#I’d like to go for a walk and listen to our new podcast episode

[whentherewerebicycles]

my little loaf :)) my beloved guy :))))

I finished my rec letters last night and then hung out with my sister and ordered Indian food. got up early this morning and worked quite hard from 6:30-11:30 at work finishing a presentation draft + a round of revisions for this big project we’re wrapping up in the next few weeks. I might do just a little bit more work on it today—I’d like to go through the doc and make a detailed revision to-do list for myself so I have it all in one place—but then I’ll be done for the week.

as I was working on that project this morning I noticed that I was experiencing a deep sense of satisfaction & fulfillment, and it struck me that this will be the first time I’ve completed a big writing project (the kind involving multiple rounds of feedback and revision) since february 2022. I almost have happy tears in my eyes just recalling and re-experiencing the feeling now lol. my creative output has been been mostly stalled for nine months now and I’ve been thinking of that stalledness largely in terms of products—I’m not producing good work, I’m not producing stories or drafts, I’m not even really producing good story concepts. but I think what I really miss and feel the absence of in these creatively fallow periods are the rhythms of writing work itself. there’s something about that cycle of planning, drafting, revising, drafting, revising, drafting, revising that feels intensely good and pleasurable to me—that calm, relaxed yet deeply focused flow state where you are continually assessing your own work and making small purposeful changes and then assessing the changes. I love the work itself and when I am cut off from it, internally or externally, I feel like an important part of myself starts to wither. I know this stalled state isn’t forever (it never is), but I would be so much happier and calmer if I were absorbed in work 😩 but then also who knows—maybe this small little revelation will unlock something for me and help me figure out how to bring writing back into my daily life, even if it’s not in the fiction-writing mode that I’ve been trying to make myself work in.

[bodybeyondstories]

Just ignore it - 6

After things get heated, David finds himself back at the gas station. Then again. And again.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (Previous)

Male TF // Dick Growth // Growth // Butt Growth // nsfw

This is sort of a non-conclusion to this story arc with a weird idea that I had that I wasn't sure how to execute well (the usual lol). Had a lot of fun with this series, lot of threads yet to play with, eventually, maybe...

---

“That you?”

The Mystery Machine. Lee lazily scrounging around in the bag of cheese puffs. The gas station attendant power walking away, bubble butt jiggling uncontrollably. Me sitting in the passenger seat, staring into space. And not unleashing a higher dimensional being through some magic portal and eating out a giant-size Blake. 

I had never had a dream that vivid. He had grown to monstrous proportions, I was awash in his thick musk, his deep, almost subsonic groans shaking me to my core, body lengthening and muscles inflating, his ass like two planets trying to fill up the entire dome–

“We’ll assume yes,” said Lee. “Looks like he didn’t see that coming,” he continued, long fingers reaching into the bag.

“Be careful with those, I heard they go straight to your…” I’ve said this before. 

“Ass? Allegedly,” Lee chuckled. “Apparently dudes mix these into their protein shakes on leg day or crush them and down entire family size bags on a dare or whatever and see what happens. It’s an urban legend, but I guess urban legends keep us employed. We’ll have to look into it right after all the other magical calamities spawning off around you.” He gave a cheese dusted smile, leaning lazily over the window, reaching back to adjust the seat of his pants.

Armand plopped himself back into the driver's seat and grabbed the aux cord, began scrolling through podcasts as he started the van. “There’s a great episode I think we should listen to, it’s on…let me find it…”

“Spectral informatics?” I offered, confused as to how I’d come up with that.

“Yeah! I didn’t know you were a fan,” said Armand, excitedly snatching a few cheese puffs from the bag. I squirreled it away before we had to deal with any further snack-based complications.

“Um, sure,” I said, as we pulled off onto the road.

It was actually a pretty interesting episode, and settled into the background of the muted scenery rolling by. Lee was asking lazy but helpful questions in the back, and before I knew it we were engaged in a deep side conversation that complemented the soft radio voices of the podcast hosts. Armand seemed genuinely pleased. This was maybe the longest actual discussion I’d had with him. I was present in a way that the right jolt of caffeine makes the world feel crisp and new.

Because Synt wasn’t there.

I don’t know why it had taken me this long to realize, but Synt’s overbearing metaphysical residence in my mind was nowhere to be found. It was like a weight had been lifted, but I felt the absence of agonistic tension that I had gotten so used to. I involuntarily reached out for that itch of power and possibility, the wild tangle of transdimensional multisensory perception and found only the walls of my own psyche. What happened? I thought, with growing suspicion. Where had they gone?

As county roads turned to back roads and we passed the vine covered “Marshlands State Park” sign, the trees in the landscape seemed to stretch up and yawn in the breeze. I felt small among this ancient, imperceptible community, had the feeling of a convening that I had once been privy to but was no longer. I had a brief impression of a figure strolling through the forest, towering over us as they stretched with them, like an overexposure or an afterimage. Here and then gone.

The episode was wrapping up as the van turned off the small forest road onto a poorly maintained gravel path that led to a patch of dirt currently occupied by a shiny new park ranger truck. Armand pulled up next to it as Lee and I scanned the area for our collaborators, seeing only a path through the trees that led down to an expanse of shallow water. As I stepped out of the van, a shiver went down my spine. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been there before. Not just in this landscape, but this exact point in space and time.

“What’s up?” asked Lee, as he emerged and let his hand briefly scratch my lower back.

“Nothing,” I answered. “Just…deja vu.”

“Happens out here a lot,” came a voice from nowhere.

It felt like I had perceived Blake speaking before registering him as a physical presence making sound. I turned to see him walking up toward us and couldn’t look away. He looked…big. Not just bigger since the last time we met, which for some reason didn’t come as a surprise. The hems of his sleeves fraying at the edges against his biceps, the small tears along the sides of his quads, his shirt fully unbuttoned to reveal a shelf of pectorals that seemed to fill any available space, the sides of his glutes visible from the front. That I had seen coming. 

But there was something else that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. He looked at me briefly as if picking up on the force of my attention, moved as if to say something, then quickly turned away, lips pursed in concentration as he continued to unload gear from the truck bed and waddle back down the path.

“He is getting bigger,” came another voice suddenly in our vicinity.

“How are you both so good at that?” asked Lee, turning to see Logan walking up. 

“I actually needed to talk to you about–”

“And what’s with the waders?”

“Oh. I, well–”

“Only thing that fits?” offered Armand with uncharacteristic sincerity.

“No, well yeah, well they’re–”

“Airboat,” I said, unaware of how I knew that beyond a crisp image in my head of the five of us gliding across the water. “Blake’s piloting an airboat.”

“I’m piloting a–yeah,” said Blake, emerging from the path. “Water’s still high, so the island is still an island.” He gazed off, staring intently at the cluster of trees in the distance as the rest of us began hauling stuff onto the Swamp Hag.

Under the roar of the propeller, we cruised over golden brown fields of late season wetland grasses, and there it was again. The feeling that this configuration of people, in this airboat, moving through this scene was a repetition with a slight difference. I had the sudden image of a massive eye on the landscape, energy crackling, something coming through. I looked up to see Blake behind and above us in the pilot seat, eyes locked intently ahead towards our destination, left hand nimbly controlling the rudder stick.

I couldn’t tell if it was just my imagination, but his pipe in his shorts seemed to creep slowly down his left leg, leaving dark spots of precum and even pulsing with an occasional lurch further and increase in girth. With his meaty quads looking ready to burst through his pants, he looked like, felt like, a concentration of size and weight. I let my mind wander, imagining what would happen if that prodigious bulge–

One side of his face scrunched in a grimace of concentration, his eyes briefly making contact with mine, a fleeting look of warning–or pleading–before returning to the task at hand.

As we landed on the island, Blake looked stressed, almost flighty, as he lifted the apparatus with the artifact with ease and started following the winding trail towards the center. I followed him along the vein of the iris of this landscape-scale eye as the others got their bearings. He was difficult to keep up with, his tree trunk thighs pumping powerfully as they moved around each other, his form giving the impression of an elephant about to clear a forest path.

“This site feels pretty weird, right?” I said, thinking of his earlier comment about deja vu.

He whipped around in surprise upon hearing my voice. Thrown off balance by the apparatus sitting on one shoulder, he grabbed one of the nearby trees and crushed half the trunk in his hand. He stammered for words as the unsuspecting cypress continued to crack, tipping away from the path and falling into the surrounding woods, leaving a gap of heavy silence.

“I, um, didn’t see you there…” he muttered, his eyes straining under droplets of sweat across his brow.

“Let’s deal with that later,” I said with a helpful smile as I heard the others catching up in the distance.

—

“This is where you found it?” asked Armand, eyes scanning the uncannily circular clearing. “It looks untouched.”

“It’s where it found us,” Blake quipped, his voice level. “And yeah, it just sort of appeared. Right there in the middle.”

That feeling again. I felt with ghostly certainty that I had been there. That I had never left. That I was standing here across an unknowable set of timeframes converging on this temporal point. Beneath that, I felt something deep and subsonic, something I hadn’t picked up on since I was an unsuspecting subject of one of Synt’s energetic outbursts. I could feel an energy seeping into local space, something crescendoing to some sort of threshold, before– 

I snapped back to reality. While Armand and Lee had set to work setting up a makeshift cleanroom, Blake had opened the apparatus to remove the artifact and move it to the center of the clearing, complex linework of lavender and gold forming and reforming across its surface. As he let his hands slip away, it remained stationary, rotating slowly in the air.

“Now that’s cool,” I said, walking up to it, entranced. Its motion was flawless, like it wasn’t so much moving of its own accord but the rest of the world was rotating around it. Like if I stopped it with my hand, the celestial motion of the solar system might gracefully fall apart. 

Blake, possibly with a similar idea, lifted a finger and brought it to the surface.

“Wait,” I warned, apprehensive but unclear as to exactly why. “Maybe don’t–” 

In a fraction of a second, the curls, diagrams, and fractals covering the sphere converged around Blake’s fingertip in a multicolored spiral and sent a jolt of electricity across the short distance.

“Are you okay?” I asked, as Blake winced, bracing his palms against his forehead.

“I…can’t…”

“Remember what we practiced,” said Logan, looking at him with intention.

“What do you mean what you practiced?” I asked.

Before he could answer, a pulse of iridescent energy shot out from the artifact, passing through us and stopping a few feet before the perimeter, forming a dome that resembled a giant soap bubble.

“Oh, hmm,” said Lee, lightly touching the whirls of energy a few feet in front of him as Armand scrambled to adjust their instrumentation. “It’s like a, um–”

“Forcefield,” I said with acute certainty. “It’s a forcefield. I’ve…seen this before. Where have I seen this before?”

“Take a wild guess,” Blake eked through what looked like a head-splitting migraine.

“We’ve been debating whether we should mention…” said Logan.

“Mention what?” I cut in. “And Blake, really, are you okay?”

“It’s Synt,” said Logan. “They took up residence in Blake’s head. I’ve been trying to guide him through it.”

Ah, fuck. Well that explains that.

“Ah, fuck. He’s not trained for this. Blake, you’re not trained for this.”

“I…realize…” muttered Blake, carefully delivering each word, “...that now.” He grimaced, doubling over in pain and intense concentration, actively trying to hold himself together, every vein and sinew along his over muscled body seeming to glow with ethereal light.

“You got this,” coached Logan, moving closer toward him. “Just breathe.” He reached out a hand to steady Blake as he stumbled again.

“No, wait!” I yelled, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

But it was too late. Logan caught Blake’s meaty forearm and was thrown into a full body spasm, every muscle pumping slowly with the power flooding into him. But there was one in particular that was thrown into hyperdrive, the bulge in his waders inflating to even wilder proportions, and showing no sign of slowing down. He managed to let go of Blake’s arm, gasping for breath through beads of sweat.

“You guys alright?” asked Lee. “Looks like it’s gettin’ pretty weird in there.”

“Really incredible readings, though,” added Armand. “You’ve gotta see this.”

“Maybe not the time, dude,” I said, more concerned about Logan’s exhausted whimpers. “You doing okay?”

“It’s not…” Logan looked at me in terror. “It’s not stopping. I–augghhh…” The straps of his waders finally gave up, snapping off his corded shoulders as the mass in his crotch continued to expand. He fell onto his butt, frantically peeling what was left of the fabric off, enjoying a moment of relief as the beast inside was finally freed, before his precum-smothered cockhead landed solidly on his face, covering his entire head and continuing to grow along the ground, before lifting itself, miraculously, into the air. His shaft was thicker than his waist and showed no signs of lessening as his mega dick began to approach at 90 degree angle, swaying gently as it continued to pulse and lurch with mass. 

With his legs pushed apart by his beach ball sized nuts, Logan was rendered immobile, powerless to do anything except lose himself in a deluge of orgasmic bliss, his face a contortion of pleasure and panic. As it touched the upper edge of the dome, it stopped, crackling against the force field, allowing Logan to briefly return to lucidity.

“This feels…unbelievable,” he whispered as I approached, hypnotized by the tower of cock before me. I could barely wrap my body around it, pushing myself into the intense heat of his flesh, quickly covered by the constant stream of precum gushing from the tip that was at least 15 feet in the air, pressed against the dome. Whatever I was doing, he seemed to be enjoying it, his breathing quickening as his massive balls contracted and his cock pulsed with additional girth, shoving my arms apart, patterns of fractal static appearing across the force field as his unbelievable trunk pushed angrily against it, cracks appearing and deepening in the framework as it finally pushed through, shattering the bubble into a multitude of iridescent shards.

And then–

—

“That you?” asked Lee.

The Mystery Machine. Lee lazily scrounging around in the bag of cheese puffs. The gas station attendant power walking away, bubble butt jiggling uncontrollably. Me sitting in the passenger seat, staring into space. And not using my entire body to jerk off the monolith of cock attached to Logan.

Ah, I thought, my face scrunching in annoyance. A time loop.

“We’ll assume yes,” he continued. “Looks–”

“Like he didn’t see that coming,” I finished. I looked at him standing in the car window, pausing in surprise with cheese puffs halfway to his mouth. “It’s a time loop.”

His eyes widened in thought for a weighty few seconds, twitching back and forth as if doing quick calculations in the air between us, brows furrowed in concentration.

“Well that’s fun,” Lee said, returning to nonchalant snacking. “How many iterations?”

“I think this is the third.”

“Oh that’s fine. Time loop protocol doesn't start until at least the fifth or sixth.”

“Well I don’t feel like waiting that long.”

“Waiting for what?” asked Armand, hopping back into the driver's seat. “By the way, is there a new style I’m not aware of or was that you’re handiwork with the station attendant? It’s less than professional is all I’m saying.”

“Dave’s stuck in a time loop,” said Lee.

“Of course,” groaned Armand, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Time loops are so much paperwork. How many iterations?”

“This is probably the third,” I offered. “At least the third.”

“Last update on time loop protocol says to wait until the sixth.”

“See that’s what I said,” Lee interjected, easing into the back seat, leaning his lanky self conspiratorially forward.

“And I don’t think we have time for that,” I retorted.

“Well technically we do,” said Armand, a helpful, oblivious smile as he started the car.

We cruised through the rolling landscape, discussing the same podcast (at this point, I was really coming around to spectral informatics). We pulled into the Marshlands. We greeted the pair of Blake and Logan who had a consistent, but slightly different dynamic of weird and antsy.

Protocol called for as few people as possible being informed of a potential time loop, even if both of them, Armand stressed, had been possessed–and were possibly currently possessed–by a cross-temporal trickster deity.

We take the airboat. We get to the island. We fall, somehow unsuspecting, into some wacky bullshit. And then–

—

“That you?”

I sighed into the mist of ass enhancing cheese dust kicked up by Lee’s questing fingers. “Fourth iteration.”

“Oh a time loop! The plot thickens.”

“Yes. And yes, that was my handiwork. And yes, the cheese puffs are causing more than the plot to thiccen.”

Lee paused in brief trepidation, then shrugged and grabbed one last handful before easing into the backseat. “What’s this one like? I don’t think time loop protocol starts until at least the fifth or sixth.”

“The sixth, according to Armand’s last memo.”

“You read Armand’s memos?” asked Lee, incredulous.

“No, he just–”

“You read my memos?” asked Armand, hopping into the driver's seat and taking a minute to nonchalantly wrestle with his bulge into a slightly more comfortable sitting position. 

“No, you mentioned it earlier. Earlier for me, meaning you haven’t actually mentioned it yet.”

“Dave’s in a time loop,” Lee offered. “Fourth iteration!”

Armand paused, his eyes shifting around the middle distance just passed the hood of the van, looking like he was very carefully piecing his next words together. “You know I really shouldn’t eat these,” he muttered, reaching into the bag of cheese puffs. 

The podcast. The Marshlands. The airboat. The clearing. The great watery eye in the landscape on the verge of winking at me in jest. The artifact, hovering.

“What could possibly happen this time?” I asked myself. “Maybe aliens touch down and retrieve their toy.”

“No, I don’t think that would happen again,” came a voice from just out of sight, but not out of earshot.

I turned my head slowly, making eye contact with the oh shit look painted across Logan’s face.

“What do you mean again?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

“Well, we were trying to tell you, or, debating whether to tell you yet,” he stammered, before catching himself. “Wait, what do you mean this time?”

We stared at each other, waiting to see who would break first.

“Tenth iteration,” he said.

“Fourth iter–tenth iteration?! You never thought to mention this?”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell anyone until like iteration twelve,” said Blake.

“Iteration twelve…” Armand seemed to deflate.

“No, no, they changed it,” said Lee.

“Does no one read my emails?” asked Armand, a vision of exasperation.

“Oh buddy,” said Lee, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Of course not.”

“You’ve been through this nine times?” I asked. “And every time, what, something weird and catastrophic happens?”

“And then we reset,” Logan confirmed.

“I’ve been thinking,” Armand mused, “maybe this whole ritual with the artifact is a strategy for Synt to fully enter this plane of existence, but maybe it fails every time, essentially short circuiting this local timestream and resetting it.”

“So Synt keeps breaking the rules and the game restarts?” said Lee.

“There are…rules?” asked Blake, heading tilted slightly in wonder.

“There are laws,” said Armand, “for this corner of multidimensional existence. There must also be for higher planes and more complex configurations. At least guidelines. Maybe some sort of natural adaptive system, or even a higher dimensional defense mechanism.”

“A higher dimensional defense mechanism,” I began, “that reins in the higher dimensional being that we can already barely fathom?”

“I mean…possibly?”

We sat in the soft moss for a while, contemplating our shared existence as specks of cosmic static. We bounced around half baked ideas and speculations about quantum field theory, supernatural entanglement, simulated realities, clockwork universes. We waited for some ridiculous happening to send us back to start over again. We debated why it was or wasn’t. 

“One time Dave turned into a giant and started throwing trees around,” Blake said, perking up with enthusiasm.

“Oh hell yeah,” said Lee. “Can’t believe we missed that one.”

“I think you died in that one, actually,” said Logan, with a quick, sympathetic smile.

“Oh dude, c’mon,” said Lee, turning towards me.

“I’ll buy you a beer when we get this figured out,” I said, throwing my hands up. “A whole round!”

The Sun moved to the tips of the trees along the western edge of the clearing. The sphere spun smoothly on its axis.

—

[Meanwhile, at the gas station…]

Okay, sharp inhale, hold it, hold it…cinch your entire body inwards, and pull. I yanked up the waistband of my khakis, giving it a few jumps to get gravity on my side, and gasped in delight as my backup pants miraculously made it over my glutes. Not all the way, I turned to see them riding low in the back, but good enough to make it through the rest of my shift. They were my last pair, the others laying in tatters, strewn around in frustration. 

I still couldn’t believe that three of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen rolled into this little gas station in the middle of nowhere and I actually ripped my pants. And then the backup pair. And then the backup pair to the backup pair. They had fit just that morning. Not well, but well enough, considering the shelf I was dragging behind me. I didn’t think it had gotten that much bigger since the last time I had had everything adjusted. I had always been proud of my bubble butt, but it seemed like any weight I put on went to one place and one place only, and it was getting ridiculous. And expensive. I had just been joking when I mentioned the cheese puffs, but maybe I should cut back. At least I had this final pair, practically painted on to my backside, but stable so long as I made no sudden–

“Hey Kes!” I wheeled around to see what Zac wanted, grimacing as I realized far too late what I had done. The sound of seams ripping, the touch of cool air across my butt cheeks, the look of unbridled glee on Zac’s face.

“...Fuck,” I said, hanging my head in resignation. “What is it?”

“I was going to ask if you did inventory yet, but I see you got some bigger fish to fry.” The easy smile, the lean against the side of the doorframe. The bulge in his pants that I knew from personal experience was a 7” softie–and that I knew from personal experience was a serious grower. “Is that, like, a harness?”

Ugh. “It’s a, ah, support system,” I corrected, glancing back at the array of straps and elastic bands holding my round cheeks in place, now fully visible to Zac from the doorway. “I found it online, they’re made special for guys with unique, uh, proportions. Didn’t think I would need it, yet, but I had one on hand just in case.”

“Hmm,” his eyes settled closed as he nodded, putting on his active listening face. “So like a bra.”

“It’s not a…” I sighed, giving up mid sentence.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” his palms out in acquiescence. “You know I’m a big fan of your unique proportions.”

That was putting it lightly. Zac’s one of my oldest friends, a very endearing stoner type who always manages to stay cool as a summer breeze. He’s had a habit of bouncing from one scheme to another, the latest of which is this run down gas station he acquired a few years ago and has somehow managed to keep operational. He lets me pick up part time work in the offseason, and most days it’s just the two of us looking after things and managing the slow drip of business, allowing ample time for the benefits of our friendship. He had always been a big fan of my assets, and my now constant wardrobe struggles only worsened his enthusiasm.

“You know it’s hard for me to find pants that fit, let alone get alterations out here,” I said. “I almost asked one of the guys in that van just now before I had to run back in, you should’ve seen…” I trailed off, holding an invisible beach ball between my hands.

“You’re more than enough for me,” Zac said with a smirk. “I think there are still those stretchy purple shorts in the office, from back when we did the Incredible Hulk promotion.”

“Don’t remind me.” My cheeks blushed as I thought back to the comical sight of my ass stuffed into that spandex costume, going viral on social media.

“How ‘bout you stay behind the counter and I’ll handle the pumps. You only have to be presentable from the waist up,” he added with a wink.

“Deal,” I said, my eyes lingering for a few seconds as he meandered off.

The stretchy purple shorts–with tattered fringes and cosmetic tears, of course–weren’t exactly my style, but they were at least comfortable. And chances of catastrophic failure were minimal with me perched on the stool behind the counter, ringing up the occasional customer and flirtatiously shooting the shit with Zac as the hours ticked by.

It was a normal enough day, but I couldn’t get my mind off that trio who came through earlier. I could feel, I don’t know, an energy about them, like the air around them was shimmering but not in a way you could see, if that makes sense. I guess it doesn’t. I would’ve written it off as the usual weirdness out in the boonies, but it lingered all day. Felt deeper and deeper. Like a presence had stayed behind after they left, some sort of gravitational pull hovering in the back of my mind, making my skin tingle and my hips flex with the feeling of phantom touches. Like a cosmic pressure growing. The opaque, dream-like impression of a trickster smile.

Not that I much cared. I grew up around these parts, there’s all manner of haints and spirits and cryptids, or whatever you want to call ‘em. You learn to deal. Pay attention to the hot/cold patchiness in the woods, watch out for fairy circles in suspiciously quiet clearings, don’t stare too long at the crotches of trees that look too much like doorways. Not that I had a habit of putting my nose where it didn’t belong, but I paid attention to the stories and had done plenty of reading of my own. I knew enough to know that sometimes a being that may or may not be of this world decides to spend some time with you, and sometimes that being may or may not want to have some fun with the fabric of our mundane everyday reality. Didn’t mean you had to take ‘em all that serious.

Pretty sure the park rangers out in the Marshlands get paid to deal with that kind of stuff. Seems like a fun job. Apparently you just have to take some classes at the university. I’d been considering it off and on but maybe this is some kind of sign. In the meantime I thought maybe I was craving some quality time with Zac that evening. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe his seven inch softie was looking more like eight.

I had the impression of tectonic plates in the back of my mind moving in agreement.

[archiveofkloss]

The model and entrepreneur has teamed up with Thorne Health for their latest campaign.

Karlie Kloss has a lot going on at the moment.

Many recognize Kloss as a model who has graced the covers of magazines and walked several iconic runways (including the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show), and now, the mom of two and busy entrepreneur is featured in Thorne Health’s “Find Your Way” campaign.

“Find your way to wellness is something that just really resonates with me because my wellness continues to evolve as life evolves,” said Kloss.

As someone who has high expectations of herself, Kloss understands that everyone’s needs change as they age. She’s taken advice from nutritionists over the years as well as a test on the Thorne website. “I want to be both physically strong and also have the mental acuity to be able to keep up with my day-to-day juggle,” she said. “You don't have to be a health expert to find things that are going to make you feel better in your skin and help you perform better.”

In this exclusive interview, Kloss talks about her wellness goals (including a big race she has her eyes on), her thoughts on starting a podcast and what she’s listening to when she works out… and no, it’s not Taylor Swift (but she does have a favorite TS song these days).

Q: What workouts are you into? 

A: I try and squeeze in whatever I can, whenever I can. That's always been the case. Long before having kids, I've always been on-the-go traveling for my day job. Whether it’s 20 minutes for a quick run, or pushing my kids in a stroller —and it's not even a high intensity thing —but just moving my body. I love to do strength training and Pilates. I'm starting to get back into running again.

Q: Do you have any running goals in mind?

A: I actually had knee surgery two years ago, which was a crazy thing as a 20-something to go through. Recovering from that forced me to take better care of myself and also train differently and really focus on strength.

I am toying with the idea of attempting a New York City marathon again this year. That was the only full marathon I've done. I've done a number of halves in Paris and in Germany.

Q: Running and training for a marathon is no joke. What’s on your playlist?

A: I love an audiobook or a podcast. I feel like it keeps my mind busy as opposed to checking the time. There's this podcast that I'm recently obsessed with called acquired okay I what it's called Acquired. They do deep dives into businesses — two hour long episodes. around like because they did a really great one on Hermes and on LVMH, and Nvidia.

Q: Would you start your own podcast?

A: I am definitely like a lifelong student. I love learning. I love asking questions. I feel like that's always been my form of education. I feel so lucky that through my career I have been able to meet so many interesting people, and I'm constantly taking advantage of that access to learn from the people around me.

Q: On the note of interesting people: you went to The Eras Tour. Do you have a favorite song off of Taylor Swift’s new album?

A: I’d say the whole album. I mean, her music is classic.

Q: Do you have a favorite Taylor Swift song, historically? [In 2013, it was Love Story.]

A: She’s got so many hits. I definitely love “Shake It Off.”

Q: What other concerts are you looking forward to?

A: I was trying to make it to the Billie Eilish tour. I had a baby last summer, so I was very sad to miss Beyoncé.

Q: With all that you do, what other goals do you have?

A: I want to continue to focus on the things that are currently on my plate. I'm excited to continue growing Kode with Klossy. We have a big birthday this coming year. We're going into our 10th year. We have 3,000 young women and gender expansive teens in our camps right now across 90 countries around the world. That's my first baby.

My bucket list item is to complete my degree. I'm a long time student at NYU, in the Gallatin program, where you make your own degree. I have taken a ton of classes across all the different schools, which is the beauty of the program. Even once I get my degree, I'm just a student of life.

[returntosaturn271995]

Tuesday, May 16th: Domesticating the Shrew

So I didn’t go to the DMV this morning. I went to bed at 10:30 last night just so I could wake up naturally at 6 am...and still roll over because holy fuck I have no control. When I’m awake I’m happy to be awake by my god a body at rest loves to stay at fucking rest. Was I bear in a past life? 

A manic depressive bear? 

Anyways, once I journeyed out of the cave my day became more impressive. I threw on a navy sports bra, light blue leggings, and my old running shoes because I am sick of breaking in the new cool ones. That is until I saw a sliver of my little socked toe wiggling back at me. 

Okay. Might be time to throw them away and commit to the new shitty ones. Anyways, I took my (too) old shoes on a new path by heading to the bay today instead of my usual beach trek. I felt moody and girlie so was listening to Lorde’s “Solar Power” and Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” albums. My sights today included: boats, a telephone pole graffitied “Fuck Capitalism”, met a sheepdog named Alvin whose owner’s name I have since forgotten, and an old fashioned turquoise car with a surfboard on top- straight out of ‘60′s San Diego. 

Upon returning home, I put the cow leather chair that I’ve had forever in to the garage and texted (low key pleading) with Hannah to move Lumos’s destroyed cat tower AKA the first thing anyone sees when they walk in our home. She thinks I should buy something to replace it, but if she thinks I’m spending a cent on more furniture for that cat to piss on she’s smoking actual crack. 

I channeled my cat-shaped rage in to making a very ambitious smoothie and applying to jobs (getting some responses thank god) for about an hour. Texted Kendall and Kelly about Kelly’s wheel exploding on the freeway, Maddy about her finally opening a bottle of wine we ordered in Seattle 2 years ago, and Eric about how lackluster relationships aren’t worth it. 

My goal for cleaning today was just to organize my night stand, but looking at the dust behind it spiraled in to me vacuuming, power-disinfecting and reorganizing the entire corner of the room including the bookshelf. Then I spent 90 minuets cooking homemade Kung Pow Chicken (New Skill: used cornstarch). Washed all the dishes and swapped out the recycling. Today’s podcast was three episodes of Radio Rental, and then the new Ted Lasso. 

Finally at 8, I spent a solid 45 minutes doing yoga, (shoulder and arm flexibility, head to knee pose improving, happy baby pose is embarrassing). Today’s meditation was on being real. Yeah, okay. How’s this for real: “I’m not sure I’m getting any better at this.” 

Whew. Definitely a self-improvement day...minus the DMV. 

Along with the 90′s book, I’m also reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Last night the chapter I was on discussed how the key reason Sapiens came to dominate earth and kill off other species of humans was due to our ability to agree on concepts that didn’t exist (gods, trade, LLCs). Shared meanings, myths, stories. It’s what makes us powerful, persuasive, and innovative.

In a way, I had to imagine I’d improve before I ever did. Will these moments, these tiny accomplishments, in to existence, in to behavior, in to part of the narrative I’m creating for myself. 

I’m someone who cooks, reads, journals, writes comedy, does yoga, meditates, cleans, works on themself in therapy, gets outside and runs, has good relationships with friends and family, politically aware and open minded, loves music, dresses well, and keeps their room beautiful.

Also my hair, tits and ass are pretty fucking phenomenal. Oh, and I wear sunscreen! Fuck me that’s not nothing. 

I’ll get my license renewed sooner or later. Today I feel like pretty identifiable.

[christimesteele]

Transcript - carla joy bergman on Youth Autonomy, Adult Supremacy, Trust and Friendship

chris time steele  

Welcome to Episode 56 of the Time Talks Podcast part of the Channel Zero Network. This month I had the honor to speak to my good friend carla joy bergman. carla is a joyarchist, a weaver, a healer, listener, writer, author, and revolutionary. In this episode, we talk about her latest book Trust Kids: Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy, which is an amazing book. I also have a chapter in this book, and I'm grateful carla reached out to me about contributing. In this episode, carla discusses youth autonomy, adult supremacy, trust and friendship, the Purple Thistle, and intergenerational solidarity. Thank you to AwareNess for the music and here's a brief jingle from a fellow Channel Zero Network member.

 chris time steele  

So my first question is if you can give some moments in your early life, where you started questioning these dominant narratives, so what you usually refer to as Empire, but to break that down of capitalist imperialist white supremacist childist patriarchy.

 carla joy bergman  

You start with the hard question. Well first of all, thanks for having me here. I love coming into the Time Talks portal. Time listening it should be called. It's such a big question. I was thinking that maybe I would, because it will help me not go off on a big long tangent, maybe keep it around the topic of adult supremacy and kids, maybe a little bit if that's okay? But yeah, I think it's so good, it's such an honor to be asked these questions because you get to play with time a bit. It's always always interesting of how we affect the past with these reflections. I definitely was a kid who right away didn't like injustice, especially socially speaking. So I was, I think in my kindergarten, or probably even actually in church, like even early on, like, even before school, at my new school I was in trouble for always talking back. The talking back was usually because somebody was not being treated well, like usually another kid was being bullied by the adults. Really, it gets visceral, like I really remember always being that person who stood up for the kid being bullied by an adult and including in my home. I'm the youngest of five siblings with like a quite a large age difference with some of them. So, you know, that's where it really that kind of talk back started. Then with my parents as well, and it played out all through school, like before I dropped out. I was either like, kind of the teacher's favorite, or the one who they they sent to the office every single day, because it was based on that. That was the bar, like, are you treating the young people in the room with respect, then I'm gonna treat you with respect back, like, you got to set the tone. So if a teacher like was a bully, and was disrespectful, I was their thorn in their side, and to the point where I even had one teacher, I'd walk in, they'd be like carla out, I'm like, I didn't even do anything. But I know you're going to like in the hall, I was, you know, the quintessential kid in the hall. It was like our elementary or what's it called middle school or whatever. It was all like at this modern school that was had all glass windows. So if you're a kid in the hall you could see in and so that's why I was always kicked to the office because I just continued being a problem in the hall. So you know, I just talked back really like right away and that included like between kids too like I was that kid who got in between two kids fighting or my brothers were fighting I got in between them. So it's just like, I don't remember a starting point, and it just really comes down to and maybe it's empathy or compassion or who knows what it is but I I really couldn't stand by when an injustice was taking place. So that just continued to grow as I like aged and noticed that happening writ large and it really, publicly it started like with the kind of anti nuclear stuff with like the Sandinista stuff, like in the late 70s, early 80s. That's where I really started to get involved in going to protests and marches and being aware. I was that punk kid, like during the punk scene, and it just slowly grew. It was almost external, in a lot of ways, that kind of stuff and it really wasn't until I became a parent. I always say that Zach was born the same year the Zapatistas did their thing. So I don't know they're both are, they're both important. I think also Rwanda happened around that time, too, that genocide was also really impactful. I spent a good chunk of my academic time, majoring in genocide studies. So I don't really want to minimize that, because it's really important and they all kind of work together. So having a kid who is neuro different, and watching his, his way of being in the world be squashed from institutions and other adults, including close to us adults, it just broke me open in a new way. To the point where I even had to leave university because that doing genocide study stuff and trying to like work at that level of politics was so disconnected from my community and from like, trying to figure out how to work to undo adult supremacy how to like, put my kid but all kids maybe have more thriving in their life. I started getting involved in alternatives to education and alternatives to school and other ways of connecting that solidarity.

 chris time steele  

No, that was good. You were involved in kind of like the punk scene in the 80s in Vancouver, did that have any  influence on collectivity or organizing? Or was it just something you were drawn to, but then something you learned from and helped grow as well?

 carla joy bergman  

Yes, well, so I was in the punk scene in Victoria, which is like the island, the capital of like, the so called colonial province that I'm in British Columbia. The punk scene, there was actually pretty awesome, some great bands came out of there, like No Means No, and Dayglo Abortions, and many others, I think the thing that like got seeded there was I was about 18, or just turned 19 and the only bar that the bands could play at and, you know, we got to go for free to watch them for a really low price burnt down, and No Means No's equipment was part of the part of that fire, which was really distressing. My brother lived in a really cool big collective house that I spent a lot of time at. So I asked them, if I could start running events there for punk bands, and to that all the proceeds of the door would go to the getting gear back for No Means No and then whatever else and connecting it to other struggles in the city and stuff. So I think like that kind of organizing a social space that brought people together around shared ideas, and then branching out solidarity really did get seeded by this like disaster that happened. That's something that's carried through my life is more that and then in terms of like, mutual aid, or collectivity, or whatever, I actually, like, I grew up on a military base, the first 12 years of my life or something. That kind of like ethos of the soldier of like no one left behind or whatever played out in this, like, beautiful way in the neighborhood. Everyone took care of everyone else's kids. No one like I doubt it's like this at all anymore. But you know, I always joke that everything I learned about mutual aid solidarity and like reciprocity, and like the true ethos behind collectivity, or anarchism, I learned on the army base. So yeah, it's just something that was everyone took care of everyone, everything for everybody.

 chris time steele  

Awesome, thank you, and you write about a lot of that in your pamphlet on mutual aid and that was also in the Building Power While the Lights Are Out book edited by Jimmy Dunson.

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah and you're in that book too.

 chris time steele  

Well, my next question is about Joyful Militancy, you and Nick Montgomery interviewed many people about autonomy, autonomous communities, finding ways to thrive and playing with what joy means, which doesn't always mean happy. There are so many threads in this book with trust and youth autonomy with stories of the Purple Thistle. I was wondering if you can talk about these works, how these kind of work together and feed each other and what you further weaved into your newest book, Trust Kids.

 carla joy bergman  

Thank you, that's an awesome question. Yeah, they're so connected, it's interesting because I also made a film about the Purple Thistle and trust was like at the center of it. Nick actually was showing that film to his class the other day and he texted me, he goes, trust and friendship, trust and friendship. It was really sweet because it's like yeah, like those are, those are kind of the notions or the themes that animate the work that like my eldest Zach said that joy is something that I'm aspiring to, to embody more and to become and to have more in my life like I definitely it escapes me a lot. But he's like trust is something that you know you that animates your life, like how you work with people, how you like, show up. And I think that comes back to that kid thing. Like, I really noticed when I wasn't trusted, or, you know, to put it in maybe less abstract way, I really noticed when people don't believe me, right? Whether it's my experience or my perspective, or my ideas. So yeah, trust is like, to me the foundation of any good community or any potential for a community to thrive and do well by each other's that, you know, this kind of baseline trust for each other is like what we talked about in Joyful Militancy is really important as a common notion, something that is like an ethical emergence that has to be at play for things to go well and we put it together with the idea of responsibility because trust can't be a demand and it can't be rigid and it can't be this thing that is static, it's always emerging and fluid and then alongside that is our responsibility for each other for how we show up and breaking that word apart. Like thinking about the ability to respond so like thinking about like bringing in intersectionality around disability justice or children or folks who can't show up at that you know, we can't have a flat like a bar of how you must show up or whatever it has to be nuanced and

 chris time steele  

I like the no assholeism rule you all had at the Thistle.

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, that was a Matt Hernism. It was very good it was on the door it was the only rule and no sleeping there but that was something else.

 chris time steele  

I wanted to look more at the Roots of Trust Kids, one thing I found when researching the Purple Thistle and this was started in 2001, it was in a shared yellow building in East Vancouver is that right?

 carla joy bergman  

Chartreuse actually, Chris, okay, it was Parisian green is what I was told. (laughs)

 chris time steele  

I don't have my color wheel key out. On the Purple Thistle blog in 2014, you wrote an entry called Trust Each Other So We Can Be Fearless and I'd like to read part of this entry and have you respond and talk a little bit about it and the Thistle, and you wrote, "Giving folks and especially young folks the trust upfront is a terrific and important place to start. In fact, I think it's the most important foundation for a strong and caring community. I am not talking about the kind of trust you would build over time in your long term core relationships but something more in line with care and respect, like friendship. I think without a starting place to trust our foundations are weak, and then all kinds of problems can grow from that lack of trust in each other. In contrast, when I'm trusted, I do better, I'm going to step up and do well by that trust. So I think starting with something simple, like, I trust that the folks who I am working with will do their best is a terrific place to begin to rethink our practices and the ways we treat each other." This just seemed like such a seed of what Trust Kids bloomed out of.

 carla joy bergman  

Thanks for reading that and finding that yeah, it was actually, we had a broadsheet like one of those really old analog massive beautiful designed by Joi Arcand at the Thistle and so every once in a while I'd write a little piece for the cover. If you've read haven't read Joyful Militancy, we interviewed Kian Cham for the book and we ended up putting his entire interview in the book because he was a kid who showed up at the Thistle and was part of the project for a really long time and he really talks about trust in a really neat way and how it played out at the Thistle and so I just really recommend that because it had a lot of, I wanted to bring up that because it really influenced Trust Kids and I think the way that it flowed out because I mean you can have this kind of I don't know ethical way of being in the world but you don't always get it reflected back to you. You don't know if it's actually landing and Kian's words about like he said, like it was just wild like you just trusted me like you and the other adults like you just you just like I was there for like a week and I got keys and then like I was there for a month and then I became like the anchor of the garden project and was given this budget and told like, he has this quote where he's like, I could have ran off with all the money but like I didn't because you guys trusted me like it's like this weird dynamic, like you just did this thing. Yeah, it was this interesting thing that was in practice at the Thistle, because of the intersections of difference that folks who were involved, that came from all kinds of different backgrounds, class, race, genders, all of it just busted it all, disability, abilities. I think, like, how that connected to the book is that doing that work at the Thistle publicly and having folks in other kind of movements not really get it, like, there was this disconnect around youth oppression, they thought it was really great what we were doing at the festival, but they kind of pushed it to the side. To the point where some groups, some people, some organizers would reach out to say that they wanted to come and give a workshop to the youth on how to run a space. My brain would be like what, like, like you, I mean, you never got to experience but the Thistle was really dynamic, it had all ages, and you know, all kinds of art projects happened there. They knew how to run a space quite beautifully, actually and they made the same kind of mistakes that any age group makes, it was just this wild ageism, right, this idea that kids no matter even though they're doing it, they still need to be taught, right? Then I just wasn't, you know, I didn't notice that, it's just starting to bust open more, but it's still like often left off of the list of oppressions as a it's just a given, right? Like kids are these things over here. That's when I started using the phrase solidarity begins at home because they go together, like how kids are treated out in public is this thing that's happening. But really, it's all starting home. And what was happening as I was noticing a lot of the most radical organizers who got platformed and held up didn't think about kid oppression, and a lot of them are parents. I just was curious about like that cut off, like, how do you reckon with that? How do you reckon with your own adult supremacy?

 chris time steele  

I think you explained that really good of how like trust and how these adults who are even in "solidarity" are coming in and still reinforcing that childism.

 carla joy bergman  

Right, I guess the thing is, it's a part of the conversation of undoing all oppressions, or collective liberation, that gets sort of put to the side in a lot of ways. There's a lot of practical reasons why, because of capitalism people are struck with so many decisions to make around schooling and not schooling, and like, making sure their kids have, you know, some skills for life and all these things. So part of how that work at the Thistle influenced the book, and then my home life influenced the book and thinking about solidarity in a larger sense, was like, how can I have this conversation? How can this conversation break through some of these barriers that are from Empire that are bigger than us?  One of those ways was to really center this ocean of confronting adult supremacy. Often this conversation gets siloed in youth liberation and just like women's liberation was, it got siloed. It took some really powerful folks like bell hooks to go wait a second, this is about patriarchy, you know, we want collective liberation, actually and we need to, look at patriarchy and invite people to this conversation who are like, wielding the patriarchy and right, so it's kind of similar, what was influencing me and bell hooks really influenced me because she actually centered children as a site of oppression that prevented collective liberation. So yeah, all of that is to say that trust is where it all begins but solidarity is a big part of that and how can we grapple with our own, including my own, like, I'm still grappling with my own adult supremacy and how I deal with it.

 chris time steele  

Thank you so much, I think one other way that this ties in with Trust Kids and the Purple Thistle is your theme through your work is about questioning institutions and also deprofessionalism. One thing that was really cool is on some of the blog entries when that this whole was closing, it was written in there that the Thistle was never meant to be an institution. You all had written, "this had shown us that perhaps we're no longer needed in the way we were in the past and have pretty much done our time," and you all write, "everything does end and to be honest, we wish more places would end when it's time but unfortunately we live in a system that values longevity over thriving, and that ain't us", and I thought that was really powerful. That capitalism thing of having to grind and then this other side that you are brought in of like we're not going to be an institution, we're going to trust and listen and do what we need to do to move on from there. I was wondering if you could speak on that experience?

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, thank I mean, yeah, closing the Thistle was probably in terms of community work and organizing and accountability to others was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do it. It took a very, it was not done in silo, it took a lot of conversations. I met with every single collective member, one on one first, every person who was ever involved in the Thistle had like, including Matt, who had been gone for a couple of years. I met with him, he was one of the first people I told, and yeah, it was just really important to me to change, change the discourse a bit about closing and ending because, you know, yeah, another level of gentrification, it was happening in Vancouver and continues to happen. The closing of spaces was connected to that, the cutting off funding to spaces was definitely a big part of that. That was a part of the story at the Thistle too, but there was also these other stories. I think we can we can, as activists and organizers, and people who are really pissed off at the world can just keep in the one narrative. I think that it didn't do it justice, it was like it was going to leave behind the beauty that was happening at the Thistle, which was always a response to the kids in the neighborhood at the time and what they needed, it always was based on that. Like, it was always like, that was the story. So yeah, like, what else is going on? Let's step back and look at all the the other parts. One of the biggest things that was going on was a lot of former people involved at the Thistle were opening their own spaces, which is like amazing, right like that were based on their predilections and their communities needs and the little bit of funding that was left at that time in the spaces was going to the Thistle because we had the we had the reputation, and we had the support. So it was like, yeah, I think we talked about calling it the Quakers ethos of like, sometimes you just gotta lay it down, like get out of the way and that was also at the like, core of the Thistle and the core of how I parent, and the core of how I work with people is sometimes it's actually about getting out of the way. Like, you know, yes, guidance is important. Yes, mentorship is important. But sometimes you just gotta like, go away. Just let people experiment and do their thing. So yeah, it's, and it was, it was really, I think, an important way to end it did change discourses, I had people from socials, we had run social spaces summits, through what we call the Thistle Institute, then people came from all over who ran social spaces. So we had this network, and a lot of those spaces reached out and we're really grateful for that new framing. Because, yeah, I think we can just replicate the systems that we're trying to fight against, when we just keep it really linear. One story just about anger, just about victim, like there's always so much more going on.

 chris time steele  

Yeah, thank you, and solidarity begins at home, one of your chapters that you wrote in Trust Kids, you really talk about how there's a lot of these normalized social fractures in our community, and that they chip away at our relationships, and cause rifts in social bonds and that was just really powerful. One of the things you wrote was "the roots are often still there deep in the ground but there's a disconnect or more precisely, there are institutions built on top of the buried social ways of being in relationship that cut us off from our more autonomous and communal ways of being together and children spend a great deal of their lives locked away in one of these institutions." I thought that was really powerful and you kind of explain that, like, those roots are already there, they're just disconnected. Yeah, I just wondering if you had anything to add to that?

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, thanks, I think that's like why I think how I could connect it maybe to the work or the book is like why I focus on autonomy over youth liberation, or is like that autonomy away from institutions. And because so much of like, how empire and whether it's the state or capitalism, colonialism, or white supremacy, all of it continues to subjugate us all in different uneven ways. But still, it's still going on is that we're so reliant on institutions, everything, you know, how we raise our kids, how they get educated, how we grow our food, what we eat, how like everything is, has been sort of taken away from us and these forms of life are removed, and there's many, many stories of the reclaiming of that there. There's a beautiful upgrowth of autonomy and flowering and blooming and they don't always last though, and I have, there's a lots of reasons why they don't last because you know, because the state comes crashing down, and capitalism doesn't like it. But also I think it's because a lot of them still send their kids to school, or like, have a, I think that's one of the like, strongest colonial holds still is that kids still need to be educated away from community. Toby goes into this really well in the book Toby Rollo about how like, if children, if we don't actually deal with children, childism, and the oppression of children, everything we do gets cut off in one generation, because it gets everything gets replicated again, through these systems of control through the various institutions. And I also want to say all this, that I tend to stay out of the school, not school conversation a lot, and I decentered it in this in this book on purpose, because I think it's one of the ways that this conversation gets marginalized around children immediately, because it gets people in their camps instantly, like, oh, it's so privileged to unschool your kids, it's so privileged to remove your kids out of school. And it gets away from actually the heart of the conversation, which is how can we like undo adult supremacy and create a life of collective liberation and more justice for everybody? Right? I'm more interested in talking about school solidarity, like how can we work to be in more solidarity across all these intersection issues, if the goal is to undo empire's hold on us to truly like have collective liberation, then we have to think about autonomy and autonomy, the way that I think of autonomy, I know that autonomy is one of these words that can get really liberalized fast. But the way I think about it is like autonomy from the state, right? Autonomy from the institution's, autonomy from capitalism, autonomy from and then autonomy for our community, for each other.

 chris time steele  

Thanks for getting into the difference between youth autonomy and youth liberation in your view too, one of my next questions is if you could talk about some of the ways that trusting kids is a way of solidarity, in not just providing a co-mentorship and stuff and kind of that difference, because I feel like that can get marginalized, that can get kind of put into a binary too like, well, I'm going to trust a kid by being a mentor, kind of like what you're saying about the Thistle on how people, some people are trying to come in and do workshops, and maybe some examples of how you see that not working and ways it can work.

 carla joy bergman  

Are you maybe getting into like power, the responsibility of power?

 chris time steele  

Yeah let me give one more example that I left out, you are a part of the podcast Grounded Futures with your kid, Liam and Liam always talks about how it's okay to have guidance as well. It's not just like a kid on their own and adults are just watching them be free and trusted. So I guess kind of that nuance of like, what true solidarity looks like, and how that can kind of be confused with being a mentor as well, but also there is the need for guidance for kids.

 carla joy bergman  

Oh, yeah. that's wonderful. Yeah, and it gets into this idea of neglect and Liam is, so he's been my kid who's just really always brought it right down to like, the, the core point, I'm just like, appreciate him so much. Oh, my God. Because like I would, you know, occasionally I'd be like, oh, through being in solidarity and listening to my kids like, is there a fine line to neglecting them? Like from becoming their best selves or something and Liam is like no, like, the parent who forces their kid to all the things is literally neglecting them, like literally neglecting their souls, like not listening at all, because they've heard that kids need to be in six different things to become the adult they're meant to be or whatever, and I was always so grateful for him. Yeah, and it's why I am not big on and I I very rarely, if ever, in support of parenting books and parenting advice and Trust Kids is definitely none of those. Because, as Liam always points out, it's not going to work because it's the opposite of listening to, and being emergent with your child and being in solidarity with them at the moment they're in. And sometimes that means, truly, like this is just an anarchist ethos of meeting somebody where they find themselves or where they're at, right. And so sometimes that means doing a whole lot for that kid. Like, it can look like beyond mentorship, like you're actually doing tons for them. And from the outside, they can look like you're this controlling A type parent, but really, you're listening to a kid that maybe has anxiety disorder or is autistic or whatever, right. Like one of the things that emerges a lot in youth liberation circles or alternative schooling circles is an entrenchment of individualism. And this is another reason why I like to move to autonomy and solidarity as the ethos around this work instead of liberation, but I think just moving away from that, is because, you know, it's like, I heard this really good bell hook's quote the other day about the difference between equality and reciprocity and so like I'm really interested in like, it's not about trying to get equality, it's about reciprocity and about justice. So that means listening, that means showing up and being in solidarity across difference. And mentorship flows in all different directions. But more than all, and then all of this aside, is that, you know, I've been around, you know, as an as somebody who's older than my kids, quite a bit older, I have some experience, I have some things to share. And there's a time and place for me to show up in that way in a really solid way. The solid part of solidarity is just be solid. I don't know if I answered it. It's always changing for me. It's relational, Joyful Militancy really is that this is in that book, right? It's relational. It's, it's back to that word responsibility, like, how do I respond? That's based on trust is that I'm, yeah, it's just always responsive. Being responsive versus having a guidebook or a handbook or a parenting how to in front of me and checking off things. Instead, I'm like, looking and listening and hearing, and then responding.

 chris time steele  

Awesome. Yeah, the the reciprocity that you're talking about through that is so key. Thank you. That was a really good answer. My next question is, there's a lot of talk of throwing around the term, abolishing the family and I wanted to ask you about, I don't know, just kind of a discussion of, of trusting kids, like you say, solidarity begins at home and this nuance between abolishing the family or denuclearizing the family?

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I really don't like abolish family. I'm not on social media anymore. So I don't pipe in like I did. But anytime I would see the list of all the different abolishing, and it would have family I would always pipe in and say I think you mean denuclearize the family? I think you really, could you please just step back and really think about that for a second. Like, are you kidding? We need more kinship, we need more, we need to actually expand it, what we mean by family and reclaim it. I also think that there's a lot of whiteness, and a lot of colonialism in that statement of abolishing family. Most of my friends who are Indigenous, People of Color, particularly with Latino roots, like the familia is everything, like everything, you know, and it's expansive. It's not the nuclear family, and it stretches beyond bloodlines even. And I know that a lot of it comes from, it's like queering the family, queering kinship, which is really important. I'm really grateful to decades and decades of the LGBTQ+ queer communities who have expanded what it means to build kin like I'm so deeply grateful, because I think that there's an intervention into whiteness that happens at that one that's really important to highlight and the oppression of children still happens in those homes. Because that's not brought into the fore as an intersection. And so I think that's why there's like, anti authoritarian or an anarchist view of like abolishing families, because it's, there's a belief that it's just inherently patriarchal, inherently hierarchical, but it's not like if we stretch back, please read Toby Rollo's essay in Trust Kids, if you stretch back to like that families weren't not hierarchical. Or even, you know, like Silvia Federici touches on this really beautifully in her in her weavings of the past that the subjugation of women through the patriarchal family and then the subjugation of children is all part of capitalism. It's all part of the plan, but sorry, Marxists it actually predates capitalism. It's actually a colonial idea. And it's very actually ahistorical to just root it into capitalism. So it's very much this idea of like a family being inherently patriarchal, heteropatriarchal and hierarchical is flawed. Is it happening? Yes. And it's located in what's called the nuclear family. And that part is really important. And it keeps whiteness really strong. It keeps colonialism really strong and it's about capitalism as well. So yeah, I'm somebody who promotes and talks more about denuclearizing the family and creating larger webs of what it means to be in family and in kinship and, you know, I'm with Donna Haraway, like making kin is the most important thing that we have to do right now and that includes across all species and includes like fungi and more than humans and trees and, and speaking about mentorship, I mean, most of the guidance and mentorship I receive is from, you know, the fungi and the mycelium and the trees about cooperation and mutuality. Right? So I you know, I want to make kin with even more kin, more family across bloodlines.

 chris time steele  

Yeah, that reminds me of what you kid Zach always says when he sees fungi, he says what's up ancestors? Yeah, definitely expanding what family and kin is to the non human more than human. It's cool you said that because this leads to my next question is a chapter you cowrote with Zach called Magneto's Dreams. I love this chapter and I love the art in there too, by Gadzooks Bazooka, and you have this nuance of Professor X and Magneto and what I really liked about this essay is it's not mean to Professor X either. You all talk about how he provides shelter. He saves lives, he provides trust. But you know, this goal of his is assimilation, and is to work for the state and to kind of bring back the status quo.One quote I really liked on what you all said about Magneto is you say "Magneto supports dissidents and gives them space to exist freely outside the stratification of the state, prefiguring a liberated now." So I was just wondering if you could talk more about that quote, and kind of this chapter. I think it's a really just creative and genius chapter and take on, on the whole book, too and I love that it's at the end of the book.

 carla joy bergman  

Thank you so much. I just want to go on record to say, if you read Trust Kids you'll read it in my acknowledgments but Chris was really, really important for this book coming together, because you showed up at a really important time. And with a lot of joy and excitement, enthusiasm and knowledge, and an understanding of what I was trying to say and but you really helped. And I really want to thank you, and your essay is so so good. Thank you so much. I'm worried we're gonna get this call. And I didn't get to say that. And including, nothing's done in silo, like nothing. And I've been this person in smaller ways than Chris was for me. But like when you put a book together like this, especially something that involves a lot of people's voices and a lot of vulnerability on the line. And then like all the people who aren't in the book, all the conversations, all the music, all the songs, all the movies and TV shows and like all the books and people's work that influence the smallest conversations that watered seeds that made this book grow. And you're like sitting alone with it. And it's this bizarre thing. And so it's really important to have friends, like Chris was to me that he was somebody I could text and say, I really want to put it in this order what do you think and just having that I don't, I think it doesn't get talked about enough. And I know that most people who write have Chris's in their life or like, and I've been that person for other people. So I just really wanted to thank you publicly for everything you did for this book. And I you know, sometimes I think your name should be on it. You help so much. So thank you.

 chris time steele  

Thank you and it was an honor to be a part of the book and help out and I had a lot of fun and learned so much. So yeah, thank you very much for that.

 carla joy bergman  

So connected to that, X-Men and I, you know, Liam, who his full name is Uilliam has an essay in the book, he did a solo essay. And then my partner, Chris [Bergman] did some art in it. And so I was trying to figure out how, you know, the reason why, like I said, like, having Zach was what got me on this path and opened up my world in such massive ways. I can't even begin to talk about it, you know, in a way that captures what he's done for me and continues. So I was really, I was coming up to the end of the book of finishing it and sending it in. And I asked him, if he would cowrite a piece about Magneto. He isn't actually an X-Men fan. He read the comics a bit as a kid. And because I had Lupus, when he was young, I used to always call myself an X-Men that I was, I was mutated, I had mutated. I have like that. I'm actually a powerful person with my Lupus. And we had a fun little joke going about that I was at, and we just nerd out about that stuff. And we're both really into Nietzsche and other philosophies that kind of intersect with these ideas. And so he's like, sure, okay, let's do it. So I just wanted to say that and that's why it was done around that. But also, I went off on a whole tangent about you helping with the book, but I forgot your question about like the quote that you wanted me to respond to.

 chris time steele  

Oh, yeah, it's talking about this kind of this nuance between Professor X, like providing trust but his goal is assimilation. Then you all had said that Magneto supports dissidents and gives them space to exist freely outside the stratification of the state prefiguring a liberated now and in the your time at the Thistle too and the metaphor of the helmet and how Magneto had the helmet to protect himself, but you can use that to protect others and just so many good metaphors in this.

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, thank you and I apologize to true X-Men fans and Magneto fans, we went way off. But I know it's pretty common for anarchists, particularly to have an affinity with Magneto in the shows and in the books, so I think it wasn't too big of a stretch. But yeah, I personally, like there was a time when I was working with the youth and they would call me Professor X and I really liked that. It wasn't until when one of the newer movies came out where the writers went back to kind of the origins of Magneto and his army of misfits and how he was really upset with the assimilation stuff that Liam again, said, "no way you're a Magneto, you're all Magneto" and so I got deeper into like the the nerd verse of who Magneto really, maybe was meant to be in the potential that was cut off. And even Stan Lee himself knew that he wasn't a bad guy. Like he didn't mean for that to happen. And that was, you know, whatever Marvel movies did that, and other writers but I just really liked the idea of, I think it's like a, it's a timing thing. Like we've seen this big opening around neuro difference around people, about the celebration of us that like we don't all have to be medicated and assimilated into being this ideal person this ideal youth, this ideal, whatever professional, that we can like step back and kind of deprofessionalize how we view how we show up together and community and Magneto as a symbol for that shows that, like, yeah, it's not easy having this difference, but we can work with it together. And you can be you can be your full, beautiful, different self. In community, you have a role you have something to offer. And one of the things we nuance in the book is that like, yeah, Professor X, that they trust, and they finally or that they finally find an adult saying you're not broken, how important that is for someone who maybe has come from huge trauma, but also, like, let's use Rogue, for example, when I touch somebody they die, like I actually am broken, like in my soul, like I need some help. I need to not just be put into an a uniform and become an elite member to go fight for the state. Like I actually need some care and love and support. So like there's nuance there. I don't mean to just leave people alone in there. But also like, you know, and I think it's just really connected to adult supremacy and how adults can show up and yeah, and the helmet was the goal of the book is, or that essay is that we can we deal with it, adult supremacy to the point where all adults can take their helmet off, who are doing the work because like, I know, I have to wear my helmet because people are constantly trying to tell me that I'm messing my kids up by raising them the way I do.

 chris time steele  

Thank you for that, that was awesome. Thanks for breaking it open. My next question is kind of on intergenerational solidarity and also ties into EMMA Talks, the program that you had put together with some others. You talk about this patriarchal carelessness, and how many events and talks to a horrible job and that's why many women don't agree to do certain talks and how you had some success with EMMA Talks. You also had Helen Hughes in Radiant Voices and it was in Trust Kids, this interview with Helen, and she was part of the Listening House since she talked about listening and voice. Kind of just wanted, that really showed a lot of intergenerational solidarity that talk is really comforting to read. Then also just how that curtails into patriarchy, too, EMMA Talks if you could just talk about those, those two kind of how they dovetail together.

 carla joy bergman  

Oh wow thank you. Yeah, I think there's a few things there. When I started community organizing around creating multimedia works, I right away was like, how do I really bring in youth and children and you know "emerging." Or I think we're always, always always emerging, everybody. You know new writers with what you know, longer term, well seasoned, well known writers in a way that's not tokenistic. And how do I do this in a way that feels generative and pushes against the patriarchal and other gatekeepers around how we share media and talks and our ideas? So I started with a magazine project and one of the ways is, it's the way it's done. So I had youth do the magazine with me. So right away, that's going to disrupt a level of tokenism. And there's older people on part of the collective as well. I think from the first issue I had Matt's kid Daisy, who was 10, at the time, write a piece called Daisy's Rant next to a piece from Noam Chomsky. So like, even like layout is really important, and that was really important. And that Daisy had a voice that was just as important, if maybe not even more important in lots of ways to Noam Chomsky. So yeah, and then whatever. And then so years go on. And then a lot of the times I create things because I face barriers. Personally, I have speech apraxia I have a learning disability. Writing is really hard for me, speaking publicly was like, I couldn't even talk in front of a room of six people. So being in collectives is really hard for me always, because I didn't like the tyranny of the round. I would just die. I'm somebody who would never have given a TED talk, I was asked to do one of those smaller TED talks I was like no way. And so I was like, what? So I'm always interested in the conditions and we talked about this as anarchists a lot, right? If the conditions are such things will flow, right. And so EMMA talks was like, what would work for me to do a talk? And I still didn't do one then. And I wasn't even the emcee. I never ever stood on that stage at EMMA talks, talked into the mic, because I wasn't there yet. But, and so one of the things was, yeah, like, EMMA stands for Engaging Monologues Mutual Aid. So monologues, the person on the stage has the first word and, and the last word, there is no Q&A there is they get to just tell their story. And we created beautiful videos that go with it that are accessible, that close captioning and everything. And so if you're in the room, you got to experience the beauty of the evening. But then part of this was I did with Corin Browne, and she was the director of that part. And she trained young women and gender nonconforming folks on camera, there was four cameras going and really highly produced videos. So it was also like part of the mutual aid was to give the speakers something that they could have to share with the world. We also did the people who came the night of they donated to whoever the speaker wanted to donate to whatever cause or organization. Yeah, and so because we have all been to the talks, where we know who lines up first, at the mic primarily it's cis white men or men, often not with thoughtful questions often just to show that they know, they want to say what they are thinking about the topic or adding to the topic. And what it did, the feedback I got was it gave a lot of the speakers the space to go a different route with their work, because they knew they weren't going to get interrupted, they knew they were going like, like, could be vulnerable. I don't really want to name names, but like one of them said, like, they usually wouldn't do that talk that they did, because they are always so emotional after it's about their child and they cry, and they have to go to the green room after and just be alone or be with their people. But if they had to do a Q&A after forget about it, so they wouldn't ever do that talk. So that's an example of how it broke that open. I feel like you had it at an add on.

 chris time steele  

Just the other part was Helen Hughes and intergenerational solidarity.

 carla joy bergman  

So it's like, giving a platform or a space for women, for folks who maybe don't always get the space to talk. So that's like one side of it. But the the other part was listening, like creating space for listening in this really cool, different way. And I learned a lot about how to truly listen to young people from Helen. She was one of my main mentors. She was the founder of Windsor House, a publicly funded democratic free school that ran for 48 years or something in Vancouver, really important for because it disrupted capitalist models because it was free. It's part of the system. And she just really listens in a way that's profound. And I think, like one of the, it was, it was interesting, like, the feedback from men, cis men who came to EMMA talks was like, wow, you created a space where like, I had to really get uncomfortable with the fact that I wasn't going to be talking like I had to like, listen, I know. But I liked it. I like the feedback. I guess. I guess the thing with Radiant Voices and why that book happened as an outgrowth of EMMA Talks is the publisher actually asked me if she could do a book based on the EMMA Talks, and I thought that was really kind but like, I really care about who has access, who gets to tell stories. So I wanted to invite other folks in who would never stand up on the stage. Right. So we did weave in eight of the EMMA talks into that book, but then I asked, I asked 12 new folks to participate in the book, and one of them was Helen.

 chris time steele  

I really love one of her quotes in the interview you did with Helen where she says, "Move toward the trouble it rarely goes away on its own".

 carla joy bergman  

That's beautiful. Matt had that was also a thing at the Thistle, like, go towards the trouble, or Klee Benally has a term he calls the anti retreat. He first spoke about it at a social spaces summit that he came to, from his space that he ran, runs and ran, had a lot to do with youth, Indigenous youth and media production. And yeah, if something came up, if conflict came up on the collective or, like, instead of retreating from each other, they called it the anti retreat like you actually go towards the trouble. You don't, you don't retreat from it. So I really love that.

 chris time steele  

That's great. The documentary Common Notions is so powerful. I was wondering if you could talk about, you already kind of talked about this documentary a little bit, but maybe the documentary and the trip that you all took to Mexico, and the interviews that you all had with Gustavo Esteva, who I want to say rest in peace to. You actually dedicate Trust Kids to Gustavo. His interviews were so deep. It seemed a spirit of collectivity and real community were huge themes there. I just wanted to give a little space for you to talk about that trip, talk about Gustavo and really just how he really highlights friendship throughout those interviews.

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, thank you. I'm so sad that he passed this year. That was the first time I met him when we went there in 2012. I made that film with Corin Browne, who I did EMMA Talks with, and a bunch of the youth from the collective came from the Thistle. We got to spend time in his home and he shared all his thinking and ideas with us, a lot of them are rooted in Ivan Illich's ideas, he challenges me, he continues to challenge me. He, you know, I would, he could always notice the one word that would undermine my whole statement. So I often sent him work I really, really miss him. You know, like, if I said, I think in like Making Kin, the pamphlet I did I think in the beginning I say, systems of care or something and he messaged me and said, I think you mean webs of care. Why would you want a system? You know, like, I just I don't know, I mean, maybe you come a bit close to that, Chris, but like, I don't have anyone else in my life. I mean, I mean, Nick a little bit too, but like nothing like Gustavo and he did it with such delight and conviviality and friendship at the heart of it like it never felt harsh. It always felt deeply, deeply care centered, and friendship centered, the embodiment of like, carla, like, I know, you mean something else? And I'm gonna help you in this moment. So really, one of the last things we did together was, he cowrote an essay in Trust Kids with his two friends, Madhu and Dana, it's so good. They wrote one of my favorite papers of all time about liberating from pedagogy, and a very anti pedagogy piece, which I'm in line with them and deprofessionalism and all that stuff. But I asked them for their bios, and Madhu sent this really flowery, fun, playful bio, she's a philosopher of education at Penn State University and has cowritten a few books. And she just sent a really playful, joyful bio and Gustavo got back and said, oh, my God, Carla, you need to change my bio, it needs to be more playful. And I was like, okay, well, here's mine. And we all did really playful bios together and Dana got in there and the four of us had this really uplifting, joyful, playful encounter for Trust Kids, and it was like the last emails I had with him. So I mean, I'm so grateful and just heartbroken. But I feel like I didn't answer any questions. I really, really grateful for the space to talk about him. A really big memory, of course, is that you and I got to have a Zoom session with him about some work we're doing together that hopefully we'll put out and because he just dropped so many incredible ideas and information for us both to to live with and be with. So I'm grateful for that. I miss him. He would have really understood what the book is doing and what it was about. Yeah, I don't I don't know that the movie would have been nothing without him like to come back to Common Notion like literally that that film he was so integral and the reason why we went there I need to say is that both Matt Hern and Richard Day who we interviewed for the movie earlier on both said in our interviews, you need to go to Mexico and talk to Gustavo. So it was like within the making of the movie that that trip happened.

 chris time steele  

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing those stories and thanks for letting me be part of talking to Gustavo too. That was an honor. Kind of what you were saying about how he gives you those suggestions reminds me of that radical honesty that bell hooks always talked about too, or critique as a way of love, or just different ways of just interacting in a kind of way.

 carla joy bergman  

Yeah, I feel like bell would would have been that friend too. That would have sent like, you don't mean to use that word.

 chris time steele  

This is my last question and basically this question is about sci fi and you, your influences. I see Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler is present, they're present in all your work you do, and also was wondering about your future explorations in writing fiction and sci fi. You have a new essay coming out or a story coming out on Baba Yaga. That's already out in a zine by Dani. So I was just wondering if you could kind of talk about on some of these ruminations of sci fi and you and your exploring writing fiction and sci fi.

 carla joy bergman  

Thanks so much, I don't get asked this very often. That's really nice. Every time I visit Ursula Le Guin, whether it's rereading The Dispossessed or I just finished Always Coming Home. I'm just blown away with how many, I'm gonna use your phrase watered, the seeds she watered by reading her work. Like, I just just, it's all there. It's just like, wow, that had more of an impact than probably any nonfiction book I ever read. I also think she wasn't she was so experimental and not afraid to bring in different worlds and make worlds that like I guess like at the term I think I was like, she's such an incredible time binder. Like she was so good at thinking through time. She must have been a time traveler. I don't know. At least this this just plugged in or something. So yeah, she's really really important. And then Octavia Butler in a different way, influences influences the way I am or think about the world or want to write but and many other writers too, but like definitely Le Guin like, yeah, I don't even know. I know it was her birthday yesterday. It's like, oh my gosh, like Orwell too, I want to give a shout out to Orwell because I think like, I think because Orwell started writing in nonfiction and writing about the world, and then moved to fiction, like I actually feel an akin to him like not that I'm like him, or do what he does, did, but that I understand this desire to be like, ah, I got to just move to fiction because and maybe Ursula and Octavia were just smarter and knew, like, this is the way you can impact people in a deeper way longer than writing your rant in a in a journal or something. But the freedom that comes with writing fiction is just there's just nothing like it. And I know you've dabbled in fiction and you do I think you I would say your songwriting does it too maybe you can speak to this better than I can, because I'm just starting. But there was a freedom in my voice of like, like the true me of what I want to say when I write fiction that is maybe connected more to the ether of ideas of the times. So that's what I think I mean, by time traveler, like the connecting to all the ideas that are floating around, and I'm really excited about, yeah, I'm working on a couple stories. And they're not one genre, like I, that's the other thing, too, is like I needed people who could bust through the gatekeepers a bit. And we're seeing more and more of that, but I'm really interested in like, creative nonfiction, but also like mixing that with fantasy and some magical realism and sort of blending them or busting them up, doing both at once. So I'm trying to do that. And it's hard because you, you know, gatekeepers are pretty there. That's a real thing. Yeah, I have been working on one and like that, I did talk to one of my publisher friends, and they're like, I just don't even know. I don't know how to pitch this, because I don't know what genre it is. Like, oh, no. I'll just have to publish it myself. Yeah, I don't know if that answered your question. But I'd like to hear from you. Because you seem to you have I think more experience than me why you might go into that world in fantasy and

 chris time steele  

Yeah, I guess there's like a freedom in, in fictionalizing things but there's also it breaks a binary, that nonfiction gets stuck in like there's an institutional kind of thing in your back. And when you write nonfiction like, oh, this Western thought of, got to have citations, it needs to be rooted in truth, needs to be verifiable. And those are lies in nonfiction, but they can get stuck inside of you. And when you write fiction, your nonfiction is still there. Like, your stories there. Your friendships, your it's still, it's still autobiographical. So I think fiction breaks down some of these dimensions, but it lets the truth creep in too. So it's kind of it's a magic, you find that in your writing, which I like.

 carla joy bergman  

That's really well said. Thank you.

 chris time steele  

Thanks. I never thought about it thanks for asking.

 carla joy bergman  

But it's true. Like I was trying to think of like, when I write nonfiction, I have all the critics in my head. And it's that it's the institutionalization, it's the like, the lie of Western thought, being there and the linear linear time and that they're, what's the word? teleological that? You know, that things run in linear in a linear way? Whereas when you get into fiction, you get to really disrupt all those ways? Yeah,

 chris time steele  

yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what I find in songwriting. I can, I can describe a vibe or a feeling it's not. It's make many different people or many different situations.

 carla joy bergman  

yeah, you do that. Well. That's amazing.

 chris time steele  

Thank you. Well, thank you for doing this wonderful interview.

 carla joy bergman  

That was fun. Thank you.

 chris time steele  

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the time talks podcast. I want to thank my friend Carla for taking some time to speak with me. Please pick up Carlos newest book, trust kids. It's amazing. Thanks to everyone who shares the show around thanks to awareness for the music. And as Lonnie poplin always said, keep the peace

[depressedacadamia]

Blood will have blood

Summary:  Being a healer during a war was a job that only few could handle- seeing soldiers who risk their lives was not for the weak. But Will questions everything as a powerful but very young demigod is about to die before his very eyes.

A/N: Day two of Will solace's bday week!!! I know I could have written another 3 Days in the infirmary fic but I thought I'd give some angst because I haven't done it in a while and I listened to somone talk about Patroclus' death; it was in the Podcast Let's talk about myths, baby! It's suuppperrr good but that episode had me close to tears. Thnks to @solangeloweek AND THIS IS REVENGE FOR THAT REALLY GOOD BUT SAD FIC BY MY FRIEND; THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Anyways, love from me <3 !!

Read on A03      Masterlist

“Move!” Will yelled as he hastily brought medical supplies to the healer who was working on fixing someone’s foot which had been sliced off.

“Fucking Gods, sending their kids to fight their battles, They don't know when to stop, do they?” Will gritted out aggressively as he crouched down by his patient- a powerful but young demigod who had been severely injured in a vicious fight.

Will washed the bloody cloth in the water and produced a clean one, at which he gently cleaned the wounds. He could feel their life force thinning, their heart beating softer and softer. He had given the demigod all he could- ambrosia, nectar and as much treatment as he could offer; but they were in a war- he couldn't dwell too much on the patients who he couldn’t save.

“If you don't require urgent treatment, you need to leave,” Will announced. “ Starting now, we are under triage. Red patients will immediately be accepted, yellow will have to wait- the walking wounded will have to consult their nearest field medic. I repeat, As of now, we are in triage!”

“Will, a new wave of patients are going to come soon- apparently the enemies have launched a fresh attack and our side wasn't prepared,” Kayla mumbled, handing out supplies to the healers. Will groaned but his frustration was quickly overcome with worry: how would his friends on the frontline fare with this fresh assault?

He worried for some of his siblings who had chosen to be soldiers over healers, he worried for people like Annabeth Chase and Piper Mclean- He even worried over Percy Jackson.

But most of all he worried over Nico Di Angelo. He was not concerned over Nico dying; he knew his boyfriend very well and the chance that he’d let someone else kill him was practically impossible. But he did fear Nico overworking himself, it was almost unavoidable.

Alas, he couldn’t worry about his boyfriend, he was in a war after all and he had to focus on his job- to heal the others.

“Will-” An urgent voice tugged him from his thoughts. “ Isn’t there anything else you can do for them?” The soldier pointed at his wounded younger sibling. His bruised, bloody face was contorted into a grim expression as his hand gripped the hand of the dying soldier.

“We can’t do anymore,” Kayla informed sadly. But as Will watched the young patient slowly being dragged to Thanatos, he couldn't help but feel that it wasn't this child's time yet- that's what they were, a child.

They were fighting a war, children were fighting a war while the almighty sat in their thrones above and watched it as if it were simply a film. Innocent children like the one beside Will were dying and.. And - and the gods just expected them to continue.

“There is something I can try,” Will started quietly. “But I can’t guarantee that it will work.”

“Will, you can’t-” Kayla quickly cut in. “You know how draining it is on your body and you've never tried it on somebody with such grave injuries before.”

“But I can still try,” Will told Kayla. His mind was made up- if his friends were out there risking their lives on the battlefield, this was the least he could do; risk his life to save this innocent, and powerful demigod. If this went right, their quick recovery would be essential to winning.

Kayla knew that nothing could stop Will as he peeled off his gloves and placed his hands onto the cold skin of the soldier. Will’s hands danced slowly around the bloodstained chest and abdomen of the soldier and every once in a while, his fingertips would accidentally brush against the wounds dipping the tips of his nails in a crimson substance that was still warm.

He glowed, as he healed- he always did. But his hands felt warmer than usual and when he felt it was time, he pressed his hands into the bloody wound that no longer poured blood- for there was no blood to pour. Wil drained himself, trying to heal what he could but it was to no avail- this child had died. There was nothing Will could give.

But he refused to let this be it- It couldn't be! The Gods couldn't let this child die, they were not a soldier- they were a child for god's sake!

So after he had given everything- all the healing power that he had been blessed with by his father, he found himself with his hands pressed into the lifeless body of the child. And slowly, as he weeped over their corpse, with every drip of his tears, he felt a little more of life ease into the child again. And so he bellowed.

He cried and let the tears pour into the wounds, healing, no- bringing the child back to life. They steamed down his face as he mourned as grievers do. He clutched at the child’s chest that no longer beat and he felt the life before his grow stronger. He heard a little ‘ba-dum’.

Then, the soldier opened their eyes and took a deep inhale.

There was clapping and laughter and crying as people across the infirmary watched the miracle being performed by the Head Healer.

Will felt a smile across his face. While he felt weak, so very weak, he felt pride as he looked at the child, who bleated as they choked air into their lungs like a new born baby goat, their cheeks rosy again.

And then he felt pain. Excruciating pain. It twisted and burned. He heard screaming, the scream of a mother who has lost their child before realising that it was his own voice- his hands, once covered in the blood of the child shot to clutch at his chest only to feel a warm thick liquid coat his hands like water running out of a tap.

He gasped for air. Urgent hands were on him, lifting him onto a stretcher as people immediately fell silent. The room, celebrating moments ago, fell into a trance watching. The healers worked desperately, tearing open Will’s clothes, working as fast as they could.

Will coughed and coughed and as the blood stained his lips he let out a small smile. His small smile turned into a laugh covered with his coughing which only forced up more of the substance as it trickled slowly down his chin.

“Will? Will?” Kayla asked desperately, watching him choke. His lips turned crooked as his face paled, displaying his freckles dusted across his nose and cheeks.

“Please frame these last words: Fuck the Gods,” He whispered, content with his last moments before he suddenly shot open his eyes as he recalled that he had forgotten something. “ Oh- and tell Nico that I love him and that jazz.”

His voice was weak and the blood began to dry on his hands.

“Tell me what?” A confused, alarmed and horrified voice echoed from the other side of infirmary belonging to a warrior holding their helmet under their arm and stygian iron sword in their hand.

[sagamemes]

the sheridan tapes  📼  part one.   here and under the cut, you can find a little under 120 lines of dialogue from the horror podcast the sheridan tapes, specifically from episodes one to three, edited for roleplay purposes.  tw: police, murder, supernatural elements, mentions of apocalyptic scenarios, near death experiences, injuries, vehicular crash, recreational drug and alcohol use.

❝  jesus, [name]. you’re not making this easy, are you?  ❞

❝  makes you wonder... do these things follow me because i chase them, or were they always following me?  ❞

❝  darkness and complete disorientation does a number on the human brain.  ❞

❝  i don't think he was a werewolf.  ❞

❝  i’d call it the customer service smile. you know, the one that says  ‘ thank you for shopping with us, please die now ’.  ❞

❝  i’ve found the more showy the text, the less impressive the actual phenomena.  ❞

❝  my job here is kind of… shaky at the moment.  ❞

❝  [name] was also engaged in the study of the impossible in his free time.  ❞

❝  so it’s just me who drives you up the wall then?  ❞

❝  well, you’ll be happy to hear i haven’t been having any fun. no weed, no ghosts.  ❞

❝  there hasn’t been a new lead on her case in more than half a year.  ❞

❝  so here i am, wrapped up in a blanket, staring at my little fireplace, so bored i actually decided to call my sister for once.  ❞

❝  it’s a little town near bandon. very little. nice little mini-market, and that’s about it.  ❞

❝  i doubt i’ll sleep much tonight. that’s okay. i just feel like looking at the stars for a while.  ❞

❝  it's probably for the best. i am simultaneously exhausted from the drive and absolutely wired from the coffee.  ❞

❝  i wonder if there will still be ghosts out there when that happens?  when the earth is gone?  ❞

❝  glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself, then.  ❞

❝  knowing doesn’t make things any easier, but it does make them a little less frightening.  ❞

❝  that’s all just a lazy way of saying that the real explanation is too difficult—or too horrible—for them to accept.  ❞

❝  it almost killed me, but in the end it settled for putting me in pt for a year while i figured out how to use my hands again.  ❞

❝  he muttered something about my time being up. or maybe he said it wasn’t up.  ❞

❝  i don’t really care that i didn’t get any writing done today.  ❞

❝  nothing. not a single idea worth writing down, no itch i needed to scratch or question i needed to answer.  ❞

❝  guess there really is no such thing as bad press.  ❞

❝  i have no idea what a writer’s  ‘ process ’  usually looks like, but i’m pretty sure it’s not this.  ❞

❝  see what i have to deal with?  god… siblings, am i right?  ❞

❝  what can i say?  i have a soft spot for gothic architecture.  ❞

❝  computers have never been very good at reconciling paradoxes.  ❞

❝  they’re pretty much over funding my little expeditions.  ❞

❝  that kind of smile doesn’t normally show that many teeth.  ❞

❝  you know, that’s only scary the first few times you do it.  ❞

❝  one day, it will be dead. one day all the stars will burn out, go dark and silent. one day, everything will be so dark and so cold that no new stars can ever be born. the old ones will blink out one by one, like candles going out, and then… nothing. silence. darkness. void.  ❞

❝  the simplest explanation is almost always the right one.  ❞

❝  i don’t remember getting in my van, putting the key in the ignition, or speeding away from that house, but i must have.  ❞

❝  no, no, i’m fine, i’m fine, just go bother someone else.  ❞

❝  i haven’t eaten, moved, or written anything all day.  ❞

❝  but maybe that's just the fact that it is two in the morning and my brain is running mostly on caffeine.  ❞

❝  given how good a [job] he is, i know it’s not the first time he’s done it.  ❞

❝  i escaped, but i knew that whatever was in that house has just marked me as prey.  ❞

❝  calm down. think. you’re just going to confuse yourself.  ❞

❝  just wanted to tell you a couple of us are headed out to marvin’s for drinks if you want to come.  ❞

❝  one of the most disappointing things about living in america is the lack of genuinely haunted houses. out of all the supposed haunts i’ve visited, maybe one in ten seems like the real deal.  ❞

❝  sounds… peaceful. not many distractions, then?  ❞

❝  something tells me this tape wasn’t played in court.  ❞

❝  one of the neighbours must have called 911.  ❞

❝  my infamous accident. it almost killed me.  ❞

❝  i just woke up to footsteps in the kitchen. i don’t know who, or what, but there’s someone in here with me!  ❞

❝  could you shut the door on your way out, please?  ❞

❝  uh, wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.  ❞

❝  the fire that i said went out?  yeah, it just started burning again.  ❞

❝  so i asked him to lie.  ❞

❝  it'd really be just a few of us. maybe me and [name] and one or two other tagalongs…  ❞

❝  apparently, the press had a lot of questions too.  ❞

❝  i’ve driven more than 8 hours and drunk enough bad coffee to give an elephant heart palpitations. i’m sure as hell going to get my money’s worth.  ❞

❝  oh sorry, am i bothering you now? what happened to  ‘ call anytime you want, [name] ’ or,  ‘ you’re always welcome here, [name] ’ ?  ❞

❝  i’ve forgotten to charge my phone. again.  ❞

❝  i… think i’m going to turn around now.  ❞

❝  well sorry if i wanted to have a nice talk with my sister for a change.  ❞

❝  will it just be left there forever? our legacy? look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair?  ❞

❝  no matter how far away from home you are, no matter how different the constellations might look from where you’re standing, you can always look up on a clear, dark night and feel like you’re about to fall right into it—the terrifying, endless expanse of nothingness.  ❞

❝  i know authors can do some crazy things to get out of writer’s block, but i’ve never heard of one resorting to arson.  ❞

❝  why do you always think there’s something wrong?  ❞

❝  ours is not to question why, ours is but to digitize and stay the hell out of trouble.  ❞

❝  so let’s try walking backwards. just keep an eye on it.  ❞

❝  i got lucky. or maybe i was just fast enough to escape.  ❞

❝  maybe there are secret passages behind the walls and corridors.  ❞

❝  no matter how far i walked, i couldn’t find the way i came in.  ❞

❝  well, i /know/ i’ve had worst nights. i just can’t think of any right now.  ❞

❝  i do want you to have fun, [name], i just don’t want you to get yourself killed doing it.  ❞

❝  i mean, obviously, i do care, that’s the whole reason i made this trip. to get away from the noise and focus.  ❞

❝  i might have… forgotten to tell anyone where i was going.  ❞

❝  before i get started, there’s just one thing i need to say. i have absolutely no patience for the unexplained, or the things people call  ‘ unexplainable ’,  ‘ supernatural ’, or  ‘ paranormal ’.  ❞

❝  i told [name] that i needed to get out, to get inspired.  ❞

❝  okay, if someone is messing with me, they’re going to be very sorry, very quickly.  ❞

❝  [name] lied his ass off to save yours.  ❞

❝  a crash like that does funny things to your head.  ❞

❝  i still don’t know how he got there without me noticing.  ❞

❝  any plans i had to travel abroad went up in smoke.  ❞

❝  i thought of pulling out the bad cop routine.  ❞

❝  strange how something so dead can be so beautiful.  ❞

❝  it hated me:  hated what i do, and more than that, hated who i am.  ❞

❝  lots of tall tales. and more than a few ghost stories.  ❞

❝  oh good, you’re still here!  ❞

❝  reviewers absolutely grilled it:  said it was a nonsensical rip off of the dark tower, whatever that means.  ❞

❝  i jumped out the window. cut my hands on the glass, but thankfully not bad enough to need stitches  ❞

❝  i told her, tonight.  ❞

❝  for a minute, i wondered if that would really be so bad. it was a fitting way to go, given my… well, everything.  ❞

❝  i suppose that’s a universal constant—maybe the only one.  ❞

❝  i never let myself get this turned around. especially not at night.  ❞

❝  i don’t know if it’s actually haunted. but if not, then it was sure as hell convincing.  ❞

❝  i’m not one of those people who thinks she’s the spawn of satan or something ridiculous like that.  ❞

❝  unless i’m prepared to accept that she was murdered by something that crawled out of a funhouse mirror, this isn’t much help with the case, either.  ❞

❝  i have to try and work some actual cases the rest of the time. you know, cases that might have some answers i can find.  ❞

❝  it's cold, damp, and dark as night. i'm in my element, at least.  ❞

❝  your place is waiting for you.  ❞

❝  yeah, i’m all good. great… hanging in there, you know?  one day at a time.  ❞

❝  oh, i see you. you think i’m still scared of [thing], huh?  think you can freak me out?  ❞

❝  trust me, i’ve had a hell of a day, and you do not want to mess with a pissed off…  ❞

❝  and tell my sister i'm sorry.  ❞

❝  oh god, it's cold.  ❞

❝  the night sky really is beautiful out here.  ❞

❝  tell him he shouldn’t have been such a good liar.  ❞

❝  i’ve been listening to this for the last two weeks now.  ❞

❝  it’s not even that i’m having bad ideas. i’m not having any at all.  ❞

❝  can’t get away from the work, no matter what i do.  ❞

❝  i made sure i switched off my phone before i came up here, just in case.  ❞

❝  god, these things smell of weed.  ❞

❝  yeah, well… just wanted to make sure you’re okay, you know?  ❞

❝  [name] is dead. that's all there is to it.  ❞

❝  no, i need to get out of here. it’s been a long day.  ❞

❝  a lot of the art i found was just paintings of a night sky full of stars.  ❞

❝  my job is to look the facts dead in the face and find an explanation. one that will hold up in a court of law.  ❞

❝  personal and career choices, i guess you’d call them.  ❞

❝  damn. i could’ve sworn i felt something strange about this place when i hiked through this morning… or maybe it was a different part. hard to tell this late at night, anyway.  ❞

❝  well, let’s just say a middle-aged man-child running out panicked and tearing at his eyes would hardly be a marketable image.  ❞

❝  i didn’t mind that i’d be alone—i always expected that to be how i went.  ❞

❝  i’m sure that’s on my personnel file by now, as if it could get any more problematic.  ❞

[notebooknebula]

Is Doing Business In Tax-Defaulted Properties Virtually Possible? |  Jay Drexel & Jay Conner

https://www.jayconner.com/is-doing-business-in-tax-defaulted-properties-virtually-possible-jay-drexel-jay-conner/

Is doing business in tax-defaulted properties virtually possible without needing to look at the property?

Can you really do the analysis (once you learn how to do it) just from sitting in the comfort of your home office?

Simple answer. Yes!

If you are interested to know more about investing in tax-defaulted properties, watch this short video now.

Over 10 years ago, Jay Drexel discovered Tax Default Property Investing. Today he owns over 700 Tax Default Investments and buys a couple every single week from his home office.

These investments are in multiple states, they are making anywhere from 10% to 25% ROI. He’s a full-time investor and educator teaching students all over the country about how with the right education, technology, and coaching, you can invest safely and successfully in tax liens from the comfort of home.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: – https://youtu.be/rbrwXPwusDU “Tax-Defaulted Properties with Jay Drexel & Jay Conner”

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

#RealEstate #PrivateMoney #FlipYourHouse #RealEstateInvestor

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11249/is-doing-business-in-tax-defaulted-properties-virtually-possible-jay-drexel-jay-conner

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

Can you really do this business 100% virtually from sitting at your desk without having to go out and look at properties? And I mean, can you really do the analysis once you learn how to do it from just sitting in your home office?

Jay Drexel:

Yes, that’s, what’s so awesome about it for me now is cause I used to be, you’d have to go to sales and there’s some areas that only do it that way, but if you want to be a virtual investor and invest consistently online every single week absolutely you can do it all from home, your due diligence, your research. And something’s a little different when you’re buying leads is remember we’re not buying the property, we’re buying the lien against it. So we don’t have to do the same type of proper due diligence you would when you’re purchasing a house, a duplex, whatever it may be. Now, if I’m buying the deed to the property, there’s going to be more research yet, but I can do that. Virtually I’ve bought properties in Florida through deed sales. I’d never stepped foot on way in Michigan also, or I never stepped foot on it, but I always get some boots on the ground.

So to speak somebody to go over and take pictures, we can give you different ways to do ii, but you can do everything a hundred percent virtual and then learning from an expert like you, you always have tons of different exit strategies, right? We can get them into finding great properties, finding great investments, and then working with an investor like you and getting the knowledge that you have. You can show them multiple exit strategies. Some people want to keep the properties for cashflow. Some people want to move into the properties and some people just want to do a quick flip or virtual flip, the last few properties that I’ve sold. I’ve never stepped foot on the property. And the communication I had with the investors that purchased it, most of it was online. It’s usually less than a five minute conversation and it just depends on how you acquire the property and how they want to purchase it. I’m a big fan of quick claim deeds in some states, because I can just put my hands up. I’m selling it to them. Very, very cheap, very inexpensively. So I’m able to walk away, make a decent profit, and then they still have a lot of meat on the bone to do they choose to do with the property also.

[mayisani]

Timmy & Y/N podcast

A/N: Thank you so much for all the love on California Sun. Hope you enjoy this new imagine. I was inspired by listening to podcasts so I decided to write one about if timmy had a podcast with y/n. I’m also thinking about making this a series which will basically will just be them talking about different topics. Send in requests if you like. Anyways hope you’ve had a lovely day and enjoy reading. 💕

Warning: Mentions of sex, fluff, cuss words

Word Count: 1692

Update Part 2 OUT NOW!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During quarantine you had been quarantining with Timothée your Manhattan apartment. Which you were very grateful that had already been living together. You both laid in bed cuddling each other and your two bunnies that you had recently adopted right before lockdown.

“What if we did start a podcast I mean we have more than enough time on our hands. Plus, we can donate the money to Charities. And it will let us be more connected to everyone. I’ve already talked to my team and they think it’s a great idea. So, I’m a go.”

You looked over completely at him having the biggest smile on your face. “Wait you’re being serious right now?! I mean you know this is what I’ve been wanting and talking about for some time now.”

A couple of days later

Timmy had just finish setting up all the podcast equipment.

“Okay so I’ll post about this podcast on my twitter and Instagram and you can post on your socials.”

“Sounds perfect.”

You walked out to the balcony and started posting on Twitter and Instagram saying that you’ll be starting a podcast with Timmy soon to be able to raise more money apart from what you’re already able to donate. You walked back into the room and saw Timmy sitting down ready to record. You sat down next to him and put on headphones. Timmy started recording.

“Hey guys it’s Timothée.”

“And Y/N, and welcome to the podcast.”

“We’re live from New York. So, I know many of you are probably very confused right now on why we’re starting a podcast out of nowhere. Mainly because we’re both pretty private people. But we know we’re going through hard times so we wanted to raise money for charity so we are able to donate more.”

“Yes, this is all for a very good cause plus we thought it’d be a good time to connect with you guys since that’s what you’ve all been asking for so we’re now finally going to deliver. Also thank you for getting us trending on twitter.”

“Well this mainly going to just be a co-existing podcast so don’t expect much from us. But I do want to thank you all for being overall pretty respectful about my relationship with Y/N.”

“A lot of you have been wondering how Timmy and I meet. That was about 5 years ago we meet out in Seattle which was basically destiny because as you know neither of us live or have lived in Seattle. We were there randomly traveling I was with my best friend and Timmy was there with his sister Pauline.”

“Yea I was there with Pauline since she was out there doing a film she was working on at the time. I was basically dragged there because I didn’t want to go not because I didn’t want to be with Pauline but because I had some stupid party. And honestly, I don’t even know why I wanted to go I mean I didn’t even know the people who were hosting it I just heard about it through Ansel. But anyways getting back on track Pauline convinced me and I ended up going with her to Seattle.”

“So, if you’re listening thank you Pauline thank you for dragging your stubborn brother along.”

“Hey I’m not stubborn…” You let out a chuckle “Okay okay maybe I am a little stubborn.”

“We basically met through Pauline because she saw me at some restaurant and I guess loved my look for her film which I don’t know why. But she took me over to the hotel she was staying at to talk about the film and then Timmy comes into the room and he basically was just staring at me the entire time.”

“I mean what do you expect I was just coming back from eating at some small shop in Pike Place Market and I walk into my hotel room and see a stunning woman.”

“Honestly Timmy was not scared to talk to me at all. He was very upfront well we both were.”

“I mean I don’t really believe in playing hard to get I mean what’s the point in that if you like each other go for it you’re not going to win anything for it.”

“So, after that we became friends pretty quickly we got into a serious relationship.”

“I mean I knew I wanted to be with you since the moment I walked into the hotel and I didn’t want to waste precious time or risk losing you to some dude.” You were blushing bright red being touched by his sweet words.

“Okay so now that you basically know how we met I’m going to look at some questions that I screenshotted and ask to Timmy.” You turned on your phone and looked at the questions.

Username1: Why was your relationship so private for quite some time.

“Well at the time I was starting off as an actor we were already very serious. But at the time I honestly thought it wasn’t that important. Our relationship was an if you know you know situation. And we could have stayed like that for a longer time but about a year ago or two I really started to blow up everyone was seeing my work which I will forever be grateful for don’t get me wrong. But the reason I decided to confirm it publicly was because Y/N was getting a lot of hate and death threats. And I of course didn’t want to cause any more pain to her. I mean I’m madly in love with this girl, I don’t want to be the reason for her unsafety and pain. But I’m grateful that once I confirmed everything, things started to calm down. Y/N was no longer seen in a bad light or some random girl.”

“Those were very tough times but I always had Timmy with me so it made things bearable. And once people starting seeing me for me I gained a lot of love, support, and respect which is more than I expected that I’d get but I’m grateful that I did.”

Timmy grabbed your phone and read out the next question

Username2: What relationship advice do you give?

“Well firstly I think it’s very important to have trust. Don’t build your relationship on lies that’s a horrible foundation. I mean Timmy knows basically everything about me and likewise. I’ll be peeing and he’ll be shaving there’s no boundaries in our relationship really. We tell everything to each other we’re very close.”

“Definitely trust is important in a relationship but I know what I’m going to say isn’t going to be the best advice but personally for me I knew Y/N was who I’d wanted to be with. I mean within a month into our relationship I knew I wanted to move on with her, marry her, and start a family. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you can see all that with the person you’re seeing then you have a good relationship.”

“Here’s another one”

Username3: How often should you have sex in relationships?

You quickly became very quiet so Timothée took over the question.

“I’ll probably only be answering this question since Y/N is over here blushing. But it has a simple answer whenever you both feel like having sex. If you both want it, then you’re good and one if you don’t then you’re not good why because consent is everything.”

“I mean if you want to fuck then fuck there’s not much stopping you.”

“Look at y/n finally joining the conversation but yup in conclusion have sex whenever you both want to.”

Username4: Do you guys want any kids?

“Funny thing so we recently got bunnies two to be exact we named them clouds and moon. So, he’s seen my motherly side and this has caused him to constantly be like Y/N let’s have a baby. And of course, I want to have kids but right now is not the best time to have kids.”

“Well I know it’s not the best times but I really do want kids and I always have and always will want kids. I know kids isn’t for everyone but it is something we both want so no worries it’s just we need to get timing right.”

“I think that this will be the end for this episode we will have more episodes coming out soon of course. So, thank you to everyone who stuck around and put up with this. We promise we’ll get better at this so don’t worry.”

Timmy turned off the recording equipment and put it all away.

You walked over and sat on your bed your back resting on the headboard. You got onto Instagram and went live.

“Hey guys Timmy and I just finished recording the first episode to our podcast which we’ll be naming Timmy & Y/N I know pretty original of us. But we’re excited for this new journey. So, for the next couple of hours we’ll be editing and then our podcast will be posted onto all the places where you can listen to podcasts.” Timmy was laying his head on your shoulder being silent reading all the comments.

Username5: Hi loves hope you’re both staying safe

Username6: Timothée what do you think about tik tik

Username7: Are you guys going to join tik tok

Username8: You know I’m going to watch all these episodes

Username9: Finally you show your face Timmy. Thank you Y/N

“Hey everyone thanks for all the support I promise I’ll be more active don’t worry.”

“But that’s all we’ll say for now it’s starting to get late we’re getting take out from a local restaurant tonight. Don’t forget support all your local businesses in these crazy times. Much love to everyone stay safe.”

“Bye everyone I’ll maybe go live later I’ll think about it.”

Username10: You better go live Timmy we’re starving over here

Username11: Timmy & Y/N content is the only thing that’s keeping me going

You ended the live and put your phone on your nightstand.

[emilykinncy]

I posted 2,244 times in 2021

28 posts created (1%)

2216 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 79.1 posts.

I added 1,932 tags in 2021

#cue the queue - 671 posts

#animals - 253 posts

#lol - 250 posts

#photography - 165 posts

#cats - 136 posts

#flowers - 120 posts

#disney - 97 posts

#pretty places - 92 posts

#btvs - 78 posts

#relatable - 70 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#ok but it's even worst when your page won't load all the way so you can't tell if you're waiting for it to come into frame or the gif is jus

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

She doesn't talk to him for years and he still asks to be on her podcast. Normam Reedus is literally a simp for Emily Kinney.

lmaoo right?! And let’s not forget this

9 notes • Posted 2021-01-13 06:05:24 GMT

#4

Well I understand Bethyl and their special relationship, but what is wrong with Emily and Norman? I'm new to the show, so ... are they dating or what my friend told me Emily unfollow him and all of this? Would you please explain to me what happened?

I’m assuming you’re referring to my tags on that video I reblogged? So first of all, regardless of their offscreen relationship it was so nice to get cute/fun normily content while they were on the show together. So that’s one of the reasons I said that.

As far as the history...basically it’s never been confirmed but many of us believe that they briefly dated in 2015. There was actually an article in Us mag in June 2015 about it & they had at least one (unnamed) source, NR technically denied it (more like diverted attention with a joke on twitter) but Emily said nothing & when she’s been asked outright she’s essentially refused to answer. Neither of them have ever said ‘no, that didn’t happen’. So onto the unfollow part. In May 2017 NR posted a pic of D***e on IG (I just don’t like her for multiple reasons so I don’t write her name out lmao if you don’t know who I mean, you can just google NR & it will tell you who his ‘partner’ is) & basically it became clear he was dating her (tho I think there was already news out about it) and later that day or the next day Emily unfollowed him. So...it seems pretty clear the reason why she unfollowed. He would continue to occasionally like Emily’s posts & once commented for her bday & she never acknowledged him lol. But apparently as of last month she’s decided to give their friendship another chance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

If you want to jump down the normily rabbit hole more you can check out my normily stuff and normily trash tags (you can look at the regular normily tag I have too, but the other two are more ‘streamlined’ to evidence lol) 

10 notes • Posted 2021-01-17 21:20:55 GMT

#3

Thought I’d share my twitter breakdown this morning listening to Emily’s new podcast episode 🙃

Full Chandler reaction pic, my permanent normily mood:

15 notes • Posted 2021-01-12 23:30:26 GMT

#2

I’m just gonna say it now: I think most everyone who ships Daryl with an existing character is pretty pissed about the fact that he is going to finally have a canon relationship with a brand spankin new, random character but please for the love of God if the actress who plays her has social media DO NOT SEND HER HATE. And don’t hate on her even if she doesn’t have social media. She got a role and did her job and had nothing to do with the plot & crap writing. 

20 notes • Posted 2021-02-03 07:14:06 GMT

#1

Normily My Caffeine Withdrawal Podcast episode (transcript of certain parts)

EK intro: I first met Norman Reedus working on The Walking Dead of course. Over the course of my four seasons on our show, I got to know Norman better and better and we became good friends. And in a sort of interesting parallel, our characters storylines also became more intertwined within the show. Norman is so special, he seems to have endless amounts of creative energy that I find incredibly inspiring. He also has great taste in music and coffee which makes him a perfect guest for this podcast. Welcome back to My Caffeine Withdrawal, I am so incredibly excited to share this episode with all of you today. Norman has so many fans and I know this to be true because everyday someone in my life or someone on social media asks me ‘hey, how was it working with Norman? What is Norman Reedus like?’ Well, now today you guys are going to get to know Norman in the same way that I know Norman! We talk about how Norman got into acting and when and why he moved to California, as well as what his life was like as an artist first starting out in Los Angeles. We talk about a book he’s been writing! And he tells a lot of great stories! But first, Norman explained his current coffee setup situation and how he’s currently weathering the quarantine from Costa Rica. 

This gets long so putting it behind a cut!

I put a timestamp of where each segment starts at the end of them! 

NR: Hi Emily!

EK: Hi!

NR: I just set this up cause I’ve been listening to your podcast which I really like and I know it’s heavy on the coffee so I brought my coffee setup down the mountain in my backpack on the motorcycle and this is my coffee jam here (I’m not 100% sure of the last 2 words) so, this is what I do. You ready?

EK: Yes!

*NR shows her & describes his coffee process*

EK: What was the thing um, on Instagram, you posted this picture of a hummingbird, that was crazy! What made you post that?

NR: It’s this person that I’ve become friends with, they only try to post positive things…*he explains more about the person & post* (starts at 6:08)

EK: You wanna hear something kind of crazy about the hummingbird thing? I don’t know if you know this about me but I’ve definitely gotten more like spiritual…but like *Emily giggle* this is gonna sound crazy and I don’t even usually talk about this stuff, but I sort of have this sign of when I’m like guided where I’m supposed to go, and my sign has been a hummingbird. And you had text me and I randomly looked at your Instagram and saw—

NR: Wow

EK: —It definitely was like one of those where like ‘go there’, maybe it was just if there is a god or whatever just being like ‘oh nice, connect with your friend, you know, like connect with Norman…’

NR: I actually believe all that. When I texted you I was having breakfast at this place by the beach, the lady that makes the honey, by her place. And I was listening to your podcast with Lennie. And I had already heard Lauren’s and I was listening to Lennie’s, and at the end of it you were like ‘you know what I hope during Covid everyone can reach out to a friend’ and I was like ‘I’m just gonna text her’ so I texted you at that moment. I have the same thing with a bird like my dad, before my dad died he was always talking about cardinals, those red cardinals. So everytime I see a cardinal I think the same thing. And then the night before, Danai called me out of nowhere. I hadn’t spoken to Danai in forever. And she’s like ’what are you doing?’ and I’m like ‘I’m sitting on my patio with all the lights off…’ and there was a meteor shower, it was called like the Gideon meteor shower, this huge meteor shower that happened. And I saw 21 shooting stars before I went to bed. I pay attention to all that shit—

EK: Yeah

NR: 21! And I was like talking to her I’m like ‘there’s 11! There’s 12!’ and it just kept going. I believe all that stuff.

EK: I grew up Catholic so I kind of, like…religion in general felt sort of overwhelming even though prayer and stuff like that came naturally to me and then just over like the last like 5 or 6 years or so I’ve like really embraced it where I’m sort of like ‘yep, I think these things are happening, I have little signs that tell me like where to go…’. I guess I don’t really talk about it with people much but it’s just, like I read about it and stuff. Yeah.

NR: I believe it, I believe all of them. I’m not really religious but I believe all those signs all the time. I see little signs in everything, yeah.

EK: Yeah! (starts at 9:38) 

--

EK: That sounds like you’ve had a very productive quarantine, or whatever this corona-pocalypse quarantine time.

NR: I’m not good with sitting still, you know what I mean, so I’m always doing something.

EK: Yeah! Yeah. I mean that’s one thing, when I was thinking about—when I was around you more working on the show, was that you were always…like you know sitting down to dinner and then like noticing this saltshaker and this fork should be next to each other in a certain way and then you can take a picture. You know what I mean, like I remember that about you like always making something, I guess. Or looking for the art in it or the picture. Or, you know, which um—

NR: it’s ADD or something I dunno what…

EK: I admired it because I feel like I can be so slow. Like, I love making stuff but I can sort of like piece it together over weeks  and then I finally do—like in my head somehow, like I’m more of like a turtle! You know just like—

NR: Yeah but you make music! I mean, we all wish we could write songs and perform songs. You know, you make music. We all wish we were musicians, you know what I’m saying, so. (starts at 18:18)

--

EK: I remember you telling me a story of how you got an agent by like going to a party and then someone said ‘do you want to be in a play?’ and then you were the understudy and then the guy just happened to have to call out so then you were in the play, you didn’t have to be the understudy and then an agent—and that’s how it all started with acting, um, *laughs* did I just tell your story for you?!

NR: You’re right. No, no you’re exactly right. That’s exactly what happened. (starts at 26:08)

--

NR: I actually made an album, a music album

EK: You did?!

NR: Yeah

EK: Oh, that’s—you wrote all the songs and stuff? Or did you—

NR: I didn’t write any of it. And I didn’t really sing it, it’s more of a spoken word thing

EK: Yeah!

NR *tells story about how this came about, which involves an igloo*

EK: Wait, why were you in an igloo in Switzerland?! *laughs*

NR *tells more of the story…it’s long ok I don’t wanna transcribe it sdhfhsfh*

EK: Yeah I wanna hear your album! I mean…

NR: It’s out—

EK: It is?!

NR: It played…it did pretty well in France, it was on the radio and shit

EK: Yeah, will you email it to me or something, so I can…

NR: I will. Yeah yeah.

EK: I also wanted to make sure today to get some of your music picks because I remember back when we were on the show you always gave me the best music, like stuff that I hadn’t heard. I don’t know if if it’s just like because of your friends in New York or like maybe you’re a little bit older than me so you know different bands than I do. But, I remember like Dinosaur Jr., you like introducing me to Dinosaur Jr. Like I didn’t really know Dinosaur Jr. before you

NR: That’s crazy that you don’t know Dinosaur Jr. then (? I really can’t tell for sure that last word he says)

EK: I know! I think I might have pretended that I kind of I knew but like you introduced me for sure and I like totally dove in. But yeah during this quarantine, what have you been listening to?

NR: *lists some bands* Sean Lennon’s band that he made with Les Claypool is really good. He was on Ride with me.

EK: Oh, he was?! I’ve only see—I haven’t seen all the episodes of that, I’ve only seen, um, a few of them (adsdfdjf don’t lie Emily it’s probably actually 0 but we all understand babe) (starts at 35:10)

--

EK: It was so fun to talk to you today

NR: Yeah I miss you! I miss you, it’s good to see you and hear you.

EK: I miss you too, I’m going to check out that sock method…although I think it’s just pour over it’s just with a special…reusable—

NR: Yeah, a dirty sock

EK: Yeah, but something about it, yeah….*both laugh* Thank you for being on here, it feels so good to like chat with you

NR: Yeah, I miss you it’s good to hear your voice

EK: I miss you too, yeah. *she starts talking about twd & the connection with everyone etc* (starts at 41:36)

NR: *after he mentions everyone from the cast he’s still in touch with* You get these friendships with people and it becomes a big part of your life, your friends on the show, so. I’m glad I’m talking to you

EK: Yeah, I’m glad I’m talking to you too. (starts at 44:03)

From Emily’s end blurb: I hope you guys enjoyed Norman and I’s little catch up call over Zoom, I hope that you learned something new about Norman you didn’t know before. You know, Norman and I really hadn’t connected much over the last couple years (we all know this Emily and we pretty much all know why lol) we’ve just been on sort of different paths (yeah, that’s a way to put it I guess haha) but again and again I’m finding that one of the blessings of this time, being stuck at home, is remembering and reconnecting with people I care about and people that care about me. Maybe you have a friend you used to work with that you haven’t caught up with for a while and now you’ll feel inspired to send them a little text saying hello.

(How do they literally have chemistry on a *podcast* okay bye I’m going to go fly into the sun now)

32 notes • Posted 2021-01-14 07:29:03 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[bettsfic]

march pinned: ending the sex project

in the march edition of my lowkey writing-related newsletter, in addition to my writing-related post roundup and upcoming consultation availability, i have personal essay recommendations and a segment on the definition of a project!

for more information on my creative coaching services, check out my carrd.

if you want to receive my lowkey writing-related newsletter directly, you can subscribe here.

full newsletter below the cut, or you can read it here.

fuck february, amiright?

i thought january was bad. but february. february was the stuff of nightmares. my cousin passed away from covid (you can read about her here; she was really an amazing person and i feel so lucky to have known her). i was finally formally diagnosed with PCOS (bittersweet, i guess). my car broke down. i took two (2) days off and it took me two and a half weeks to get caught up again. i can only hope march treats us all a little more gently.

the good news is, i finished revisions on my short story collection to send to my agent, finished workshop submissions for the semester, and now i can return to my first love, fanfiction. that i am constantly working through original fiction to return to fanfiction has been making me think a lot about the nature of a creative, capital-p Project. so, this month’s BTALA (been thinkin a lot about) is going to inspect the concept of a “project.”

new resource

last month i unveiled a folder of my favorite short stories which i’m pleased to hear several of you have perused and gotten some inspiration from. this month i’ve compiled my favorite personal essays. there are fewer essays than there are short stories because i’ve broken them into two groups: personal and craft. next month i hope to have the craft essays compiled.

i’m always looking for more things to love, so if you have recommendations for your favorite short stories and essays, i’d be happy to hear them!

writing-related posts

how to physically maneuver the revision process

the difference between M and E ratings of fic

resources for worldbuilding (check out the reblogs for more!)

a couple syntax/prose book recs

how to break a long work into chapters

march availability

unfortunately i have to cut my coaching hours down a bit, so i don’t have any openings left in march, but i have some availability in april. if you’re interested in a writing consultation, please fill out this google form!

you can learn more about my services on my carrd.

what i’m into rn

for the past year, i’ve basically been trapped in a 10x10 room, and my health is definitely reflecting that, both mentally (does anyone else feel like they’re living in groundhog day? just, every day being exactly the same except fractionally worse than the day before??) and physically (i reorganized the kitchen and could barely move for two days).

reader, i have discovered something called “walking,” in which i put on real human shoes and go outside. it feels strange, bestial. neighbors wave hello to me. a harrowing experience.

while doing this, this walking, i’ve been listening to the lolita podcast which a friend recommended to me, a ten-episode series that dives into everything lolita: the novel itself, its context, adaptations, greater cultural responses, and — as a sticker on my laptop says — vladimir “russian dreamboat” nabokov. as far as i can tell it seems well-researched and presents the many perspectives of lolita in a fair way. i’m only a few eps in, but i’m entranced so far. highly recommended if you, like me, have a complicated relationship with lolita.

i’ve also found myself mildly addicted to a mobile otome game called obey me, which. look i know it’s like the definition of cringe but it’s also mind-numbingly fun and if i want to spend my minimal free time pretending 7 demon brothers are all vying for my affection then that’s between me and god. it’s a lot of what i loved about WoW: frequent events, bright colors, a daily to do list of simple but satisfying tasks, many many rewards, and it doesn’t take itself very seriously. and if i have 4k fic written of mammon/reader that’s nobody’s business but mine and my longsuffering ao3 subscribers.

i’m telling you this because i don’t know anyone else who plays it and am desperate to trade headcanons. so if you play, or start playing, hit me up!! i will give u mad tips and daily AP.

been thinkin a lot about

the project. the project. even the word “project.” PROject (noun). proJECT (verb). what is the project? “project” comes from the latin pro and jacare which means “to throw forward,” or projectum which means “something prominent.” a projector throws forward an image. to project onto something means to throw your perspective onto something else. to embark on a project is to make something prominent in your life. the concept of “the projects” comes from public housing projects, the government throwing forward affordable housing.

what is the project? in joseph harris’ essay “coming to terms” he says that “to define the project of a writer is…to push beyond his text, to hazard a view about not only what someone has said but also what he was trying to accomplish by saying it.” harris’ perspective is that of an english teacher encouraging his students to read critically, not just to summarize a text but to find its project, its greater purpose. and while i first read this essay in a seminar on composition pedagogy, it stuck with me as a writer. it made me reconsider the greater nature of the creative project.

how many of us, if asked to describe our writing project, would begin with a plot or character premise, the nuts and bolts of a specific story? maybe even the working title? but i wonder, is breaking out the plot really the project? is the discipline of sitting down and typing really the project? and when the story is finished, is the project over? what is the project?

in 2019, i wrote 86k words of a novel. i began revising that novel last fall, and i’m finding that i’ll probably keep maybe less than 10k of that initial draft. i’m not bothered by that. the novel i wrote before that started at 125k, then i rewrote the entire thing to 200k, then i whittled it back down to 160k, and next i’ll be tasked with paring it back down to 80k. i’m not bothered by that either. in the past five years or so i’ve written about 2 million words, and i’ve only published 20k of them. only 1% of what i’ve written, i’ve published. in the words of lauren cooper (catherine tate), i’m not bothered.

i used to see publication as the birth of the project, and writing it akin to a long gestation period. then i saw publication as the death of the project, and its life was lived in its drafting. now, publication seems irrelevant to the project. the confines of a story and its many revisions are also irrelevant to the project. the beginning of a story is not the start of the project and the end of the story is not the end of the project. the project is larger than the story, its revisions, its publication, and its eventual readership.

i think it took me so long to see this because for so many years i was still in my first project, the sex project, an exploration of trauma and sexual identity, which began in 2014 with destiel fanfiction, endured through many fandom shifts, my MFA, years adrift as an adjunct, all the way through 2020 with the completion of my short story collection. i used to wonder how anyone could write about anything other than sex. to me it was the only topic worth my attention. i was certain that i would spend my entire life being a sex writer and i’d never find fulfillment writing a young adult sci fi adventure or a highly literary novel about complicated family dynamics. i was baffled by people who were interested in other things, who could write entire novels without using the word “cock” even once.

then my sex project ended. i don’t know when exactly it happened or why, but suddenly i realized i never wanted to write another artful description of an orgasm or find a tactful euphemism for a vagina ever again (personally i prefer “wet cunt” because not only is it blunt, i find it phonetically pleasing). obviously i’m still writing explicit fanfic but it doesn’t feel the same as it used to. sex feels more sidelined to me, even if it’s still the center and drive of a fic. i no longer get any personal satisfaction from writing it, although i do get satisfaction in sharing the work for readers to enjoy.

it’s like i’ve somehow solved the biggest puzzle of my life. or i guess made peace with my meanest monster, that extremely complicated double-mind of desire that some non-sex-repulsed asexuals feel: you want to feel desire you can’t actually feel so you write it into fiction, to try to understand this thing you can’t have and which society tells you you’re missing, and you don’t even know if you don’t have it, because you still feel desire for affection and intimacy, and maybe even a desire to be desired. and for those of us who are asexual and have c-ptsd, sex you don’t actually want (but don’t know you don’t want, because maybe you’re ambivalent and mildly curious and touch-starved) and an unrelenting drive toward people-pleasing can be a dangerous combination. how can you ever know what consent is if you always put other people’s desires above your own?

maybe i’m alone in this. maybe i’m not. maybe for most people, wanting sex is a light switch: yes i want it, or no i don’t. but for me, i had to write a whole lot of words to figure out things like desire, consent, intimacy, forgiveness, the shape that good love takes. the lengthy theoretical flowchart of “i might be interested in having sex if this and this and this and this and this happens in this exact order and under these exact circumstances.”

it was hard to write something into reality that i have never seen except in pieces, in subtext i clung to with no lexicon to give it shape and meaning. te lawrence in lawrence of arabia. some of tarantino’s early work. the film benny and joon. and weirdly, the star wars prequels (that one’s hard to explain; i’ll spare you). i don’t think the sex project was about coming to terms with my asexuality as much as it was trying to organize my thoughts and feelings by continuously rendering my own experiences within a greater, shinier ideal — like how you sometimes have to unravel the entire skein of yarn to find the loose end, and only then can you get started.

i guess i’m in the infancy of the power project now. i’m moving toward themes of control, infamy, greatness. the exact circumstances in which atrocity occurs. how people rise into leadership and fall from grace. the consequences of success. i don’t know why this project has come to me, or what, if anything, it has to do with me. i’m not famous and have no intention of becoming famous; i don’t have social power or influence, at least not beyond my little corner of fandom, and i’m not interested in having it. and yet, here we are, already hundreds of thousands of words in.

my fics digging for orchids (tgcf) and a standing engagement (the hunger games) deal with the detriments of fame. and even float (breaking bad) to a degree is about the aftermath of being so close to power. my novel cherry pop, loosely based on macbeth, is about an ongoing power exchange between two teenage girls. my other novel, vandal, is about a girl who believes she has magic powers and casts a spell on her neighbor to fall in love with her. and i’m in the very early stages of a novel called groundswell, a cult story i’ve been wanting to write for years. i had no idea why i couldn’t write it until i realized it wasn’t yet my project. i’m not even to the stage of developing characters, let alone a premise or plot. i’m still just building my aesthetic pile (i discuss the aesthetic pile here, as well as vandal in more detail), watching documentaries on cults, reading books, finding inspiration, marking down ideas as they come. it may be years before i’m ready to sit down and write it.

now that i know what the project is, i have more patience with myself. it doesn’t bother me to rewrite a novel from the beginning, or to scrap novels altogether, because the story isn’t the project. the project cannot be diminished by cutting words, sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters. the project does not have a product. the project cannot be published. the project is in the practice, in dragging the impossibly large into clear, acute existence, so you can see it. so you can see the very center of what you thought was an unknowable thing.

[g0ldengubler]

chapter 8 ~ the party...

A/N: im sorry for the chapter seeming very rushed and quick. i was mad at myself for taking forever of chapter 2 of positions but get ready for chapter after chapter coming up as a holiday gift :) also thank you guys so so so much for 400 followers and im sorry i’m saying my thanks now. it really means a lot to me :’) i hope u guys are still here and thank u for reading :)

Category: fluff

CW: cannabis use; consumption of alcohol; mentions of sex

Word Count: 2360

before you read | next chapter

masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spencer's POV~

We had the whole weekend planned: go fishing, read by the lake, walk through the forest and appreciate nature in all its beauty. But in a bittersweet turn of events, it ended up raining the whole time. So we ended up spending our time inside, reading to y/n in the afternoon while she sipped on her coffee, going out to the balcony at night and look at the stars because that was when the clouds would pull apart until the day came where we woke up to the peaceful sound of rain hitting the windows and the roof. I rambled on and on with what I knew about space and constellations as she let the sensations of the blunt or joint she rolled up take over her body, relaxing her.

As the weekend went on, after the first night, I didn't know what I felt about her. She was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. The way she spoke was like poetry to my ears. When we smoked and just lay out on the couch, the way she would explain her thoughts gave me butterflies. This was all really new to me, falling for a girl and having some kind of a chance that it could happen. Was there a chance there? I'm a profiler and I can read people by their micro expressions, especially when someone's in love. But with her, I couldn't even read her micro expressions. It bugged the hell out of me, but I would let it out through cuddles that happened naturally and little kisses that'd happen out of nowhere.

On the last night, it was pouring down rain, harder than it would the last couple of nights where it would only sprinkle. We had made some popcorn and y/n thought of the idea to listen to old time radio ghost stories that were then put out on the internet as podcasts. While it was playing, she grabbed her grinder and looked inside. We had pretty much finished the last of our stash this morning for what she called a "wake'n'bake", which was definitely a great way to start the day. She quickly grabbed the bong from the kitchen counter and started packing it with what I thought was nothing.

"What are you doing, silly?" I asked.

"Just packing a kief bowl." She said, very nonchalant.

I gave a confused look, then she rolled her eyes and explained, bringing the grinder closer to me. "See all this? This has all the different strains we smoked. With all of this mixed together, we'll be really really gone."

She continued to pack the bowl as I sat there ready. She grabbed the lighter when she was done and explained how she'll smoke half and I'll take the other. I watched as she put the top around her mouth. A huge cloud exhaled out of her as she moved her head up to the ceiling, which then after started coughing up a storm. I offered her water but she pushed it away, trying to say she was fine.

We continued to smoke bowl after bowl a few more times until there was nothing left in grinder. Y/n nuzzled her head onto my chest as we lay on the couch, letting those tingles intensify our senses and our minds wonder. She was right, this was probably the most high I've felt before. Every movement we made was slowed down and I could see that my arm was as if it was split in two, but was transparent like a ghost. I could barely even move as the sensations were too overwhelming in the best way possible, let alone try to figure out if this was what being this high was like or really how the brain can do this, but I also wasn't really trying either and let the waves relax me.

As I played with her hair, I couldn't pay attention to the episode because all of my thoughts were of her. I wanted this all the time, the stillness and calmness that brought peace and happiness to the atmosphere-that she brought to our atmosphere. I wanted her to feel safe in my arms and never let go. Getting to know her like this on a deeper level ever since we first met made me fall in love with her everyday we were together bit by bit. I never want to let go of her.

"Do you ever have the fear of giving your heart to someone?"

Her question shocked me, breaking the process in my head. I didn't know what to say but, "What do you mean?"

"Have you ever given your heart to someone, doesn't even have to be romantically, giving them you're all and love and care, to then suddenly watch them break it bit by bit as if they're breaking down the wall that you had built for yourself, instead of you taking each brick off piece by piece and handing it to them?"

There was silence. No words that I could think of could answer a question like that.

"I've given my heart away to so many people, and I don't know why they break it every time." She moved to where she used her elbow for support in between me and the couch. "Spence, I wish we could stay like this forever. I have these feelings for you that I never really, or truly, felt for another person before. Even though we've only known each other for a short time, I think I'm in love with you. There's just something about you that makes me feel safe. For the first time, it's like all my walls fall when we're together, I have this feeling of giving you my all, my care and support, my love. All of it. I want you, Spencer. And, this feeling I have about all of my protection crumbling down, I'm only just a little bit scared of letting it break."

I pulled her in and kissed her. I let my lips do all the talking, telling her how much I loved her, too and now nothing was going to break her down. We pulled away and she gave me a look of confusion and happiness, as if she was scared to let the happiness show through.

"I feel the same way. Exactly, the same way," I said, "I'm in love with you, too, and it's all new to me also. You're like a beautifully written poem, y/n. I could listen to you day and night and never get tired of it. You have a beautiful mind that I want to explore each and every day. I never want to let you go. Will you stay...with me?"

This time she pulled me in after a moment of pause. Our lips crashed like fireworks, yet moved together in perfect tempo. Without breaking, she moved on top of me slowly. I let my hands wonder all over her body as she cupped my face. We were passionate. We were needy. We were in love. Everything was perfect, and everything felt right.

—

Y/n's POV~

You two had left pretty early in the morning for your adventure back to D.C. Somehow, both of you couldn't sleep at all, even though you were pretty well gone to the point of passing out, so you decided you’ll leave at 5am so then hopefully you’d get back in the afternoon. The whole ride, Spencer held your hand, no matter who was driving. I'm in love. You couldn't wrap your brain around it, but for the first time, it felt like your heart knew better than your head. Nothing about this felt wrong. You had found the one that you had been looking for my whole life. Nothing was going to pull you away from him, and you were not going to allow that in the slightest.

On your way back, Rossi called about meeting up tonight at the bar for drinks, which kind of ruined your plans to stay in and cuddle, but you both figured it'd be nice to see them again. You told him we'd be there and hung up. The rest of the ride was just you listening to Spencer ramble about books he's read in last month. You forgot this man can finish books in half an hour, so the fact that he read more books in a month than the average person was astonishing. He talked about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde and their beautiful works of literature, and you never drifted off to sleep once, your mind didn't even wonder as his soothing voice was in the background. It's quite beautiful hearing someone talk about something they're passionate about.

When you got back to the city, you went to your place so you can grab my things. You told Seth that you’d be back officially tomorrow, gave goodbye kisses to your children, and went back to Spencer's, where you both freshened up and got ready for night. You had an adorable shower that turned just a bit quite naughty. You talked about how you both wanted to tell the others, and while you said you were fine if you told them now, Spencer's response was very well said. "They're very nosy, so I always thought I'd just keep it secret until I felt ready. But this is different. We're on vacation, so Hotch isn't going to have 'the talk' with us until we're back at work. It feels right, everything feels right with you."

Once you were done getting ready, you headed to the bar, where you were told specifically where to park (Garcia had texted saying that she's friends with the owner and that she'd make sure they were safe. She also mentioned that an uber was going to pick them up at around 1am to go back to her place to pass out. She was, for sure, the mom of the group. More than Jj was at that). Right away, you saw the gang sitting in a corner booth, and once they saw Spencer was holding your hand, they all either were speechless with their jaws sitting on the table or ran up to you and gave hugs and congrats. Morgan had to pull Garcia away from you so you could sit down, which thankfully for her, you ended up sitting right in between her and Spencer, so her arms went right back around you.

"How much has she had already?" You asked laughing.

"Well, she started with jager." said Morgan

"Jager?!" You was shocked. "Did she drink the whole bottle?"

"You'd think," said Rossi from the other side of the table. He sat in between Hotch and Emily, drinking his bourbon before continuing to speak, "she's only had two glasses."

"You guys definitely seem to be where the party's at then, huh?"

"You can never go wrong on us for a party." said Emily.

Spencer ordered you two some beers and a couple of vodka shots each. The music wasn't so loud to where you had to yell over one another, but the sound of classic rock filled the building top to bottom. You clanked your shot glasses together and took the shots before taking a sip of your beer as a chaser.

"Look at you, kiddo," Rossi said to Spencer, "where's the Spencer that would get an ice tea or a shirley temple instead of...a beer and shots?"

"Yeah, you can't tell me that all this of this started happening that night at Garcia's?" asked Jj.

The two of you made eye contact and were silent for a moment before bursting out laughing. "So it DID start at my place," said Garcia, "I knew it! I'm such a good cupid." She danced happily in her spot which made everyone giggle.

"You are magic, baby girl." said Morgan.

"So, how did it happen?" asked Hotch, "Don't worry, I'm not your boss tonight but we will have to discuss this once our vacation is over."

"Right," You said nervously, "Well, we hung out after that night after we woke up at Garcia's, and then the next day we went up to my family cabin in Michigan for the weekend, and...that's where we confessed."

"And the rest is history!" said Spencer, sounding like a little kid as he tried to hide the amount of excitement he had.

"Well, we're happy for the both of you," said Morgan as he got up from the table, "I think that calls for a round of celebratory shots, since pretty boy over here has proven in the past week that he can handle them."

When he came back with the shots, you all grabbed them from the tray that the bartender let him use and raised them high. "To having an uninterrupted vacation, and to y/n and Spencer!"

"Cheers!" You all said in unison before clanking them together and letting it go down the hatch. As the night went on, you drank and drank until you were all pretty drunk, even Rossi and Hotch, who you didn't think the whole team has ever seen them like before. When Garcia found out it was karaoke night, she grabbed a few of you, yourself and Spencer included, up to the stage where you sang-or slurred, really-changes by david bowie. Emily and Jj had their arms around each other to hold each other up, and Morgan and Garcia were hogging the mic from everyone, but the whole bar could still hear every one of you. You noticed Hotch in the crowd standing next to Rossi, his phone recording the moment so we wouldn't forget.

The last thing you remember was getting into the uber and Spencer being very touchy on the ride back, making sure that Emily, who sat in the passenger seat, didn't notice that anything was going on in the back. His fingers were ghosting your thighs as he whispered, 'The things I wish we could do right now' before his lips connected to neck.

[thewinedark]

Dark Academia Things To Do In Quarantine

Listen to Podcasts

I suggest throwing on a podcast to get into while you clean: keep your home clean and tidy to help your mental health. A few suggestions based on topic:

History: My personal area of interest. I am currently listening to Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” on Spotify, though there are only a few episodes on there for free. Check out the “King of Kings” series for some ancient history, and there’s also a series about WWII. Other podcasts: “Revolutions” by Mike Duncan, which appropriately covers revolutions, “How to Take Over the World” which goes into figures who changed the world somehow, and how they did it, and “Our Fake History” by Sebastian Major, which is a series of history conspiracy theories. 

True Crime: If you’ve already watched every Buzzfeed Unsolved episode three times like I have, try these: “Lore” by Aaron Mahnke, “And That’s Why We Drink” by Christine Schiefer and Em Schulz, which goes into both criminal and paranormal history and myth, and “Thinking Sideways”, which is really just a discussion of a bunch of unsolved mysteries of varying sorts. 

Literature: Honestly, I’d rather just read the books then listen to people talk about them, but here are some literary podcasts I found that seemed pretty interesting: “Selected Shorts” which involves actors reading classical and newer literature to a live audience, “Backlisted” where the hosts argue with a listener to tell them why a particular classic should be read, and is still important, and “Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon” (if you know where that name comes from, you get a Dark Academia award), which seems to be culture and literature deep dives. 

Cook

Educate yourself on culture by learning to cook some of the cuisine; or, if cooking is a little too complex for you, try baking some simple breads. Bread baking can be very good for you mentally: focus on the sensations of touch, taste, and smell. Feel the joy of creation and a bit more of self sufficiency. 

Start A New Language

There are so many free online language courses other than Duolingo. Check out this post for a whole list with tons of different languages, I just signed up for a beginner’s Dutch course today! 

Thrift Shop

People are doing a lot of spring cleaning at the moment, and while most of the physical thrift stores are closed, online thrift stores remain open. Some online thrift stores to check out:

Thrift Books: Online book thrift store. Need I say more? Free shipping on orders above $10, go stock up on all those classics you weren’t willing to buy the expensive leather bound Barnes & Noble Classics variety. 

ThredUp: Largest online thrift store, lots of people use it. Unfortunately, those who use it often know how valuable the things they’re selling are, but you can still find good quality items at a fraction of the original price. For classic Dark Academia pieces try looking up brands like Ralph Lauren, Zara, White House, Black Market and Reformation.

Facebook Marketplace: I never use Facebook, but Facebook marketplace in an untouched goldmine of old people trying to get rid of stuff. At least in my area, furniture is Marketplace’s main selling point; every day there’s like, five pianos for sale for less than $20. Still, you can find good clothing pieces there, especially boots or coats, though the stuff goes fast so I’d check back often. (Also, please be safe going to pick up anything you buy: take someone with you or let someone know exactly where you’re going.)

Watch Documentaries

Find something you’re interested in: the evolution of Russian organized crime, a specific figure from history, a particular theory, a certain plant or tea, and become an expert on it. If you don’t have Netflix, or can’t find what you’re looking for there, YouTube has a surprising number of documentaries for free, as well as experts in the subject that are happy to explain it to you. 

Practice Self Care

You have an opportunity now to start living your life differently. Many of your normal day to day obligations are gone, and while that may be scary and debilitating, try to take that extra time with yourself to change your life in little or big ways. Fix your sleep schedule, start actually making yourself a good breakfast every morning. Try yoga, or talk a walk every day; perhaps soon after you wake up, or right before the sun sets, when the world is at it’s most beautiful. Take baths and long hot showers. Sit down and write, either something creative or just what’s happening in the world and in yourself, you’ll be glad you did later. Don’t let your friendships whither: draw those who are close to you even closer. Better yourself for yourself. 

[manicdepressivemom]

My biggest fear

Hold on because there is some hefty (potentially triggering) backstory here.

When I was 7 years old, my mom had her first manic episode with psychosis (bipolar disorder). To everyone around her, she was fine one day and very much not fine the next. I was a shy and reserved child, but my early years had been relatively unremarkable.

But one day she picked me up from a friends and we drove for two days before she pulled into a house in a state we’d never been too. She began carving something into a truck parked at this house before she and I were placed in the back of a police car and taken to the station.

After that she was forcibly taken to a psychiatric hospital. I don’t recall how long she was there but she came back in a depressive haze and barely left bed. By third grade, I was quite self sufficient out of necessity.

For years she would cycle and drink. She was verbally and physically abusive. She began counting me as an inconvenient causality in a war against my dad. Once he was gone, I was the new enemy.

Once I graduated high school, my own teenage angst gave way to hypomania. I felt electricity in my veins. I was an ethereal being and made a point of getting blackout drunk whenever possible. As I began college, this euphoria left me and I crashed into my deepest depression.

I had my own stay at a psychiatric hospital. I was diagnosed bipolar 2 and given a wide variety of drugs. Those drugs brought with them side effects like hallucinations, delusions, excessive drooling, and shaking hands. Eventually I gave up on the drugs and strived for stability through life style change. I’ve managed to be relatively stable for many years. Stable enough that I haven’t destroyed my marriage, at least.

I asked family years ago what happened to my mom, and someone said she’d gotten into a bad batch of drugs. I held onto this rumor for dear life.

Until my first son was born. He was angelic. Soft, black hair, round cheeks, and plump lips. And I was suddenly certain that I was unsafe.

I spent the first few days in the hospital certain that someone would notice I wasn’t fit for motherhood. I kept my lips tight during discussions about PPD. I accidentally set off a door alarm during a walk around the ward and felt sure they’d come take him away from me.

Once we got home, the fear took hold. I washed my hands until they bled. If someone found out I wasn’t washing my hands many times while making his formula, someone would take him away.

I had images pop into my head of him hurt. I won’t go into this here because it triggers me; and I’d hate to trigger anyone who made it this far. The images scared me. I dared to google them a time or two but worried that researching too much would let someone know how unsafe I was.

I walked through doorways with painstaking care. I refused to carry him down the stairs and I absolutely couldn’t hold him over the concrete driveway. He cried. I cried. I knew I was a monster, and he probably did too.

We survived and our second came along. The images that had never gone away intensified. All knives must be kept put away. Don’t look at the power tools. And definitely don’t let a single soul know.

Recently I overreacted. I asked my husband if he liked a 99¢ goodwill painting for the kitchen accent wall. He said no. I opened the back door, flung the picture outside, and yelled for awhile.

After several hours of not talking, I had a breakdown and we decided my reaction was probably a trauma response to a recurrent issue in my childhood.

My obsession with thrifting crashed, and was replaced by an all consuming fire to learn about ptsd. I read books and blogs. I listened to podcasts and journal. Every minute of my existence was obsession.

So I called a therapist. And we spoke a few times before they decided Cyclothymia and ptsd. Somewhere on the bipolar disorder spectrum.

And all my fear that I might one day snap like my mom felt more confirmed than every before. I’m a good enough mom. But so was she. And then she was abusive. Then she hated me. And here I am at 29 untangling all of this.

I asked my dad, my dearest alley, had mom done drugs? Please tell me drugs triggered it. I can avoid drugs. But now, that wasn’t it. He thinks she was stressed. He traveled a lot and she had an affair. I can avoid an affair, but I can’t avoid stress.

There is no amount of practical thought that can relieve me of this fear. For all I know, my mom saw the same things. Me, hurt, by her own hands. And then she couldn’t control those thoughts anymore.

Or maybe she never had any sign. She just woke up one day in a different reality. A world in which my dad was the devil, and I had the devils eyes.

I can’t think my way out of this one.

My greatest hope is just that my husband won’t pity me at all. I hope that, if I begin to unravel, he takes the kids and he runs. Don’t ever give me another chance to hurt them the way she hurt me. God they deserve so much better.

Even then, he might not know before it’s too late.

I can’t trust my brain or my body. It doesn’t matter that the correlation between my moms mania and my hypomania is weak. It doesn’t matter that I love my kids. Because she loved me too. I believe she still loves me dearly today.

But I’ll never be certain that I won’t become her one day. And as long as I’m here, I can’t know that I’m safe.

[incidentreport31]

Episode Three: Gather raw meat of any kind, red preferred, human is fine TRANSCRIPT

(You can listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts.)

Recorder clicks on.

SFX: papers shuffling as Val decides on an account to focus on for the day.

ARCHIVIST:

(humming Under My Skin by Jukebox the Ghost for a few moments as they decide) Which one for today, then? Christ, this place is a mess.

[they stop as they pick up one covered in grime]

ARCHIVIST CONT.:

What in god’s name? What’s all over this one… (they scoff) Great, Val. You’re asking the damn recorder questions now.

[beat, then to the recorder]

Although I suppose you’re good enough company even if you can’t answer… (fondly) aren’t you?

[an awkward beat, a little too long]

(they clear their throat) I suppose I’ll be getting this one over with…

[SFX: shuffle of paper as they pick it up]

Certainly seems the most interesting given the…

[SFX: another shuffle as they flip it back and forth and take it in]

-residue… on it. (they sniff) God, the smell of it. Almost like rotten meat.

(they shudder)

(sighing) Right. Best get right into it… (muttering) it’ll be over sooner.

For the consideration of their parents: Bryn Fischer’s retelling of their time traveling alongside their road bike expedition through Massachusetts and- Dear Lord- a - what does this mean- a… a meat rain? (they sigh, exasperated) Yes, a “meat rain” that they came upon while driving.It seems Mx. Fischer is requesting their parents to pay fully for their next vacation… I’ve said it before, but (sighs) Rich People. Surprisingly, though, this account does seem to have a date written in: July 21, 2001. Regardless of my disbelief in the fact that the previous Archivist finally did something competent, their account begins as such:

[ACCOUNT STARTS]

I used to drive support for my parents’ long distance bike rides. They used to go out for anywhere from 90 to 200 miles a day with only a few stops in small towns where they could meet me at the car and grab new waters before heading right back out. They’re big bike geeks and I was the one person they’d always had at their disposal for the longer trips. Once I turned sixteen and properly had a driver’s license, it seemed to occur to them that they didn’t really have to ask their other long-distance riding friends to drive alongside them. Instead, they turned to me to make sure they were safe and sound on their excursions. Which was honestly fine for a while! I mean, when I’d first gotten the freedom of driving, it felt like such a treat to go on these trips and be able to just drive for hours and hours with someone else paying for my gas. And beyond that, it was nice to see everything out on the roads. I always found something good on those days where my parents were tirelessly trekking across the state highways. I loved seeing things I’d never seen before, whether it was the weird trinkets at rest stops or patches of snow hiding under dense forests I’d never seen before. I loved the exploring of it, but if I’m being honest, the thing that really amazed me was my parents. The dedication it took to willingly submit yourself to that much physical exertion with nothing but the few waters they could carry on their bikes between our meeting spots… Well it wasn’t something they’d passed down to me, that’s for sure.

[beat]

But, that’s all to say that after a while of driving for them, it eventually lost its charm. They eventually found a route they loved above all others and decided that they were going to make it their annual ride. As I’m sure you can tell, the whole “seeing new places and exploring” thing went away pretty quickly a few trips in. I was a stupid teenager, you know, and started griping about it to them two years in when they decided the perfect time for their next ride was over the weekend that my eighteenth birthday fell on.

ARCHIVIST:

Sometimes, Bryn, parents don’t have an ounce of self-awareness, I’ll give you that much, but this is getting past the point of exposition and I’d suggest you get to the point lest you sound like a writer who got to write in more background details than usual because this is a two-part episode.

[ACCOUNT]

After that, well I decided they could get their friends who actually gave a damn to go along with them. And even then, I was going away to college in Boston soon, so they’d have to stop relying on me eventually, so it was as good a time as any.

[beat]

Well, that’s my rambling exposition for you, I suppose.

ARCHIVIST:

Thank God.

[ACCOUNT]

But of course, by my sophomore year in university I was growing away from my parents and our calls had become less frequent. As much as I hated to admit it, I missed them. So when they called me and briefly mentioned they’d tired of their old route and would be taking on a new ride that summer, namely one that would loop right by me in Boston, I jumped at the chance, telling them to please not bother any of their friends with the trouble of driving and to let me come along. They were thrilled, of course. It had been a while since I’d willingly gone with them on their trips and they agreed without a second thought, inviting me to stay at their hotel with them like old times. I’ll spare you the details of the trip as a whole, I suppose. It was 119 miles along Wachusett mountain and there was a lot to look at. I mean I could go on and on about the sights I saw and the nostalgia that bloomed in my chest when I remembered the first few drives I’d taken with them.

ARCHIVIST:

(mocking) Heaven forbid you go on a tangent.

[ACCOUNT]

The important thing is the fact that, although I was so sure I’d checked all the maintenance lights off beforehand, by some twisted turn of fate, the lights on my dashboard flicked off, and stopped functioning altogether. It would have been fine, I mean it was in broad daylight still, but without a working speedometer, I was screwed. Now, my first thought was rage, of course, quickly followed by worry about my parents. I was lucky enough to have broken down where there was still cell service and to have my father pick up when I called, the two of them having momentarily paused to sight see. He assured me that it was okay. They’d be riding through where my car had stopped in about an hour and would be able to refuel their waters and snacks, but that they were going strong and should be fine to continue the ride. He told me just to call Triple A and make sure to get myself back to the hotel we were staying at safely and to leave the waters and things by a tree if by some miracle my car was fixed before they got to me. I tried to stay calm and called for the repair guy, who informed me he wouldn’t be there for about an hour and a half which was… just perfect.

ARCHIVIST:

Now I genuinely cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not as it’s written down so it’s anyone’s guess really.

[ACCOUNT]

I thought for a while and decided it would be fine if I walked around the nearby woods for a little while. Like I said, I really did love the exploring aspects of these trips and I figured that if I would be stuck here for a while, I might as well make the most of it as long as I kept my phone on me and kept track of the time. And honestly? It was some of the best fun I’d had in a while. Staying in the city for college had put my love of nature on hold indefinitely and I was happy to have it, even if for a short time. After a little while of walking around, I found this nice secluded area right on the edge of an open field and took a seat within a bush where the branches grew haphazardly enough that there was a decent sized hollow space for me to rest. I closed my eyes, just enjoying the moment in spite of my circumstances.

[beat]

SFX: Eerie music begins playing.

And… that’s when I heard it. There was this slight whooshing noise followed up by a few wet squelching sounds as whatever seemed to have fallen bounced once or twice along the damp earth.

My eyes snapped open, but as I scanned the forest floor, nothing immediately caught my attention. Everything seemed normal. And then as I was staring open-eyed at the field in front of me, it seemed as though the sky opened up. But… not with rain. Instead of water, there were fleshy colored chunks of all sizes just plummeting down from the sky into the field. They flopped as they hit the ground in a way that was both comical and simultaneously made me afraid I was going to lose the continental breakfast I’d had at the hotel just a few hours earlier. And that’s before I even noticed the smell. In the end, that’s what really made me realize what I was looking at. The smell that permeated the air as the shower continued suddenly clicked in my brain: rotten meat. There was nothing else that could smell so repulsive and sickly as the mass of meat chunks that had begun to collect on the field before me.

[RECORD SCRATCH]

ARCHIVIST:

What.

[beat]

[ANOTHER BEAT]

(they clear their throat) Right.(somewhat shakily) Moving on then.

[ACCOUNT]

By now, I was holding my hands clasped to my mouth, trying not to panic and furthermore hoping that the meat shower would stay central to that one area. Honestly I didn’t know if I would be able to handle any of it coming near me and I was thankful for every second it didn’t. It went on like that for several minutes through which I finally resolved to keep my eyes firmly shut.

[beat]

And then all of a sudden, the wet flopping sound ceased. For a moment, I could almost believe I imagined it, with my eyelids still pressed together. And yet, the smell still hung in the air. I slowly opened my eyes, hoping not to see what I deep down knew I would. What had once been a gorgeous fertile field full of lush grass and the types of wildflowers that would have been classified as weeds by those without any sense-

ARCHIVIST:

You mean botanists who likely have PHD’s? Hmm. I see.

[ACCOUNT]

Well, it had been turned into a literal hellscape. Not only was the meat layered on itself in clumps of already rotting material slowly heating up in the mid-day sun- which yes is as nasty as it sounds- but even the areas where the meat hadn’t settled were covered in that kind of slimy residue that comes off when you pat pre-packaged meats dry before you cook them. Pretty awful in every sense of the word.

[beat]

I sat on the ground for a few more minutes hidden safely within my bush before I realized that it had probably been about forty-five minutes since I called the Triple A man and figured now was a good a time as any to try getting back to my car, especially since I wasn’t keen to get caught up in any second round of meat rain.

SFX: Eerie music starts playing.

Unfortunately for me, the moment I decided this was exactly the moment the man and little girl walked out into the field. They came in from exactly the opposite side from where I was attempting to stand up, so of course they saw the bush shudder even with the cover it gave me. I hoped against everything that they would pass it off as an animal, perhaps drawn towards the display looking for dinner, and it seemed that, even standing up as I was, I was lucky enough to scrape by on that front.

I guess you’ll be wanting a description of them, yeah? The man was a little older, maybe in his late thirties and seemed positively pleased to be walking through the field of gristle and gore. At the very least, his smile beamed as he passed his eyes back and forth across the field. The girl next to him seemed to be so young, a toddler: maybe five at the oldest? I don’t know, I’ve never been good at discerning children’s ages. But young as she was, she didn’t seem put off by the scene around her in the slightest, skipping along next to the man with her hand swinging along in his.

I wish I knew what happened next. You ever have one of those moments where you suddenly realize you’ve been holding your breath? That’s the only thing I can chalk it up to I guess. Maybe it was the terrifying notion of them noticing me any further, a freeze fear response, or just subconsciously trying to keep the smell out of my nostrils, but no matter the reason, I realized I hadn’t taken a breath in far too long a few moments too late and I fell forward into the bush.

[beat]

Loudly. Loud enough that when I came to my senses a second or two later, halfway fallen out of the bush where they could see me clear as day, I could see both of them staring at me with their heads cocked to the side. As frightened as I was, though, I remember clearly that the two of them shared the same calm, kind face, the pleasant demeanor dimmed only by their surroundings. And then, with my head still cloudy, I heard him call out to me.

“Are you alright over there?” And that was the moment I knew that-

[SFX: paper being turned over frantically and then a beat]

ARCHIVIST:

(frustrated) Hm. It seems that the account ends there if I’m not mistaken. Though it seems the story does not. I suppose maybe there’s another sheet around here with the rest of the story, although how I’m going to find it in this mess I can only guess. (muttering) Guess I’ll just have to keep a look out for another paper coated in this grime, which I am now unfortunately being led to believe is meat… juice.

Either way, I’m afraid that with the few details I’ve been given so far I cannot confirm anything about this case one way or another. I would love to dismiss it right off the bat and write off the… grime on this paper as a practical joke, but until further research is done or I get a hold of the rest of this story, I’m afraid I can do no such thing. (a long, drawn out sigh)

[SFX: the listeners become aware of the sound of a camcorder whirring at some point in this closing as Chris approaches]

[As Chris begins, the Archivist yelps in surprise, maybe a little desk clatter]

CHRIS:

Do you think you could do another take real quick? Maybe up the acting a bit during the meat rain, really sell the emotion?

ARCHIVIST:

Bloody hell—who are you?

CHRIS:

Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you.(then, trying to be cryptic, but she’s too over-the-top for it to be scary) Or did I?

ARCHIVIST:

(confused) You—how long have you been in here?

CHRIS:

Uh. The whole time? I thought you’d say something to me eventually, but you were really lost in the sauce there for a bit.(trying to be funny) Or, lost in the meat juice, I guess. (she giggles at her own joke.)

ARCHIVIST:

Well, my sincerest apologies, but you weren’t supposed to be in here in the first place. Who are you? Is—is that a camera?

CHRIS:

Oh, I’m Christine Lewis, one of the researchers!

[Val tries to speak, but Chris cuts them off.]

CHRIS:

Just Chris is fine. Anyways, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get some footage for my channel.

ARCHIVIST:

(slowly) Your...channel…

CHRIS:

(she hums.) I’m kind of going for like, a Buzzfeed Unsolved type vibe, you know?

ARCHIVIST:

I’m afraid I don’t know what that is.

CHRIS:

Damn. No culture in these archives. Maybe if you stanned Ryan Bergara, this never would have happened.

ARCHIVIST:

Look, Chris, as...flattered...as I am to be the subject of your web series, I don’t appreciate being recorded without my knowledge. At least I have control over when this girl here turns on and off.

CHRIS:

Did you just call the tape recorder a girl…?

ARCHIVIST:

(overlapping) Not the point. Could you please get back to doing your job, and save the videos for when you’re not at work?

CHRIS:

If you insist. It’s gonna be worth it, though. You’ll get a shoutout in my one million subscribers video, just you wait.(mumbles). Just gotta get to ten subscribers first. Maybe if I was more active on Twitter. Say, do you think we could make an account for the [REDACTED] Institute?

ARCHIVIST:

(they are at their limit) Chris?

CHRIS:

Yeah, boss?

ARCHIVIST:

Get back to work before I tell HR to write this up.

CHRIS:

Yeah, yeah, I’m going.

SFX: Chris begins to walk off.

ARCHIVIST:

(they huff a sigh.) End recording.

Recorder clicks off.

CREDITS:

Incident Report Number 31 is a podcast made by Three-Eyed Frog Presents. This episode, “Gather raw meat of any kind, red preferred, human is fine,” was written, directed, and produced by Val West and Luka Miller with sound design by Luka Miller. This episode featured Val West as the Archivist and Jesse Smith as Chris Lewis. Music is produced by Luka Miller. To keep up with the show and find transcripts, make sure to follow us on our Twitter at @IR31Pod and on tumblr at @IncidentReport31. To contact us with any questions or concerns, feel free to email us at incidentreport31@gmail.com. Thanks for listening.

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: December 2020

And so concludes another year! Maybe not the most ideal 12 months on record, but certainly memorable. I dunno. Anyway here’s how I wrapped up the year.

……….FILM……….

Gremlins (1984) Every time I watch this I just marvel at the fact that it was made. The practical effects are fantastic, the characters are so over-the-top that I think the Gremlin-sized mallet is the most believable part of the whole film. It just has that energy of a live-action cartoon and for that, I love it.

Gremlins (1990) This and Aliens fall under the category of sequels I didn’t like at first (for the hard turn in tone) but have come to really appreciate and enjoy. The opening with Bugs and Daffy really sets the tone for the whole thing and in hindsight, I appreciate how it manages to do all the same stuff that was loved about the original while making it feel bigger and different. Not necessarily better or worst, but definitely different.

Happiest Season (2020) It really felt like Harper was written to be the villain, right? Anyway it was a solid Christmas movie for a modern era, Kristen Stewart was a solid lead, and Dan Levy’s comedic timing is unreal. All-around fun watch.

The Family Stone (2005) Claire Danes and Luke Wilson are the only redeemable characters in this movie and while I don’t think they’d work out as a couple, it’s a shame they never get a chance to chat and just say “hey all of our family members are awful, right?!?” Actually Thad and Patrick are decent people, but I suppose they’re overshadowed by everyone else. Oof what a movie.

……….TELEVISION……….

Ted Lasso (Episode 1.01 to 1.10) Never have I more sincerely connected with a character’s outlook than Ted Lasso. It doesn’t matter if you know anything about Premier League soccer, what you get is an optimistic, heartfelt comedy that doesn’t punch up, punch down, or really punch at all. It’s gentle and kind and the sort of tv we need more of right now.

The Queen’s Gambit (Episode 1.01 to 1.07) Dang I thought I knew a little bit about chess but like...none of that helps here. It felt like a Rocky miniseries only chess instead of boxing (and I mean this all as a compliment). Given that the show doesn’t expect a knowledge of the grame, credit to the actors for communicating what’s happening in a game just through facial expressions. Worth checking out.

The Bachelorette (Episode 16.08 to 6.13) You know what, this was a pretty good season! It’s a shame we didn’t get any follow up after the proposal, but it was refreshing to see a group of guys who all got along and were just generally mature!

Mad Men (Episode 7.12 to 1.14) And so ends a pandemic-long viewing of Mad Men. First time watching it and I knew a little of how the series ended and honestly, I think it was fine! We got to check in with most of the cast and while I wish we could’ve kept going with these characters, it really did feel like they were all headed off in different directions anyway. Great series would highly recommend.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1.07 to 1.11) It wasn’t until Asuka showed up that I realized this show is a metaphor for puberty and thus, is super horny all the time. Viewing through that lense, it’s an interesting allegory and the robot fights are cool.

The Mandalorian (Episode 2.01 to 2.08) For me, this show works best when it’s doing its own thing and just kinda existing in the world. The frog lady stuff, the random tasks, even the first ep did a good job of walking the line between fan service and the confidence to tell a new story. But dang if that last ep didn’t throw it all out the window. I’m just not a big enough Star Wars fan that I need to see all the old stuff again. It’s lazy writing and that’s what bums me out the most.

……….READING……….

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark (Complete) Really great! I don’t read much modern(ish) day fantasy but the ideas and worldbuilding in this are so economic that it felt immediately familiar. Plus who doesn’t love the idea of a sword-wielding heroine cutting down monstrous klansmen?

Illuminatus Part III: Leviathan by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (Complete) After reading all three parts I can say, with confidence, that I have no idea who 90% of the characters are. Maybe it’s the similar names (John, George, Joe, etc.) or that every character talks like a philosophy student, but I just couldn’t separate them from each other. The plot and illuminati stuff was fun, but I’d seen so many great reviews and high praise that I was expecting it to be more fun.

Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke (Complete) Darwyn Cooke’s effortlessly cool style elevates Stark’s pulp story to something that walks the line between classy and cruel. A murderous criminal is a tricky lead to follow but somehow you still want to see how it all shakes out. If you dig this first book then I recommend getting all 4 of Cooke’s interpretations of Stark’s work.

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley and Nathan Fairbairn (Complete) Still love this series after all these years and rereading them in color has been great. I still think the “glow”, as a twist/reveal, doesn’t really work and is somewhat convoluted, but it’s one misstep in what’s a consistently great run. The color version only adds to the quality of the book.

Dragon Ball 3-in-1 Vol. 2 by Akira Toriyama (Complete) This is the sort of light-hearted, good-natured comic I like to read around the holidays. There’s just something about a world where a criminal organization can be a mix of humans, bears, and a monster made of jelly that feels right, you know?

……….AUDIO……….

Song Exploder (Podcast) I’ve only listened to a handful of episodes so far but it’s really giving me a new perspective on music and the craft that goes into composing! I recommend starting with songs you like and then expanding from there.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) A small seasonal interlude! I’ve posted a longer recap on Reddit but the group has temporarily resolved the issue of the island flood and have moved on to an escaped Fairy causing wintery havok and significantly dropping the overall island temperature.

D&D Homebrew Adventure (Menace of Merlin) And so concludes the adventure! I think I could’ve made the final showdown against Merlin a little more climactic, but live and learn. Now we’re taking a break as the group makes up new characters to play in this world!

And that’s it! We did it! Goodbye 2020 and here’s to a bigger and brighter 2021!

Happy Thursday!