couldn't ignore the 8th straight day he'd wake me up before 3am. Let me put it this way...in the last three months, I've had six full nights of sleep. Another 12 of days he woke me up after 3am. Every other day was a 2-3am wakeup call, and three of those days were no sleep at all.

It wasn't as simple as getting up and letting him outside to relieve his fading bladder...the next hours before I went to work were spent comforting him on the couch, as his increasingly weakening heart pounded like hell to circulate enough blood through his system.

He didn't wake me up all those nights because he had to pee...he woke me up all those nights so that I could make him less afraid of his heart feeling like it was drowning due to an edema. He'd get comforted and calm down to sleep just around the time I had to get up and get ready for work.

And every morning, every day I'd come home from work...whenever I'd leave him...there was a simultaneous terror combined with hope that I'd find him having passed away in slumber. A peaceful, painless, natural death.

***

There were so many good memories of our time together, please don't ever suggest that I'm glossing over them. I am at a certain peace...it was his time, it was a wonderful goodbye, and so many of my friends and family have come to his support, that's brought me to tears separately.

He was a special guy, he touched everyone's life that he met. He was wonderful with children, wonderful with others, terrible with other dogs (but you can't win em all).

Those memories will always come back as long as I still have a functioning brain. Right now is so close though, all I can feel is loneliness.

Over the years, I've shared numerous anecdotes of Willie because I was so proud of him that I wanted that joy to be spread to others. But all I can feel is the pain of having lost my best friend.

There's a common refrain "you don't know what you got until it's gone," or some variation of that. I thought I knew what I had in my relationship with Willie...but given this gigantic empty space in my heart, this giant fucking chasm, I somehow underestimated how much he was giving me.

***

The thing that scares me the most about the future isn't losing my father, it's losing a grasp of joy.

Pretty much everyone here knows I struggle deeply with anger issues and have a darker side that I try really hard to keep tamped down. I talked about this with my therapist yesterday before the vet came over...

Willie was always a bulwark against the darker side of my brain coming to the front. Even in my worst moods, where I'm borderline psychotic, even just looking at him would bring me to a calmer, sustainable place psychologically. "Those" days at work? They bothered me less knowing I'd be on the couch chillin' with my big boy in 15 minutes.

As his condition worsened, so did the vet bills and trips. $100 a pop, $450 for an echocardiogram here, $200 dog cardiologist fees, $180 for a Lasix IV there, $150 every month for his heart medication, $50 per month on all the stuff he needed for his arthritis, and it seriously just goes on and on. Thousands and thousands of dollars over the last four months. Nevermind the car trips there and back that wreaked havoc on his heart...

But I would have done fucking anything for this dog. Anything except selfishly keep him alive when he's telling me he just can't anymore...I knew it was the right thing, and I feel like I fucking completely betrayed and failed him, at a time when he needed me the most.

That helpless feeling..."I can't do fucking shit"...I'd find myself at 3am googling "if you love a dog enough will it live forever?" You know the answer. I knew the answer. That's where I'm still at.

***

I should've quit writing this paragraphs ago...I'm just fucking sobbing and this isn't doing me any good. And I can't just talk about the good times, because all I can think of is that those times are gone. Every time I think of something beautiful or joyful, it's immediately poisoned by an onset of sobbing because I miss him so much already.

You all know how much Willie meant to me. I don't have to make the case for that...I loved that dog more than I've loved anything in my life. And I don't give a shit if you think that's sad or immature or lame.

I kept quitting this and coming back because he deserves it. He deserves to be commemorated for the tremendous companion he was...and as much as I'd love to be able to write that piece that makes everyone happy and celebrates him, I just can't write that piece right now. The joyful memories will come when I'm in a healthier state, I'm certain of it.

But I can't keep writing this and just crying all over myself. He deserved a much better eulogy than this, but this is the best that I could do. It feels like I failed him already yesterday and now I feel like I'm failing him again.

Willie was the greatest dog in the world, my best friend, my savior, and adopting him was the single most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. I'll love him forever no matter what. I'm just really hurting right now.

***

During this time, I've been trying to think of something to preserve his memory with what few skills I possess, and I have no idea how to do this or even get it started, but I want to start a non-profit called The Willie Fund where I can link with pit rescues across the country and provide funds for palliative care and dignified, in-home euthenasia for those in their communities that need it. I don't know where to start but I have to do something.

And thank you guys for letting me share Willie with you all these years. I'll be back at some point.

*The pic at the top was taken months ago, not yesterday...it's just my favorite serious picture of the two of us and thought it was a respectful image to remember our relationship by. I loved him so much and I know he loved me too.

[loveisbraveandwild]

I have some reading tips and I am excited to share them! Here we go!

1. Download Read More or Basmo (or any other reading tracker, but these are the ones I've used). You can use these apps to track your every reading session. You start a reading session everytime you read, and the app will count the minutes. And you can set a daily minute goal. Mine is 45. This will help motivate you.

2. If you don't live alone and you get distracted by your cohabitants' movements around you, try waking up early, when no one is up yet. For me, the most important factor in reading is having complete silence that I know won't be disturbed. I can't get immersed if I know that at any moment, someone could make an unexpected noise and pull me out of the book.

I don't know if waking up early would work for your schedule, but the gist of it is: find time in your day when you know you'll be left alone.

3. Do a Reading Challenge like Buzzword Readathon or Chantel Reads All Day Reading Challenge. You'll get a prompt every month and you'll have to read a book according to that prompt. It makes picking books more fun.

4. Gamify your reading in other ways. Write all the books you wanna read down and then generate a random number and pick the book that corresponds to it. Or read all books with a certain object on the cover. Or all books mentioned in your favourite book, or that inspired your favourite book. Or read all of your friend's favourite books. Wrap your TBR in gift paper and then pick one at random. Buy a mystery book box. There are also bookish calendars or scratch-off boards that you can buy.

And don't forget: you don't need to read 100 books a year. Find a number that works for you. My goal is 60. 52 is a nice number to aim for, a book a week. Or you can challenge yourself and try to prove to yourself that you can read 100 or more. Any number you manage to read will be great, and don't let anyone make you feel bad for not reading as much as them.

Happy reading!

ooo thank u for sharing! (i think u sent this a while ago to accompany this post and i forgot to post)

[tarosin]

the great adventures of y/n and ranboo

this is an extra part to the great adventures series

summary: part two to the angst imagine (the not so great adventures of y/n tommy tubbo jack and ranboo) it’s a happier ‘ending’ please read what is written in bold

this is an “alternative ending” around 15 years into the future this doesn’t mean this is actually how the series is going to end im writing it now and including it as part of series as their friendship is already established i can confirm y/n and the group are going to have a happy ending when the series eventually comes to an end this also does not mean the series is anywhere near the end i plan on continuing the series as vlogs come out, i feel the need to confirm this now love between y/n and ranboo in this imagine is completely platonic

it had been about a month since you last streamed whereas ranboo continued to stream a few days after the fallout as he wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. even though ranboo knew this huge fallout would eventually happen, it still hurt him, especially since he knew there was no way to prevent it, the four of you in the same house mixed with the stress of being some of the most-watched content creators made living rather difficult. it was like walking on eggshells as you didn’t want to interrupt someone's stream, then there was the additional stress of obsessive fans finding out where the four of you lived, you still remember that day very vividly. you were sat in between tubbo and ranboo watching the office whilst Tommy was in an interview when you received a message from your mod.

Chris: hey y/n I received this message earlier I don’t want to scare you, but maybe get the locks changed. someone sent a message claiming this is your address *image of message from ‘fan’*

it didn’t take long for tubbo and ranboo to receive a message from their mods saying the same thing

“holy shit...”

“chances are Tommy has the message too. we shall go check around the house when Tommy is done with the interview.”

luckily no one ever showed up to the house, but the fact some people were so obsessed to the point they found your address was enough to put everyone in the house on edge. and now it was just you and ranboo in the house. you didn’t feel safe as even though ranboo promised to not let anything happen, you didn’t wanna risk it.

“we should move. there’s no point in having such a big house for two people, what are we going to use the extra space for heh? hide and seek with people who have our address. no thank you. I say we move leave this mess behind and start completely over, hell I’d feel safer in the us and that’s saying something”

ranboo agreed the house didn’t have the happiest memories attached to it anymore, it hurt walking past the hallway as it would bring back the memory of him crying into the crook of y/ns neck whilst tubbo left the house.

“let’s do it, I’ll do an early stream then we can look for houses. go take a shower. I’ll stay close to the door so you’re safe, then you can stay in my room whilst I stream, you can join me if you would like.”

“you’re being very protective all of a sudden...let me guess you got the message from our mods announcing the obsessive fans are at it again?”

“go take a shower.”

“no.”

ranboo ended up picking you up, carried you to the bathroom and turned the shower on before putting you on your feet.

“quick shower I’ll see you later.”

and with that he left the room shutting the door behind him, 30 minutes later you got changed and followed ranboo to his room ready to join him whilst he streams

“hey boo, can I join you? I kinda wanna get into streaming again.”

“I'm so glad you asked, I was going to do a face cam stream, if that’s okay?”

“of course.”

you grabbed his mask and glasses whilst he locked the door so you were both safe. “here you go.”

“thank you.”

the pair of you started the stream and it was honestly going well, you were having so much fun you forgot about all the negative things currently going on, you began to understand why ranboo continued streaming as for those 2-4 hours of streaming it felt as though everything was back to normal. 3 hours later the two of you ended stream and Twitter went crazy. tweets ranged from fans talking about how ranboo was streaming with you, how Tommy was in chat, and how tubbo was modding as people who mentioned anything about their address being leaked were banned by tubbo. the one thing that caught ranboos eye was fan art and a picture of you both from the stream captioned ‘they’re platonic soulmates your honour’ ranboo went as far to like, retweet and comment on it.

ranaltboo: glad you liked the stream it was great having y/n back, think I might make them play tattletail next stream

definitelynoty/n: isn’t that the Furby game that terrified you in 2021? bring it on boo!

Twitter went crazy over this interaction, you had finally come back to social media after months of being inactive, and it looked like you were here to stay. a month later you and ranboo moved out of the house and sold it to your aunt and her wife and their three adopted children, you explained the situation and even changed the locks for them all before they moved in.

“Please do tell us if anyone shows up who shouldn’t be. we changed the locks as you were aware- oh hello little one.”

you noticed one of their children decided to cling onto your leg

“I like your hair it’s colourful!”

“Indeed it is.”

“WOAH A GIANT!”

the little girl let go of your leg and ran to ranboo asking to be picked up, unsure of what to do he looked towards you. however, you were too busy laughing about the fact he was compared to a giant.

“I'm so sorry uh if you want to pick her up you can, you don’t have to.”

“pick me up, tall man... I want to be taller!”

ranboo ended up standing next to you with an arm around your waist whilst the child sat on his shoulders happily playing with his hair.

“ranboo do not drop that child.”

“I didn't- I didn't plan on it y/n.”

eventually, it was time to leave and the child reluctantly let go of ranboo.

“bye-bye!! hope to see you soon!”

soon enough you were at a smaller house, far away from the old house, leaving behind the negative feelings. it could only get better, a week later the pair of you had settled into the new house, it finally felt like home. you and ranboo were now streaming full time again, safe to say the two of you were thriving and closer than ever.

“so I’m thinking if I hit the sub-goal today I’ll let chat pick what colour I dye my hair.”

“make it higher, and I’ll let you cut my hair.”

“Are you being serious? oh my god!”

a few minutes later you took to Twitter to announce you were going live.

y/n: kidnapping children in the sims with ranboo psst check the subgoal.

within 20 minutes you had hit the sub-goal, chat ended up picking another random neon colour for your hair.

“right hair dye and the cutting stream will be this weekend, now let’s go back to kidnapping.”

tubbo, tommy, and jack felt awful for what happened and went back to the house where you used to live, hoping to see you there so they could apologise, tubbo knocked on the door only to be met by a young child.

“my sister watches you on twitch!”

“oh that’s lovely.. are y/n and ranboo here?”

an older woman came to the door.

“oh no, I’m sorry dear they both moved out, but they left this box and said to give it to you if you returned.”

“do you know where they moved to?”

“I'm sorry dear, I'm not allowed to tell you that information for safety reasons.”

“I understand, thanks anyway.”

they ended up going back to jacks where the three of them had been staying.

“We should open the box.”

tubbo opened the box and emptied the items onto the floor, inside was the rocks y/n handed tubbo from every trip, photos of the group, a necklace y/n had gifted to Tommy a day before the argument, and a hat y/n had taken from jack during a trip to a zoo.

“what the fuck!”

“holy shit!”

“they really kept all these in hopes we would come back?”

“and now we’re too late.”

it was now the weekend you and ranboo were ready to stream, you stood leaning on ranboo who was significantly smaller than you as you lowered the chair he sat on.

“starting stream...now.”

after the starting soon intro played, you explained what was happening to any new viewers or people who didn’t watch the stream.

“so I’m about to become Edward Scissorhands...I love that film can we watch it later?”

“yeah mhm sure!”

you didn’t know this but your ex best friends were watching and ever so often would show up in the chat.

“so boo, what are we doing with your hair today?”

“just a trim please darling?”

“This is y/ns hairdressers you get what I’m capable of!”

you ended up doing a pretty good job of cutting ranboos hair, even he was impressed.

“I didn’t doubt you for a minute!”

“mhm sure thing please don’t mess up my hair tall one!”

soon enough you had the dye on. 45 minutes later you left to wash it off, leaving ranboo to entertain stream,

“chat I think I missed some of their hair it’s okay, I own scissors, I’ll just cut it.. speaking of they did a great job, didn't they? I honestly expected them to mess up.”

a few minutes later you joined ranboo again and spent the next few hours talking with chat. tubbo, tommy, and jack stayed the entire time. they loved the fact you and ranboo were able to stay close after what happened, Tommy noticed you were still wearing the necklace he got you many years ago and spammed them chat with him tubbo and jack

Tommy: THEYRE WEARING THE NECKLACE!!

jack: so what? they clearly don’t wanna talk to us.

tubbo: shut up listen to them.

“chat why are we spamming platonic soulmates?”

“they’ve been saying it all over Twitter, look on trending y/n.”

you started to blush slightly at all the amazing artwork soon enough the stream came to an end, after saying goodbye the pair of you sat together going through fan art. unfortunately the one that caught your eye was this one twitter post where the artist had created a drawing of a piece of paper with you, ranboo, tommy, tubbo, and jack, however the paper was ripped separating you and ranboo from the others, captioned ‘it was never meant to be’ this clearly upset ranboo as he took off his mask and glasses placing them on the desk before going straight to his bed.

“boo…are you okay?”

“Are you tired of me? are you going to leave next?”

“what? no of course not! I could never get tired of you, why do you ask?”

“everyone else has left..i thought they cared about us, i knew it would happen eventually and i couldn’t stop it, i’m sorry, y/n, please don’t hate me.”

you sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the floor,

“come here.”

you watched him roll over to face you.

“you know there’s no one else who I'd rather spend the rest of my life with, right…if i hated you i wouldn’t have moved house with you. it’s not your job to fix everything and make everything better, you’re a streamer for christ sake not a therapist.”

“i guess so.. can we watch that thing you were on about for ages.”

“edward scissorhands? “

“mhm!”

you could tell he wanted to be distracted, so you agreed and put the film on, towards the end you began to get upset due to how overwhelming everything was.

“Why are you crying?”

“poor Edward.”

“come here.”

ranboo pulled you into a hug you laid there crying into his chest, he knew that wasn’t the reason you were crying, but he wasn’t about to make you tell him, luckily it didn’t take long for you to stop crying as ranboo quickly distracted you.

“ranboo..”

“yeah y/n?”

“I feel bad i didnt realise how much pressure was on you whilst everyone was arguing.”

“Hey, it’s okay, is that what’s upsetting you?”

“mhm.”

“don’t blame yourself, i’d do it all over again to keep you safe and happy..then again i didn’t do a good job on keeping you happy.”

“you did..you were always there for me even when i gave up on social media, you shared your room with me after i started receiving creepy messages from that obsessed fan, hell you even went on adventures with me even though it was clear you hadn’t been sleeping, just so we could spend time together and forget about what was happening. you mean a lot to me boo.”

“i love you.”

“i love you too bud, I’m tired.”

“go to sleep, it’s been a long day.”

“okay.”

“you just staying there?”

“yes.”

“oh, oh okay, goodnight.”

about a year later the two of you were still thriving, ranboo got you a promise ring a few months earlier.

“heh what’s this for?”

“as your best friend i promise to stay by your side and keep you safe and make sure that you’re happy, in other words you're stuck with me till the end of time.”

“boo…i really don’t know what to say.. thank you so much!”

“you don’t have to say anything!”

you ended up going out to buy him a promise ring when he started the stream and decided to take your cousins with you now that they were a little older. ranboo was doing a facecam stream when the door slammed open revealing you covering your three younger cousins ranboo not realising you were hiding them from the camera, instinctively stood up covering the camera

“ranboooooo!”

“yes you three and y/n ,what do you need?”

“we would like to watch a film!”

“Okay, i’ll go put one on, y/n will you entertain chat?”

“sure thing boo boy!”

once they left you sat fixing your hair forgetting you were wearing the ring chat noticed this and went crazy, so did Tommys group with tubbo and jack.

tubbo: that’s a ring, right??

jack: yeah looks like it.

Tommy: holy shit I always thought if anyone was gonna get married it would be tubbo and y/n, they were inseparable.

tubbo: hilarious.

jack: it could just be a ring, no one mentioned marriage tommy!

Tommy: we should congratulate them.

jack: at least let them explain fucking hell.

soon enough ranboo came back into the room,

“sorry one of them found it hilarious to steal my glasses...”

“they’re little shits i swear to god but i love them.”

you both noticed chat going crazy and both looked at each other before laughing.

“i'm sorry, i can’t take you serious in the mask and glasses!”

“i can’t take you serious with neon hair, but here we are!”

“rude!”

you and ranboo quickly put an end to the rumours,

“no we’re not engaged or married, it is a promise ring. no they’re not our children, they’re y/ns cousins they just spend a lot of time here..chat stop calling me and y/n parents and comparing us to phil that’s not..that’s not how it works okay!”

“parent arc!”

“y/n, don’t encourage them!”

“it’s a little bit funny!”

soon enough the bit came to an end and eventually ranboo ended the stream.

“hey boo look what i got you”

you handed him a little black box, inside was a ring similar to yours

“i promise to always stick around and be here for you”

“oh my god”

ranboo tackled you into a hug thanking you several times for his rings. you and ranboo were living your best life meanwhile jack, tommy, and tubbo were stuck dealing with the guilt of what happened, but they’re weren’t giving up that easy. they wanted you both back, that’s when you received a notification, tommyinnit has sent you a message request: hey y/n can we talk..please?

taglist

@dumb-chaotic-bi-energy @uselesssapphickitten @l0ver0fj0y @etheriaaly @xx-smiley-xx @hawarun @kylobensgirl @cawcaw-pretty-thing @reverse-iak @renleicrashed @augustine-is-joy @c1loudee