#also i wrote this from the perspective that these weirdos are not *actually* together but like. they're together. obviously.

[alexihawleys]

Chenford + “I know what it’s like to want to go home.”

Tim yawns as the phone rings, sitting up a little bit further against the headboard so he doesn't just pass out. He rarely gets so tired that he just falls asleep while doing things, but if he were going to...he's pretty sure tonight would be the night. He's been on the road for nearly two weeks and he's been playing hard – plus, he's kind of used to sleeping with her, now.

"There he is," her voice is soft in his ear and he leans into the phone, an easy smile stretching across his face. "I thought you went and forgot about me."

"You? I could never," he hums, shaking his head. "Hi, baby."

"Hi," Lucy's grin is loud and clear through the tone of her voice. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," he shrugs. Lucy hums in his ear, clearly not believing it. "I'm sore. I'm tired. I'm ready to come home." He lets his body slump down a little bit, turning onto his side and listening as she fusses around in what sounds like the kitchen. "What are you cooking?"

"I'm making tea," she answers softly. He hears her moving – the mug clanks against the countertop and then there's the unmistakable rustle of tea bag wrappers, moving around in the large glass jar he's made fun of more than once. "What'd the trainer say about your shoulder?"

Tim sighs. "Mitch thinks I should take a night off, but he won't force it yet." Lucy clicks her tongue and he huffs at her. "I will, but if I'm going to be useless I'd rather do it on a home stretch."

"Useless," Lucy snorts, the phone now closer to her mouth. He can practically see her if he closes his eyes – she's standing in her little kitchen in a Dodgers t-shirt, her hair a little tousled, face a little pinched as she watches the steel tea kettle get closer and closer to its boiling point. "If he thinks you need a night off, you should take a night off. You could do something fun."

"There's nothing fun to do in," he presses his lips together as he trails off, wracking his brain for what city he's in right now.

Lucy laughs, waiting a moment. "Where are you, Bradford?"

Tim grumbles, letting out a low sigh. "Somewhere boring enough that I don't remember."

Her laughter is sweet enough that he doesn't much care she's laughing at him. "There are plenty of fun things to do in Milwaukee, freak," she grins into the phone. "What, you'd rather just spend your off-days here?"

"Is that revolutionary? Wanting to spend my downtime with you?" Tim licks his lips, listening to the ambient noise on the other end of the line as she considers. "Besides, I'm almost finished breaking that hanging chair you've got – it would be a shame to have a day off and not spend it completing my mission."

"Shut up," Lucy laughs, and he can tell she's rolling her eyes as the kettle starts to sputter. "If you rip a hole in my ceiling, you're going to be the one that charms my landlord into not charging me for it."

"If I rip a hole if your ceiling we're just going to call the Housing Bureau and get them to put it on your landlord for having a shoddily made building," he sinks down a little further into his pillows, tipping his face away from the phone as he yawns. "But, sure, babe. I can charm the pants off anyone you want...just don't ask me to sign his balls."

Lucy laughs, loud enough that he hears her put the phone down and back away. When she's close again, he can tell she's flipped off the stove as both she and the kettle grow a bit quieter. "That was horrible. God, I miss you."

"I miss you too," he breathes. "You sleeping okay?"

Lucy pours her tea into the mug and he lets out a slow, content breath at the sound. If he suspends his disbelief hard enough, he could be on her couch right now. "I keep having dreams about my teeth falling out," she says, matter-of-fact, "but otherwise, fine."

"You should look that up," Tim furrows his brows, his eyes still closed. "That's weird."

"I know," Lucy's voice is soft, focused. He can hear her moving and figures she's flipping off all the lights in her living room, double checking to make sure the stove is off. "I want you to sleep when you get back here. One night, nothing else – we just rest." Tim grumbles, shaking his head as though she can see him. "It's one night. You're off for...what, four? Five, if you take the extra day?"

Tim stretches his arm behind his head, grimacing at the stiffness in his shoulder. Fuck, when did he get this old? "Four if I take the extra day. I just," he lets out a slow breath, rotating his shoulder slowly. "I only get so much time with you."

"You'll get all the time you want with me when the season's over, though," she reasons, and he knows she's right. "Besides, you're going to be useless to me on no sleep – and don't tell me you're not running on no sleep...I know what it’s like to want to go home. You're never really comfortable until you're there."

He softens, albeit slowly. "Alright," he nods, listening as she sips her tea, then sets it down – probably on one of the heavy coasters she's got on her nightstand – before sitting on the creaky side of her bed. "You just know me so well, don't you."

He doesn't phrase it as a question, but she still answers. "Too well," she hums, and he can't help the smile the thought of that puts on his face.

[apoptoses]

i gotta know, what order do you rank the VCs

oh man I cannot number order them, to do that would be like picking a favorite cat and they change depending on my mood so like I gotta go with the tier system.

ALSO I never promised anyone here that I had taste, these are my own personal feelings etc etc Mostly I have ranked them based on how much I skim when (or if) I re-read lol

The Vampire Armand- Anne put her whole entire vampirussy into this one like this is the book that has everything!!! There's angst, there's smut, there's cults and kidnapping, there's the beauty and high drama of the Venetian renaissance, what more could you want!! And honestly I think her Armand voice is one of her strongest, right up there with Lestat. You could take an Armand quote out of context and know he's the one speaking. Even my least favorite parts of TVA are still more enjoyable than the best parts of the VC books I don't love.

The Devil's Minion Chapter of QotD specifically - absolute insanity, just banger after banger, not a single word wasted. I could have read an entire novel of this, and again, a unique voice and style! I think this part of the book slaps so hard because it's the first truly modern part of the VC, told from a modern perspective and like. It's so good because every VC reader has probably thought 'wow how exciting would it be to be a vampire's companion/lover' and then Anne actually went and wrote what that would be like. Incredible!

The Vampire Lestat - Getting the back story of the characters introduced in interview is incredible and I feel like Anne finally cut loose and let herself start to be a weirdo with all the world building and entangled relationships. Also just worth the re-read for Armand drop kicking Lestat out of Notre Dame and Marius's insane house of taxidermy and baboons.

Interview with the Vampire- a classic, no other details needed.

Tale of the Body Thief- a polarizing choice I know, but it's such a wild diversion from the typical VC books. Lestat described himself as the James Bond of Vampires and this is the one book that's truly like a tightly written action movie. And Lestat is just so monstrous in it, and in a really complex way- like he's partly reacting to the trauma he went through with Akasha, he's at a low point with self esteem, but then also some of this behavior begs the question of whether being a vampire made him the way he is or whether it's just inherent in him. An underrated VC book tbh.

Blood and Gold- I just love that Anne took on the challenge of writing the life story of a vampire that is thousands of years old. Reading it gives me the same feeling of growing up and realizing that the people you considered 'adults' are just as lost and mentally immature and messed up as you, and never really had any idea what they were doing when child-you thought they had it all together. Also I just love anything that gives me more of the events of Armand's life from another pov.

Queen of the Damned- a great story but I get bogged down by the number of characters and plot lines introduced every time I re-read it, and I end up skimming some of the POVs (or skipping them entirely like baby jenks) I know Anne finally put her foot down and told her editors to fuck off with this one but I wish she'd listened to them just a tiiiiny bit and cut some stuff/expanded other more interesting stuff.

Pandora - Such tight writing!! I wish Pandora hadn't been sidelined in the other books because Anne built such a strong character with her, she deserved better tbh!!

Prince Lestat - it's okay, I just like the sections with my favorite characters and seeing some secondary characters return like Bianca and Allessandra and Antoine. Getting some resolution on what happened with them and where they are closer to the modern day was nice. Also the stuff with Fareed giving Lestat hormones so he could fuck and then get Maury Povich'd eighteen years later was hilarious nonsense, 10/10 Anne insanity. This book just feels like fun trashy vampire stuff (affectionate) in the same way watching True Blood feels like fun trashy vampire stuff, so even if it's not Anne's best work it's still alright imo.

Memnoch the Devil - I simply do not care about God or the Devil or Dora or Rembrandt enough to care about this book, and it only gets ranked below Prince Lestat because I think it drags where PL has a faster pace that allows my brain to skim over the least tasty parts. Really it only makes it to D because of Armand in his dusty jean jacket and Lestat using Dora's uterus as his personal capri sun. Overall though just a slog to get through.

Blood Communion - I just personally do not care for the whole vampire court concept and wish Anne had dropped it after the replimoids. Like I tolerate it in Prince Lestat but ending the series on 'united vampire community' feels off to me when the whole concept of vampires is that they're outsiders struggling with immortality. Also, another kidnapping plot? Anne pls you're better than this.

Merrick - I have erased everything but the Louis bits of this book from my mind. We simply did not need Claudia's vengeful spirit or Louis getting force upgraded and the humanity of him erased by Lestat's ultra-powerful blood but we got it anyways I guess. Very atmospheric though, I do like the return to New Orleans as a setting.

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis - Cruel of Anne to put Atlantis in the title and give us aliens instead of mermaids. The most cracked out VC book in existence, would only re-read if paid to. I have no words for how much I do not care for this book, especially after reading Anne's notes at Tulane and knowing what could have existed instead.

The Vampire Vittorio - such a flop of a vampire he never even gets mentioned in the other VC books. I do not know this man. This book does not exist to me.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 131

Two things about this chapter:

One: I am a sucker for these domestic chapters. I love showing people being people, and weaving world-building and plot development into those scenes.

Two: I am currently doing better from a work-exhaustion perspective, thank you everyone who was concerned!  I actually took the day off the day before I wrote this and just slept as much as I could that day, because the last day I worked, I was literally swaying on my feet if I stood still.

As always, thanks to @the-raven-fae, @baelpenrose, @anotherusrname, and @charlylimph-blog for keeping me going, along with every. Single. Person. Who has found this story somehow and just binged it as fast as you could. I love when my inbox gets detonated by someone new, please never stop!

Glimmering Feathers Podcast is currently doing The Miys from the very beginning! Please listen and support!

“Have the shelter locations for non-combatants been shortlisted?” I panted as Tyche and I sat on the floor of the gym after an intense cardio and sparring session.

She shook her head as she took a gulp of water. “Not that I know of, but Xio hasn’t really told me anything yet.”

“You would think we would be told pretty quick,” I complained. “After all, we’re supposed to be putting together the rosters of who goes where.”

“We put together the lists of combatants and non-combatants.” She stood and held out a hand to help pull me off the ground. “Our part is done for right now, and we’re pretty far ahead of schedule, honestly.”

“This isn’t exactly the kind of thing we want to leave to the last minute.”

Tyche groaned. “Right about now, I wish you were planning the Festival still. You get crabby when you’re stressed and don’t have anything to work on.”

I scowled and made pincer-like gestures with my hands.  She just laughed and shook her head before I asked, “Are you and Antoine coming over for dinner tonight?”

“Only if you let me shower first. We both stink.”

There was no way I could argue with that, especially as I went to put my glasses on and caught a whiff of myself. “Showers, then dinner at twenty-oneish?”  As we exited the gym, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the far-dimmer lighting. Chills ran down my back every time I recognized the similarity to the nightmares Else had given me while trying to communicate, and I always had to spend a few minutes forcing myself not to step over debris that wasn’t actually there.

“Can we do vegetarian tonight?”

“You have to talk Conor into it.”

 A couple hours later, we were standing in my kitchen area.  Tyche was aggressively mashing chickpeas while staring down a nearly-flinching Conor.

I leaned over from where I was mincing herbs. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry. I’m making him lamb, he just doesn’t know it,” she whispered back from the corner of her mouth. 

To avoid smiling and giving it away, I called out instead. “Hey, Antoine, can you come start the tzatziki? You’re better at it than I am.”

“If you would give in to the existence of salt, Sophia, you would be a much happier woman,” he teased with a serious face.

“I use salt!” I objected.

“At the end,” my sister pointed out. “He salts the cucumbers before mixing everything together.” She glanced back at Conor before arching an eyebrow at him.

Distraction time. “Love, how are the plans for the housing fabrications coming?”

“Your mate Arthur apparently convinced Huynh - somehow, it’s not like they talk - that we don’t need fortifications,” he groaned. “I keep trying to explain that we aren’t putting up fortifications, it’s for agriculture.”

“Wait, what? What does that have to do with housing…?”

He tilted his head side to side as he considered. I could almost see him rewinding. “We have several different blueprints drafted for housing, dependent on what we learn when we drop into ‘real space’. Lots of them include plans for those espell-things to grow on the side, but Huynh is pushing back. It’s holding up the approvals.”

“What does Charly think?”

“Anything that helps us grow more plants with less impact on the environment is a win for her, so I’m trying to take the long view. He can decide whatever he wants now, but she’ll go with the plants every time.”

Antoine appeared next to me, wiping his hands. “How would your plan work if there is a cavern system, as suspected, rather than a surface settlement?”

He conceded the point. “Still working on a sustainable grow-light system for that one. But if it works, we would have year-round crops, so it would solve for the problem of storage in the winter.”

The door to our quarters opened just then, and a very tired-looking Maverick paused to take off his boots. “What would solve for the winter storage issue?” he asked.

“Sustainable grow-lights,” Tyche tossed over my shoulder from where she was hiding the lamb.

He made it as far as the table before dropping into a chair and leaning heavily on Conor, who wrinkled his nose. “Mav, you stink.”

“Turns out grav-mechs are greasy, even in space,” he mumbled, nuzzling into the other man’s shoulder instead of taking the hint. “I hate calibrating them.”

“No dirty hands at the table!” I reminded him. He didn’t move his head, just held up two meticulously scrubbed hands. “Fine…” I surrendered.

“Why are we talking about grow-lights?” he asked.

“Huynh is fighting with me ‘bout the housing solutions,” Conor explained, stroking his hair.

“Ah… the plants?”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t you just make the plants where they can grow with less light? I thought you were already working on that.”

“They turned black, tasted horrible, and we ended up with a sentient plague,” I pointed out. “No more dinking around with plant genomes please?”

Tyche turned around, hands on her hips. “We are already trying to manage a food festival and a potential invasion by space-pirates. No more plagues. Knowing her luck - “ she jerked a thumb in my direction “- this one won’t be the apologetic and cute kind.” Apparently the words that just came out of her mouth registered, because she rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air before turning back to her top-secret dinner plan.

I finally finished turning the pale green paste into patties and shoved them in the oven, removing the griddle that had been warming in there. Hefting it onto the heating elements that served as a stove, I started putting together dough for pitas. “So, grow-lights. What kind of light do we need for them to work?”

“Blue, ideally,” Conor responded without even having to think. “Four-fortyish nanometers. Weirdly red light, six-fiftyish nanometers works, too.”

“So explain the issue, because I feel like I’m missing something. Charly designed lights in both those colors.”

“Wrong wavelengths,” he explained, scratching the back of his neck. “And it’s apparently really hard to finetune the wavelengths of organic lighting. She’s managed to get it right, but only for about twenty four hours before it shifts too far one way or another.  We don’t want to depend on completely inorganic light, if Von is as metal-poor as we think it will be.”

“Can’t replace them,” I half-asked. He winked and shot me a finger-gun to confirm my suspicion. “Yeah, that’s a huge problem.”

“The star emits just the right kind of light, barely, so if we stick with surface settlement, we should be okay.”

“And that’s where the storage issue came up,” Maverick mumbled sleepily, bringing us back to the original question he asked.

Conor jostled him gently, and I heard something about a shower to wake up before Maverick padded off in the direction of the bathroom.  Right at the same time, Tyche reached around me to flip a pita before blowing her fingers and cursing softly.  Apparently, her secret was done, so I handed her the spatula and started rolling out more dough.

By the time Maverick came back with wet hair and a too-big shirt that had to be Conor’s, most of the food was on the table and we were ready to eat.  Conor started grumbling about no meat and how could us weirdos eat a meal with no meat when he was interrupted by Tyche clearing her throat. His head snapped up and his jaw dropped.

“You! You are the sneakiest, most beautiful sister in law I could ever ask for,” he extolled dramatically as he saw the platter of lamb skewers in her hands.

She moved the platter out of his prodigious reach as she approached the table. “There’s a catch. You have to at least try the falafel. By itself, no lamb. Then you can have the meat.”

Maverick, more awake now and with half a sandwich already in his mouth nodded. After chewing and swallowing, he nodded again. “It’s really good, I swear.”

I pretended not to notice that he grabbed a skewer off the stack.  Then again, Maverick also wasn’t a grown man who still had to be bribed to eat vegetables. Usually, he had to be bribed to eat meat actually.

Conor, on the other hand, took the falafel pita that Tyche made for him and eyed it skeptically. “I feel like I need to point out that this isn’t a sandwich, this is what you put on a sandwich.” His hesitancy lasted about as long as it took for Antoine to stand and pick up the platter before he took a huge bite out of fear that the lamb would be taken away. He chewed frantically until Antoine put the platter back down, before he actually registered the taste.

I wanted to laugh at the confusion that flooded his face as he stared down at the sandwich in his hand. Finally, he swallowed, but the confusion didn’t stop.

“That’s…. Actually not bad. I thought vegetarian food was supposed to be bad?” He flinched when dual glares were thrown his way by me and my sister. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant - you know what, I’m going to shut up and eat before you two ladies decide I’m for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Very wise course of action,” Antoine confirmed solemnly as he carefully spooned tzatziki on his own, onion-loaded sandwich.

Still shaking my head, I started making my own food when I realized something. “I thought we made a lot more falafel than this?”

Tyche smirked but didn’t say anything. Neither did Antoine, focused on his own meal. Maverick however, was suspiciously quiet. I glanced over at him, only to see him staring really hard at his plate, which now had three empty skewers on it.  As my mind caught up, I actually found the sight kind of adorable.

I must have stared too long though, because Maverick muttered pathetically. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

Kissing the top of his head, I put another pita on his plate. “Baby, we made more than enough. Eat all you want. I just don’t want you to choke, that’s all.”

A long-fingered hand with slightly ginger hair on the back put a skewer on his plate. “Love, we can’t eat all this, you’re fine.”

“I always make enough food for ten people when you two are eating,” Tyche confirmed, not even looking up. “Teenage nephews in the Before. Lots of practice.”

He slowly looked up at us, and realizing that no one was angry, just surprised, he looked less afraid and sat up straight. Conor patted the top of his hand before deploying one of his weaponized, thousand-watt smiles. “C’mon, I’ll show you to make one with the lamb. You’re gonna need a lot of onions for this…”

I groaned, setting off a round of laughter. I wasn’t against onions on a sandwich, but they didn’t have to sleep between two men with onion breath.

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[calliopecalling]

Queen of the South 5x05 Debrief

I'm way late with this... been a busy week. But I do have some 5x05 thoughts beyond my Teresa appreciation post on Thursday, lol.

First, to continue in the long-running discussion about clothing themes, has anyone else noticed that Teresa wears all white when she's talking about going legit or makes a business move in the legit direction? I haven't had time to fully back-track through the episodes but she wears all white when she shows up at the hotel and a different all-white outfit when she signs the paperwork to buy the hotel. She's wearing her all-white blazer in 5x02 when she's talking to James about her plan to go legit. What others? Is this a pattern or am I making this up in my head? Maybe I'm reaching but I really want the queenpin-in-white visions to be the version of herself that got out of the drug business. 😁

Second, I appreciated seeing the Teresa who takes care of her own again this episode -- allying herself with Oksana by telling Oleg she'd only make a deal with him under the condition that he work with her; telling Kelly Anne that she didn't want her working twice as hard to prove herself just because she was pregnant. The queenpin that has grown overly ambitious and focused on her need to achieve safety by hording power but retains her care of and loyalty towards her "family" is a much more believable queenpin to me than one who lashes out at her family. So I'm glad we're not totally losing sight of this part of her?

Third, and look, I watch this show for Teresa and not for Jeresa; and when I started watching the show originally I was actually sort of skeptical of a romantic story-line for her that went past season 2 because I'd already read the book and LOVED it and her character truly stands on its own in the book without needing a love interest to carry through the full story; but this show really is better with a strong Jeresa element than without it. I loved episode 2 not just because they gave us another Jeresa kiss (although, ahem, thank you for that) but because the character James really gives us a looking-glass straight into Teresa's actual inner self and the two of them had lots of screen time in that episode. Episodes 3 and 4 were maybe trying to show us how dark she can get when she's trying to force distance between them and turn away from love? Now this episode we finally got a little bit of them interacting again but I felt like they could've revealed a LITTLE more.

James isn't just her love interest, he's the only character in the show now who's been around since the beginning of season 1 (not counting Pote because he didn't really become an important show character until the very end of that season even though he existed as a person obviously). He's our connection to Teresa's past self, and her connection to that past self, now that Tony is dead. I get it that that's part of why Teresa may be avoiding him. That really totally makes sense. And even so, I think seeing more of the tension between the two of them on-screen would make the central conflict of the season--the tension between Teresa now and the Teresa she used to be--a lot clearer.

So, I appreciated the flickers of that in this episode. The looks they exchanged in every scene they had together. The subtle ("black market antiques dealer, used to work out of Berlin") and not so subtle (motorcycle stoppie) moments of James peacocking for her and her slightly-longer-than-necessary eye contact with him after each of them. Her sincere but slightly breathless "thank you" after he delivered the artwork to her, which I interpreted as partly relief and partly being caught off guard by his sexiness (and competence!). And then her following him out to the balcony to have a... 15-second conversation about taking over Europe 😑 Come on! Their 5x06 conversation on the couch with drinks had better be longer than 15 seconds is all I can say. 🤞

I'm not complaining. I really enjoyed the episode. I still think we'll get payoff. (I mean, Dailyn wrote episode 3x09, so she's gotta be a shipper too, right?! She also wrote 3x12, which is the one in which Teresa finally tells James she doesn't want to lose him. I try not to follow anything she says on social, though, because I feel like she's a bit of a game-player with the fans lol.) But I am ready for more of their duo featuring! I can't wait to see what they bring.

Other thoughts:

POTE. Stop being a freaking chauvinist weirdo about your kid being a boy. Finally people are calling him out on that.

Also, POTE. Stop being such a douche to James! What's with all the grumbling at the man?! (Seriously, what is the point of that from a story perspective...?)

I really really love Teresa and Oksana together. I loved their dynamic back in Season 4 and I loved it this episode. I think part of it is that, without Camila, and without Castel (why didn't Castel become a major character in Season 4 though?), we don't have another female crime boss for Teresa to collaborate with and it's just, it's refreshing having her dealing with another woman. Also Vera Cherny is a babe. And I love the very very low-key sexual tension between them.

George and Boaz. Yes, Boaz is a loose cannon clearly. I'm not sure how George isn't picking up on that but I still loved all George's great lines.

How Boaz thinks he can take over Teresa's business and run a global cartel lololol clearly the guy is delusional and understands nothing about how she actually got as far a she did. But good luck trying buddy. I mean, maybe that's not even his end-game, maybe he's just tired of reporting to a boss who's way less volatile than him? Maybe he's just, as Pote says, a ticking time bomb? Either way, you got it good man, I wouldn't go messing around with a good thing. He's going to, of course, but it's almost funny if he ends up being the final villain.

That said, if he IS the final villain, there's something poetic about that too -- that the ultimate enemy is back home in Mexico where it all started? I kinda like that, tbh.

I know I said I wasn't going to speculate about the rest of the season. Clearly I'm bad at not doing that and who knows, maybe Boaz is just a temporary problem. But I would be surprised if we're already halfway through and the final villain is yet to be introduced.

Unless it's Oksana? It had better not be Oksana.

Or just Teresa herself?

I've seen people talk about Pote and/or KA dying and James and Teresa running off to raise their baby together. FWIW I can get around that as an ending way better than just a "James and Teresa happily ever after" ending. I doubt the series will kill off both of them but at this point for the sake of the story I hope at least one of them does get killed. And sorry Pote but at the moment I hope it's you 😬

[with-my-murder-flute]

12

(Fanfic ask meme!)

12. Friends with benefits or secret dating? 

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS. I honestly believe so much in the secular romance of people who have sex and respect each other and live their own lives and just... accept each other where they’re at. This overlaps a lot with how I like to write/read about polyamory, and also about the relationships I’ve had.

There’s this Alanis Morisette song, And You Owe Me Nothing in Return, and it’s not that it’s the only kind of love I know is in the world, but it’s the only way of moving through love that’s worked for me.

Like, when I broke up with my last girlfriend, I considered our relationship a success. Because she was also my first girlfriend, and before I started dating her, I still had this deep visceral sense that nobody would ever actually want me. Nobody would ever actually want to be with me. My negative mental scripts kept hiccuping for months after we started dating, like “and nobody will ever want me (except my girlfriend???)”. It was like a record skipping.

Oh god this got long. Below: More about me and my girlfriend; my epic FWBmances in previous fandoms, and my super ambitious plans for someone who’s on friendly-fucking terms with half the CQL cast.

It was a long-distance relationship, and she’s married to other people, and she was not one of the people the universe hit me over the head about, so it was not Grand High Romance, but there was a lot of “I love you platonically and if we can make sex work that’d be cool”

So after a few years our lives got busier, which was better for both of us, BUT, it made trying to coordinate times to get together harder, and we kept missing phonecalls and trying to make it up and failing again, and we both have ADHD, and one day I realized that a) trying to make this relationship work was taking a whole fucking lot of energy for not as much reward, and b) My deep sense of being personally unlovable had shifted, over time, to the feeling that I probably could find someone else if I put myself out there.

She made my life better. She made me better. Her perspectives and experiences on things like queer activism and fanfic and community organizing enriched my personal and intellectual life immensely. Last week I had a question about cults and power and control that I knew she was the perfect person to consult with, so we spent half an hour on the phone.

I’m still really fond of the fic-sets I did in Check Please fandom, where I took a canon character who was super obsessed/hung up on his first boyfriend, and changed his life by giving him, in one continuity, a pair of lovers who provide a refuge from his toxic workplace and show him very different ways to succeed at being human and support him building a healthier (and eventually sexy) relationship with his ex,

and in another timeline, a love interest whose interests and ambitions he respects too much to demand she stay where she’s miserable for his sake, and after a couple years of being FWB, she finds a way to come back to him (in which he also has his relationship with the first two, but makes the choice not to focus on them as his primary partners, but they stay friends, and I lost my enthusiasm before I wrote about his ex-girlfriend and current girlfriend falling in love but not in a threesome way but it was gonna be awesome)

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to finish it, but the WIP I’m most engaged with right now is about an OC who was super injured during the Sunshot Campaign and ended up working in as a courtesan/prostitute since he doesn’t have magic healing and his only marketable skills left are reciting poetry and sucking dick, and then he eventually joins a dual cultivation sect and does his best to add as many of the Top 10 Hottest Male Cultivators to his clientele as possible

Which includes really weird and distant and intimate, sexual and emotional and platonic, relationships with all of them, because he can discuss the sexual ethics of BDSM with Lan Wangji before offering to demonstrate that people really can enjoy the sex freak hidden beneath that icy shell, and then turn around and offer Jiang Cheng a person who isn’t intimidated by him and doesn’t want him to be the Big Strong Man (yes there’s pegging). He can fail to help Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue find dual cultivation techniques to prevent Mingue’s qi deviation, and enliven Nie Huisang’s drinking parties with Mo Xuanyu with witty and erudite banter, and quietly stan Jin Guangyao as someone from the gutter who made it, even when that means JGY as Chief Cultivator can’t be seen to do anything to raise dual cultivation sects’ frankly abysmal social status in the cultivation world.

The Juniors fear him because he and his sect head gave them a series of lectures on sexual ethics, so he’s the fatal combination of a weirdo hippy who’ll talk freely about masturbation, and the stern teacher who will know if you don’t tip your sex workers in cash where their management can’t see.

(And then when he meets Wen Ning he recognizes another outcast, someone uniquely without arrogance or pride--someone with, frankly, an outrageously idealistic amount of anger towards the cultivation world’s status quo--and thinks, I would like to become the kind of person who could walk beside you.)

But when one of his patrons advocates for the Jiang sect to accept him as a student in swordsmanship, they tell Jiang Cheng some things that significantly recontextualize their whole years-long relationship as sex worker and client, like how this guy got injured in the first place, which is just frankly hitting Jiang Cheng when he’s already been clobbered over the head with the fact that his pride has ruined his life, and this guy ends up at ground zero of JC working his way out of the post-series breakdown/spiritual awakening. While being consistently in love with/longing to join Wen Ning.

IT’S BASICALLY AN EPIC ROMANCE ABOUT FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS WITH ONE LITTLE ROMANCE-ROMANCE THROWN IN FOR SPICE. I CAN SEE IT ALL SO CLEARLY.

I hope to god I can write the damn thing. And find him a fucking courtesy name.

[kittyandco]

you mustve been asked this already you dont have to answer but what is your relationship with Prince Charming like? and whats your self insert like :0 when i made mine i made them a jester..

1) holy SHIT that’s an epic idea & i would love to hear... 

2) ALRIGHT ALRIGHT yeah, i do get a lot of repeat asks but i totally don’t mind answering! i’ll probably insert links to relevant posts too for more explanation. gonna try to organize this but i will not care if i switch from first to third person LMAO. everything under the cut uwu

3) so my s/i is a runaway. (which i titled my first fic i wrote with us haha...) 

she ran from her family long ago, and ended up in shrek’s swamp. they had to learn to live in the same area... mostly shrek, though. he did the most adjusting. i didn’t care so long as i had somewhere to stay and not get robbed by the weirdos who lurked in the forest. 

so because of that, she’s callous and skeptical of humans... but has a soft-hearted side, too, like shrek. the fact that charming is the exact type of person that made her so indifferent toward the world didn’t help at first. everything about him was repulsive... but also horribly inviting. ugh

honestly even though she’s been beaten down by just about everyone in her life, especially after publicly associating with ogres, she still has confidence in herself to stay strong in her negative convictions. just about everything’s justified. you’d think she’d be indecisive and lame, but just the opposite. especially when the man, The Man is now hers? well... time to never shut up about it. that isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of inner conflict but it’s mostly just that: internal. pain? confusion? don’t know them lol 

AND A BITCH IS NOT IMMUNE TO HIS SO CALLED “CHARMING” TENDENCIES. OK I’M WITH Y’ALL, I RELATE, even if i roll my eyes and scoff at every advance don’t dare stop

also: she aspires to be a knight!! i don’t talk about that enough, but that’s her most profound dream, above all else. only problem is that she doesn’t embody basically any of the qualities that a knight would require sfajdfk 

our relationship is a lot of learning... we come from opposite worlds, but really come together over shared experiences that we wouldn’t expect the other to have gone through. this was part of his appeal to me in real life, what made me relate to him most... the whole fairy godmother situation. it’s funny and all but every time i’m sitting there sweating like yeah haha overbearing mother trying to use her child for her own gain? HILARIOUS........ 😳 but i’m not absolving charming of blame here. he’s Not Great, but there’s clearly more to it, at least from my perspective. (and serious talk aside too i love fairy godmother as a character, who doesn’t, just not in this context asdsjk) 

shared trauma aside, i think we compliment each other so well. he doesn’t feel as pressured to “woo” me every three seconds. (i mean HE STILL DOES I AIN’T COMPLAINING, i actually find it funny sometimes. which he doesn’t understand, but he soon comes to like it because he appreciates seeing me happy... altho sometimes he’s like ok kitty seriously i’m not joking you really are beautiful please listen to me i am trying to flirt with you stop) we can joke and play around, and... he’s never gotten to really do that; chivalric code and all. i don’t see him as the helpless pawn that other people do. he is his own person with feelings... his want for FFA is not his only aspiration. he can be a little clumsy, but that’s because he’s hardly gotten to do anything for himself... and i don’t want him to always be reliant on someone for approval. i’ll let him do things on his own, and even if it isn’t exactly how i wanted it, i know he did his best... and that’s all i could ask for because his best is what i love so much. 

alright i’m leaving before i get emotional 

[whalohs]

i’m back with meta. 

( and then immediately i hecked up the tags, so deleting and reposting. sorry for the spam! )

let’s look at caleb and jester’s relationship, as mainly a retrospective of where it started. i’m also going to talk about where it has gone since, and how the heck we got here. not particularly shippy unless you ship it already (in which case i hope you enjoy the ship meta), and ready to discuss anything as long as you’re respectful about it.

as always, general disclaimer: for me, it’s more interesting for me to think “[character] would do this because [actions]”, rather than “[character] would do this because [player preferences]”. i can’t claim to know the critical role cast, and i think it does a disservice to their characters if i try to bring them in like that. a weird distinction, i know, but i always think it’s important to mention! i try to distance my meta from the cast, and take the character’s actions by their own merit. 

anyway.

for all we joke about how ridiculous jester is or how much caleb was ready to run from the mighty nein, it’s hard to deny these two had a really, really rough start. jester was everything caleb didn’t want in a person, and caleb was someone jester never... really had experience with. 

lemme explain, first with caleb’s perspective: caleb is running from trent & the cerberus assembly. the last thing he wanted was to be noticed or seen, let alone get his name out there in any way shape or form - and yet here comes the most silly, obnoxious, ready-to-turn-the-world-upside-down tiefling he has ever met, and he met molly at the same time. 

naturally, he hates it. but it runs a deeper than having to travel with someone who doesn’t give a shit about discretion when caleb is discretion personified. i think when we dislike someone, it’s because we see parts of ourselves reflected in them; not necessarily all bad, but parts we have lost, never had, or don’t want to acknowledge. 

it’s important to note that while caleb and jester are very different, there are parts that are shockingly similar; caleb started as a very hopeful, bright, and confident young man at the time he entered the assembly, not unlike where jester started in their adventures ( now is a different story, and i’ll get to that later ). they are both stubborn in their ideals and put a lot of faith in the people they care about ( caleb with nott, jester with the traveler, marion, and fjord ). 

i would not be surprised if caleb sees a little bit of his younger self in jester. but the conflict occurs where he sees his younger self as a very flawed, terrible individual, while jester is not... that. he simultaneously wants to protect her from becoming jaded (as anyone with experience tends to want to), while also knowing she could make very awful mistakes (like he did) if left alone. 

that said! jester is the way she is because she was able to foster her positivity, her hopes, and her ideals in a way that didn’t come and bite her in the ass. so it’s not “jester is caleb pre-development”, and more “jester and caleb are two different results due to different experiences from similar individuals”. unfortunately, caleb can’t think like that with the experiences he’s had, hence all of this.  

i think that it’ll make more sense from jester’s perspective: jester’s living conditions weren’t perfect by any means, but they weren’t exactly trauma central, either. she had loving, kind people in her life that allowed her to develop by encouraging what she enjoyed, as opposed to molding her a specific way. again! she was able to grow the strong parts of her personality - her hopes, her positivity, her confidence - in a way that didn’t come and bite her in the ass. she doesn’t regret anything that she did, because she has never had a reason to.

you could say that she doesn’t have enough experience to see the negative consequences of her actions, and i both agree and disagree. experience doesn’t always equate to hardships; while failure is an important part of learning, it is not the only way you learn. caleb is not necessarily more experienced because he suffered negative consequences, but because he experienced more types of consequences.

that said, she is sorely lacking in some experiences! primarily in dealing with people with different wants and opinions than her. having a loving, encouraging, but ultimately sheltered environment likely means she got to have a lot of things her way. and we see a lot of that at the start of the campaign. 

so the simplest way to say is: jester has never really had someone who dislikes her for who she is. she has never sat through a level of conflict resolution her and caleb needed, and so in an attempt to do things in the way that made the most sense for her, basically got off on the worst foot. 

and so, you know, this goes on for a while. start of campaign two is hilariously turbulent for the both of them. caleb makes nice because he sees the benefit of someone like jester in a party (and not much else), and jester isn’t going to treat caleb any differently than she does anyone else. hence, friction. 

then the money conversation / argument / caleb-smears-mud-on-his-face-out-of-spite happens. which i think really was a bigger turning point than we originally thought it would be (because the nature of the fight wasn’t too serious), mostly because caleb took forever to warm up to the party (disclaimer: i love caleb). 

it’s interesting because it’s the one of the first times we actually see... any actual conflict involving jester. most people brush jester off as the quirky weirdo at first, and doesn’t take her opinions as seriously as others. that makes sense, and jester is fine with that! but that’s what makes caleb’s reaction to jester basically saying she grew up spoiled really fascinating. 

he’s furious, and rightfully so. and caleb back then was keen on making sure he didn’t attract any attention, that unless she really struck a nerve he was just gonna nod and not think about it. but as we saw -- that’s not how it happened. i think he especially felt stung because he tried to help, because she had been distressed, but all of it backfired terribly. 

so they fight. they’re upset at each other. caleb smears mud on his face then walks away and i think it hits jester on the head that oh, what she said without thinking really did upset someone, when she hadn’t meant to necessarily make them uncomfortable. 

jester, for the limited social experiences she has, is a very empathetic person. it doesn’t take a lot from her to understand why he would have been upset by what she said, once she cares enough to consider it.

the remainder is a gradual, but noticeable change to where we are now; while it’s outdated and my opinions on details have changed, i did write a shorter meta on caleb and jester on an earlier episode point. i think the bulk of it stands true, though, so feel free to read that and then come back!

spoilers: they’re destroying me now.

a few things i did want to add: i think a lot about how out of all of the nein, the main people who notice jester’s slowly dwindling confidence are caleb and caduceus (beau, nott, and fjord notice it too, just in a slightly different way; and yasha is.... bring ashley back 2k19). caduceus pretty much has 3 million in insight so i’ll touch on that later, but fitting caleb in here is interesting!

mostly because he likely, again, experienced that dwindling confidence in finding his place in life, just in a more drastic way than jester; he pretty much hit rock bottom at the start of the campaign! he’s definitely projecting a little, but a lot of relationships are built on people projecting parts of themselves to others; it’s the easiest way to relate to another person. 

as an aside: it really is cool, and speaks to his development a ton, that caleb’s motives for helping the party have become a lot more altruistic than when i wrote the post above. he cares about them now, very, very deeply, and i have a lot of thoughts on why! this just isn’t the post for ‘em; maybe next time.

how he comforts her has changed too. before it was a lot of [ throw frumpkin at her and hope it fixes the problem ]; his attempts at bringing the party together were definitely more material in nature, compared to now.

it’s also really, really good to see jester slowly starting to see the “imperfections” in caleb ( the ones that caleb sees, anyway ), and accept them wholeheartedly. again! she is an extremely empathetic person, and once they understood each other it became a lot easier for her to actually provide the support he needed. 

it’s the subtle things; less jokes at his expense, and more ridiculous things in general. sharing porn with him because she thinks he’ll like it. and, a surplus of optimism about her outlook on life that seems to affect the top row a ton. 

they’re all in love with her. i can tell. that’s okay, jester has two hands and a tail ( i had to ). 

so, where are we now? it’s obvious enough to say that they’re friends, good friends at that! they care about each other a lot! caleb makes the softest faces at jester and jester grins so happily at him and they really do have a good thing going. 

i think the biggest change in caleb is that he trusts her enough to rely on her for things outside of her abilities. i think a lot about the conversation they had recently after talking to the scourger, and how caleb let himself be comforted by jester instead of denying her attempts completely. it speaks to the level of emotional vulnerability he is comfortable showing to the group now. 

that said: i definitely consider jester to be the group baseline for caleb. liam has mentioned multiple times that out of all of the nein, jester is the one person who he doesn’t want to share his past with. which, again, given the juxtaposition in their upbringing, makes a lot of sense! 

but the fact that he’s willing to be vulnerable with someone he didn’t want to be vulnerable is huge. the fact that he doesn’t see her optimism and ridiculousness as a weakness for the group, and instead looks to use them as strengths (how they use polymorph is a huge example) is very different than beginning-of-campaign caleb.

the biggest change in jester is that her worldview has expanded to understand what caleb needs, and how that might be different than what she needs. it wasn’t as huge strides for jester as it was for caleb, but i think that makes sense! a lot of jester’s development is internal, and reflects a lot about what she thinks of herself, whereas caleb’s development has been very external, and how he is beginning to view the people around him ( and allowing himself to be viewed ). 

but still! it’s huge! jester has two decades of solving problems a certain way, and being told that that way was all that she needed; but her ability to listen, comfort, and provide insight in ways that others in the group can’t thanks to her unique world view really helped shaped the types of conversations she had with him. 

a really, really simple way to say this is that jester started taking caleb a lot more seriously. which i think is hilarious, because you’d think that’d be more fitting for caleb’s thoughts on jester. but once she started reaching out to him to understand, the tone of their relationship changed. it seems less caleb-indulges-jester-on-nonsense and two equals who indulge each other on ridiculous nonsense, if that makes sense? 

oh that said: i do attribute a lot of caleb’s relationship changes with the party to the fact that he went through a lot of external development. definitely not the place for that here, maybe i’ll come back to it some day.

well i’m back and surprising no one i wrote like 2k words on critical role so welcome back, me. i’m rusty and rambly and i may have written things here that aren’t as poignant as i wish it was, so please forgive me if anything seems off!

[mama-germany]

Submission: {IIRC, submission format is bad. This is feminists-against-feminism, hopefully unedited by Mama Germany :^), and ill end my submission with “/submission”, and the rest, if anything, is mama-germany. Also, hopefully the paragraph breaks take, and if they dont…. welp…}

Imma be real with u chief, I dunno what you want me to do with this.  I’m a Jew.  I don’t like communism.  I don’t actually live in Germany.  And I’m not reading all this.  Idk.

Karl Marx’s “On: The Jewish Question” seems a prototype for conflict theory, but has ‘the real jew’ as the 'Haves’ the in place of the 'bourgeois/rich/capitalist’ 'oppressor class’. Conflict theory, icydk, is the collectivist egalitarian pseudoscientific theoretical paradigm taught in sociology, underpinning essentially the whole social justice perspective, and directly encompassing marxist theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical theory, gender schema theory (and likely influenced John Money’s gender theory, and builds on gender theory), queer theory, gender critical theory, postmodern theory, lysenkoism (mostly abandoned), standpoint theory,  post colonial theory, animal liberationism, and of course, intersedtional theory which synthesizes them all together wherever they can be synthesized. Marx said the nature of jews is huckstery, he said the real lofe manifestationnof the god of israel is money itself, he said eliminating money would render the jew an equal and normal person. His whole theory, and every conflict theory since, relies on the presupposition the indovodual is irrelevant and what matters is only the aggregate disparities between groups. This turns his theoey ultimately against all boundaries of the individual, their private property and necessarily their innate natural self ownership, their right to self ddetermination. Marx viewed liberalism/individualism as egoism. His whole family was actually jewish, IIRC, he just didnt succeed like they did, he was jealous and a mooch, kind of a beta, likely an aspie if i am to go off the symptomology. He hated them, he was jealous, he wanted success and they had it and he didnt, and so he was basically spot-on like the character Cain from hebrew legend.

Martin Luther. He wrote “On The Jews and Their Lies”. He described jews as piglets suckling from their mother pig, israel, and blamed jews for pretty much everything he viewed as wrong in society. He was basically the predocessor to Hitler and Marx. And one might actually say Marx was an additional predocessor to Hitler. I sure would posot that as likely, even if by proxy of Hitler being influenced by left socialists. I mean, he literally modified the marxist “'class struggle” into his own version of “the struggle”, “MY Struggle/Mein Kampf”. Which brings us to out next german collectivist philosopher. If youre picking up the theme im putting down.

Third subject, Hitler. Self explanatory. Jew-hating anti-egalitarian ethno socialist. Obviously fits in with the last two subject entries. BTW,I have a larger point to all this random pattern listing. One more.

Slightly diverging from hatred of jews, and more toward the begining of postmodernist thought, Max Horkheimer who said freedom and justice are incompatible opposites, and argued everything are oppressive social constructs, every letter and word and phrase and interaction. He said there is no way to know what a just society is, but that we can complain and struggle against the things we dont like and dont find just. And so if you also consider he in the same sitting said freedom and justice are opposites, and this was while summarizing his academic ideas to an interviewer, we can deduce he was directly opposed to freedom, despite considering himself anti-authoritarian…. Anyways, he was bonkers, hope you dont live near Frankfurt, theyre bonkers around them parts, and i know someone who has told me firsthand just how horkheimer style bonkers that town is.

{Honorary mentions. The Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert. Although there was clearly nuance here, Prussia WAS part of the German Empire, but the german youth injunction/sinker was still set in him, to which collectivism was his driver/floatation. He was a nationalist and refused advisors compelling him into an anti-left policy. Honorary mention 2. Antifasciste Aktion, the communist vanguard formed by the german communist party, the KPD, formed to forght fire with fire, using brownshirt tactics against the brownshirts (to whom they lost).}

All four, all German. All of them. 5 if we include the Kaiser. The father of protestantism, the father of communism, the left reformer whos students sparked the “New Left” movement, and Hitler, HITLER. ALL GERMAN. Which is not an implicit racial claim im implying, but one about a sour philosophy. I refer to this as German Collectivism. It is the archetype if collectivism which germany seems particularly possessed by. These have ravaged the whole world, toppled entire nations and enslaved likely over two billion people considering just the PRC, USSR, and Nazi Germany esp with its labir camps. Luther could be viewed as the origin, certainly the origin of modern german collectivism (protestantism & lutherean conspiracy theory, left socialism, and nazism), but the purpose of germany has not changed through any of its past or present phases. It’s purpose seems to be unintentionally destroying itself in the process of intentionally trying to destroy the rest of Europe in attempt to conquer Europe and/or the world. Maybe it came from its clash with Rome, and it never left that modality of picking away at its neighbors. Perhaps its influence from the abrahamic faiths it long traded with, maybe that caused the sort of over-populate-and-make-conquest-youth-army kind of societal reproductive modality, by influence of the abrahamic faiths that did that in the middle east for millennia (with obvious great success, whereas Germany fails at the same niche). Maybe it’s because of their empire-orientation, their pre-lutherean state where they were catholic, and so the culture, thinkers and leaders became oriented toward empire. I dont know. But i do know Hitler, the Kaiser, and Marx were all three alienated children who were very disturbed, and assume Horkheimer and Martin Luther were of similar origins, it seems the common theme among these german influences. Disturbed children make for great communists, and germany has long been riddled with communists. Communists & new left communists like intersectionalists have been frequently compared to a religion, and germany was previously, according to Neitzsche who overtly shared my distain for German philosophy (to my surprise, i love him even more now), he said it seemed to him 4/5 people in germany  were part of protestant clergy. The whole state seems in an unending modality if one total hegemonic culthood after another.

The purpose for german collectivism being so consistently against jews, i assume. It is that jews are very successful on average by comparison to every other category in the west. So theyre integral to the structure of society, particularly around power. So to do the sort of semetic strategy, the strategy of Mohammad and Moses, the strategy of just toppling societies and inheriting the remains, in the west, one must (perhaps in a sidenote of historical irony) go through the jews. If they want to make their collectivist totalitarian ideology dominate, they have to go full cain, and stab their brothers - the jews. And just as stabbing Abel didnt wirk well for Cain, obviously taking out the most success oriented demographic (OF WHICH THERE ARE TWO) in your country is not going to work well for Germany. The other the German Collectivist opposes is the individualist - the English liberal, the stoic, the empiricist, the existentialist, the naturalist, the skeptic, these sorts. These sorts of ideas bring success, and so the authoritarian german collectivist requires their demise as well. The Kaiser hated types like us, the Fuhror hated types like us, marx hated types like us, Horkheimer, and Luther to a clear extent.

i should mention, im not a supernaturalist, the supernatural is all metaphor taken as superstition, im woth Neitszche. Theres certainly no supernatural, and race is a politically meaningless concept to me. But what is contained within the borders of germany…. There seems to be an eccentric kook persona, as a sort of cultural clone prevalent in germany, parallel to the American redneck or hillbilly. Theyre not all terrible people, but theyre often super fucked up like longislanders are in NY, or hillbillies from appalachia, or rednecks from alabama. Or just extremely eccentric like a german lady i knew IRL or Joerge Sprave, or oh my god, Max Horkheimer the kook. And it doesnt miss the city, theyre like that, but converted to progressive ideology. Crazy brutes from yesteryear, mostly tamed, or stubby and eccentric out the wazoo, or tall frail and vegan and metro af. And it’s not limited to the old german. Einstein, (not shitting in einstein, not calling him collectivist, but) absolute weirdo jewish german, Horkheimer, absolute nut job, jewish german, Marx, jewish family, the only correlation is they lived in Germany, like Hitler, the SS, and the kaiser. Even the nations east of them who share similar culture, look at Freud, absolutely a german collectivist type, but from Austria, which today is apparently an ethno national socialist state in all but admission. Prussia influenced the Kaiser’s collectivism. Even people i know from america who have all german ancestry and only third gen american, theyre bonkers, like ICP & Twisted clown-rap omega bonkers, and believe in shit like vampires and wicca and werewolf “lychen”. Oh, and i forgot to mention in summarizing Hitler, his wackjob supernaturalist beliefs. What is that? Why is this so normal there for so long and nowhere else for so long? It seems to spread from there more than anywhere else.

It has to be cultural, and deep seeded. It can be changed, and it needs to be. A german lady mutual of mine sees it and is clearly very weighted by it; i was hindered by it drastically, and i live in America. The nihilism, the self hatred, the narcissism, the psychopathy, the selective empathy (ie, selective psychopathy), the tribalism, the scapegoating. You live in germany, you must see it. You dont seem to like sj or right socialism. You seem closer to an individualist. A westerner despite Germany.

Would you consider it a real phenomenon? 'German Collectivism’? A label for describing the seeming german modality of collectivist government and the german philosophical origin of the majority of world’s largest, most wide spread, and deadly collectivist movements? Particularly today regarding the medium of marxian/intersectional conflict theory ideology? I can easily empirically trace intersectionalism and the french fake-gobbldigook-espousing 'intellectuals’ Peterson points at, back to the ideas of Marx (a german). What are your thoughts on it? What caused it? Why is it so historically persistent to this day? It’s still trying to domineer and control Europe via the proxy of the EU. And what the hell is wrong with so many (#notall) German children?! Or, likely, should i moreso be asking about ***the (#notall) parents***? But today, those parents were raised by nazis, or people raised by nazis. (#notall) but those nazis were raised by communists and imperialists, and those imperialists and communists were raised by communists and lutherean protestants, and those communists and lutherean protestants were raised by more protestants, and then catholics before them, and tribalist pagans before them. The hegemony is just unending waves of wacky who begat waves of wacky. Id like to see the origin of this crap fixed, see germany liberalized, just to show german collectivism undone SOMEWHERE it has been established for once, and in Germany itself no less. My first thought is just end the EU.

Is it real? What’s the cause? How do we undo it? 

[markcampbells]

FRASIER

Ahh, the old reliable.

Favorite character: Niles. Always, forever, far and away one of my favorite fictional characters, the reason I watched the show at all. I was a big fan as a child and young teen of David Hyde Pierce’s voice work in A Bug’s Life and Hellboy and then his theater work, so my mom, who had always watched the show with my late father, recommended it on that score. I fell in love pretty immediately. She and I always talk about how David Hyde Pierce almost made the show what it was--if it hadn’t had Niles, it wouldn’t have worked, and considering Niles was created at all because they saw the resemblance of DHP to Kelsey, it’s basically carried by him in a lot of ways.

Second favorite character: Honestly, I love all the leads too much to really name one over the other. Frasier is a goddamn drama queen and Kelsey plays him to perfection. Jane does such a nuanced job with Daphne over time and I love that she strikes a balance between Daphne being a complete weirdo and her also being a compassionate person who really brings this family together. Roz I’ve appreciated a whole bunch as I got older, a female character who, sure, from a modern perspective is being slut shamed and joked about, but who never, ever stops owning her enjoyment of sex and who gets to be a successful, unapologetic single mom and career woman. Martin is difficult for me to discuss without getting emotional these days because I still feel the loss of John Mahoney really deeply, but he’s a nuanced character I don’t think people appreciate enough. He’s prickly and conservative and they lean on the tensions between him and the boys plenty of times, but he also loves them no matter what. When he passed, a gay critic wrote a tweet I still hold close to my heart, about how John’s portrayal of Martin helped him understand his own father better. That was magic. That was why this show is so special. That’s all I really can say about it.

Least favorite character: Mel. I consider her worse than Maris in certain ways purely because we actually see her and her antics in keeping Niles married to her and acting out a part are pretty horrible, though at least much briefer than Maris’. Jane Adams and DHP played off each other really well, though.

The character I’m most like: Genuinely, Niles. I’m a younger sister to an older sister I always felt a bit overshadowed by. And I have a bunch of his weird quirks, or people in my family do. (”Ooh, quilts!” is my mom and I am absolutely “Just remember, always use coasters, no snacking in the carpeted areas, and be sure to close the art books after viewing so you don’t crease the spine. :)”) 

Favorite pairing: Niles and Daphne. I don’t remember how much I knew going in, and needless to say by first watching the show through Lifetime repeats whenever I was off school in summers and on breaks I saw it very out of order, but their love story is unlike any other I’ve ever experienced and it means a lot to me. The small moments in Season 6 especially, like “cherry bark and almonds.” and the entirety of “Visions of Daphne,” are really beautifully done.

Least favorite pairing: I already said Mel so I’d probably give this to Niles and Maris overall. Until I watched the show, for the first time ever, all the way through in order, with you, it hadn’t really occurred to me how long the divorce is strung out and how we really do watch Niles endure a constant cycle of emotional abuse over several seasons. There just aren’t many shows that would have the courage to do that and to essentially call it what it is, especially in the nineties. Many Maris moments are played for humor, but in the end all the characters support Niles and reinforce for him that the way he’s being treated is not okay. Considering shows today have fucked that up quite a lot, this is another area where I feel Frasier deserves a lot of credit.

Favorite moment: The entirety of 2x23, “The Innkeepers.” When my mom was still saying I should watch Frasier and I hadn’t yet, she was desperate to find a tape she knew had this episode on it. We did find it and it had several episodes (the first one I ever saw was actually “Leapin’ Lizards,” kind of an underwhelming start LOL, but one of the others on that tape was “An Affair to Forget,” another of my favorite episodes and one we constantly quote in this house [“OH THAT’S JUST WHAT WE NEED, NILES, A FOURTH LANGUAGE!!!”]), and this was indeed one, and nothing has ever moved it from being one of my favorite episodes of all time of anything. It is perfect. (Sidenote, IMDb user ratings rank so many episodes ahead of this one and I am furious.) If I had to pick a single moment from the episode itself, it is without question “OH, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!!!!!!! [WHACK]”

Rating out of 10: The one show I’m qualified to give an objective rating. Basically twenty out of ten, forever, the rest of my life. This show is burned onto my soul and will be my gold standard for the rest of my days.

[jay-cult]

A Golden Promise

Hey guys :D I wrote a little one shot for Rhon during my free time in school. After this I can start working on chapter fics and stuff during class. For now have this lovely fic.

*Features Rhon and Scree, told from Rhon’s perspective primarily *Hints of Jaya, maybe more than hints *Also has lots and lots of Jay. Lots *Mild swearing because Rhon is a hecker *I actually have no idea how making jewelry works, I literally made this up I’m admitting this now, but I’ll fill in that hole with “it’s Rhon’s way”

While “lounging” around in her freetime, Rhon puts on a new task when her nephew brings her news and asks for help with a creation, and perhaps with more.

A Golden Promise

Rhon was having a sort of usual day.

“So, what are you thinking for this one, eh? How much are you gonna rip me off this time?” Her client asked, half joking.

She leaned in. “I told you the price,” she said flatly, but still repeated the obviously fair payment that he was to give her. In return for his vehicle being fixed, he would give her money. That’s how life worked, weirdo.

Scree was perched casually on her shoulder, and he leaned toward the client like her, trying his best to appear intimidating. The eagle fixed him with a piercing stare.

“Alright, alright, I’m jokin’, calm down,” he smiled and waved his hand in a sweeping motion as if to say, “Forget about it.” He readied a bag full of gold coins and tossed it at her.

Scree hopped off from her shoulder and quickly grabbed the bag before it hit her, but the weight of it immediately made him drop to the ground before he could spread his wings enough. He let out a screech.

Rhon looked menacingly toward where her client had just stood, but he was already climbing into his newly fixed vehicle.

“Ninjago should really establish some form of paper money,” she muttered to Scree while picking the bag of gold up from the ground.

To keep property private and all that, Rhon wouldn’t usually do her business while her airship was docked where the ninja’s place of residence was, which at this time was the newly built Monastery. She wasn’t there often. The lack of business, the noise of her companions, and the distance from fresh resources also made for a not-so-beneficial time. But today, she was staying with said companions for the simple reason of wanting to spend time with them. She did care about them, after all.

She and Scree made their way inside her airship, the Grayscale. It was big enough to hold a workshop where she could work on a couple of business and creative projects, a bedroom, a large guestroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a general piloting area atop the deck that contained many control panels filled with levers, buttons, and monitors, and of course the cockpit with a steering wheel. The deck itself was plain, with a few masts with sails enabling its flight. It was maybe two thirds of the size of the ninjas’ many previous models of the Destiny’s Bounty.

She built it herself, with some help from a friend, a long time ago.

Rhon set the bag down on a table in her workshop. She sat down and sorted through the coins, counting up the value. Scree disappeared while she was counting and returned with a couple of lizards in his mouth, settling down on a perch by the table to consume them. Rhon looked down at her calculations. One gold coin short. Figures.

“RhooOOOOON! AUNT RHON! Hi-”

Rhon jumped in her seat, scattering coins all over the table. Scree lifted into the air and let out a surprised shriek. Rhon exhaled and relaxed, but Scree continued to flap in midair, clearly choking on something.

“Scree? Fuck-” Rhon stood out of her seat again, jumping up to grab her bird.

“Aa! Oh no! I’m sorry, ooohhhh no.” It was Jay. He ran over quickly, clearly not really knowing what to do and looking on concerned.

Finally, after a few retches and hits on the back, Scree coughed and a lizard came flying out of his throat. It splatted on a wall.

“That... literally could not have gone worse,” Rhon sighed.

Jay scratched his neck, embarrassed. “I am SO sorry, shoot, I didn’t mean to-”

“Of course you didn’t, don’t get all twisted up,” she interrupted, though frowning. If it was any normal person they would be up to their ears in Rhon’s insults and accusations, but this was Jay. “Just… shake it off.”

Her nephew suddenly brightened up. Scree flapped over and landed on his shoulder, signifying forgiveness. “Okay, okay. I came here to tell yoouuu something great, oh man.”

Rhon crossed her arms and narrowed on of her eyebrows, looking at him curiously. Sure, Jay was enthusiastic and, well, emotional, but him being THIS excited-looking was a rare case. “Alright, what?”

“So, uh, like, you know, Nya.”

“Yes, yes, I know Nya, she’s kind of a close ally of mine,” Rhon said slightly sarcastically. She couldn’t really help it.

“Yeah, yeah, Nya, well. Going to….. I’m going to….. ask her to be my Yang!” Jay revealed enthusiastically.

“Oh wow, really?” Rhon asked, actually surprised. “Wow, uh, congrats!” She awkwardly smiled.

She noticed that her nephew was about ready to jump out of his pants.

“Damn Jay, calm down,” she said a bit forcefully, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. Rhon knew that her Jay was an expressive person, so something this huge might just have made him explode. “I can barely understand you.”

“Sorry, sorry, just.” He forced himself to stop being so jittery. “I’m…. really excited, and nervous especially.”

No kidding. She stood there looking at him with Scree on his shoulder and thinking it over. Jay and Nya were, at the least, different. That’s what made them special, she thought. The two were quite obviously mad for each other. The reason was, quite simply put, that they had just been through so much. Through suffering and even through death… real death. Young love, am I right? She thought sarcastically. To herself.

“Anyway, um.” Jay chilled down a little bit, becoming much more like himself. “I’m not just telling you the news.”

Rhon raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I really need your help.”

She thought he must have been joking for a second, and was about to say that he got her. But for once he had a serious look on his face. “Wait,” she said after a few moments of silence. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, of course, I need a charm.”

Rhon let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank FSM. I thought you meant- oh, nevermind.”

Her nephew stood confused for a while before he burst out laughing. “WHAT? You thought I wanted to ask you to help with the general thing? Like th-the asking and the romance and like, the wooing-”

Rhon wasn’t really used to being made fun of, so she just stood there frowning and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, hell no am I a romantic. Great Garm does that generate a weird image.”

Jay laughed more at her statement. “Oh man I’m just imagining this like, you, but Scree’s kind of flying around in majestic circles,” Scree let out a little noise at the mention of his name, “and your cape is flowing in the wind and you’re going, uh, ‘hey there, sweetheart,’ with a twinkle in your eye or something.”

She started to laugh a little. “Imagine I’m making some sort of a heart made of lightning.”

“Ah, Garm,” he let out his breath, “that’s funny. Wait wait wait, look, you mean like this?”

Jay brought his hands up to his chest and jerked them a little. Lightning flew out of them and formed a fantastic heart shape. His face was twisted in extreme focus.

“Hey, that’s actually really good,” Rhon complimented. She followed, bringing her hands up to her chest, and trying the best in her mind to flex out the bolts. Same jolted off to the side, while others flew up too far.

“Try bending your hands back a bit more,” the blue ninja instructed. “And you gotta focus, which yeah, is really hard, but you can- yeah, there you go!”

Rhon smiled upon seeing herself be able to do the fun trick. She was extremely tempted to bust out a “Hey there, sweetheart,” but as much as she loved her nephew, she retained her dignity.

“You could try this thing out on your girl,” Rhon suggested.

“Ooh, yeah you’re right, that’s a great idea!” He said, accepting her suggestion. “I sure will sometime.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Okay, fun’s over. You wanted the charm, right?”

“Yeah, you know how to make stuff, right?”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not exactly the craft-tsy type. Draw-tsy, sure, but…”

“Bold of you to assume I’m not the same.”

He chuckled a bit.

“Ah, I’m just kiddin’. I’ve made odes of gold from my last fix. I may not be ‘crafty’ but I’ve got an idea. We can try it out.” She ruffled the short boy’s hair and walked off to retrieve a stool from her workshop’s auto-fixing… area… thing. The place where vehicles would go when she worked on them.

She returned to her desk and set the stool beside her chair, making an area of two seats. Rhon looked at the still-scattered coins on the desk. With the help of Scree (Jay was off poking around in her workshop. She let only him and sometimes Nya if they were together do so with the whole ship) she gathered the coins up into a bag.

Rhon readied her smelter and placed a large amount of coins- there not being enough later would be a problem- in it. Finally, some hard clay and carving tools in her hands, she made her way back to her desk.

Jay returned there at the same time and Scree made a perching area out of his head. She placed the glob of clay in front of him, leaving a little for herself. In front of him she also placed a piece of paper and a pen.

She sat down, ready to give him a few hours of her time. “What are your ideas?”

“Well it’s a Yin and Yang charm, obviously,” he replied. “We’ll be making that symbol with the charm. Each part goes to its respective party.” Jay reached for his head and scratched Scree on his neck. The eagle let out a soft churr. “So then maybe we could the elemental signs on each respective part.”

He carefully sketched out the symbol. He drew another circle around it, putting his two lines on one side and Nya’s curvy splash on the other. He labelled his with Yin and hers with Yang.

“Well it’s really nice but also too bland,” he sighed.

“Creativity’s your thing,” Rhon pushed. “Do something with it.”

“Well I can’t just… force myself to do it,” he argued. “Ideas aren’t made, they pop out of thin air, during the wrongest times, like in the shower, or in the middle of making-”

“OKAY, alright, yeah, sorry,” she interrupted, “I just hoped you’d at least have gotten an idea already. How long ago did you start thinking about doing this again?”

“Like a week ago, but in all honesty, there’s so much else to distract me about it, I can hardly think about something as detailed to the situation as charm designs. Like what about the clothes I’ll wear or the way I’ll have to have my hair look on the day I ask.”

As Jay spoke he looked down at his gi, emphasizing his point. His eyes trailed the intricate gold designs of the beautiful dragon that stretched across him. “Oh, wait! Dragons… dragons are really cool.”

Rhon nodded as he sketched down the design onto the paper. “You know, I hate being prodded, but I’m still gonna prod you. You seem a little nervous to do this. ‘Little’ is, ah, relative.”

“YEAH YOU THINK?!” Jay yelled. He seemed to know what to do, as he took the clay and some tools and began carving the shape of a half of the charm, frustratingly digging out the curves and lines. “I mean, what if I’m not really the best. Actually, yeah, I’m not the best, it’s a fact. What am I even doing, I’m not even as strong as Cole, I’m not as smart as Zane. I don’t have near Kai’s looks… those do run in the family… and Lloyd’s leadership abilities and social skills are beyond my ability. And Nya, well she has like, so much of all of those skills. I’m just a rip-off compilation of everyone. And I mean, I have freckles. What cute person has freckles?”

Rhon was taken slightly aback. Very aback, actually. It had been ages since someone had ever expressed such deep negative feelings to her before, since she wasn’t exactly the best giver of advice. When her sister had yelled in distress, she had listened.

When it came to family, she’d still listen.

She made sure her nephew was done and looked at him. “What cute person has freckles?” she mumbled. “I’ll show you what cute person has freckles.”

“Huh?” Jay said. “Nevermind. Stop staring at me like that, you make eye contact as often as I enter a fight without fear.”

“Jesus,” she said, tilting her head and frowning. “You sure know how to put yourself down.”

He suddenly looked as if he regretted everything. His eyes widened in realization, he scrunched back guiltily, and he purposefully looked away, focusing back on his project and saying not another word.

“You know,” Rhon piped up quietly, “I may not be the prettiest woman alive… I mean I’m getting so OLD. And my eyes definitely show how tired I am, and I’m rarely seen smiling. And have you seen this slouch?”

He continued to pick delicate strokes into his clay. “Old, huh? Thirty is old…”

“But when I was a kid, and I grew up with your mother, I thought she was the prettiest person alive. Us Staticholders valued beauty and wealth, so the way I was raised should really show how right I was. And you’ve seen your father, yeah? Up on the big screen, bein’ that cool, hot mess, famous n’ all. And though not nice-looking myself, I have a say in the matter for sure. And what I will say is that you’re a perfect mix of the two. You are the hottest kid on this side of Ninjago.”

He smiled a little bit. “Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes me feel a little better.” Scree flew off his head and landed behind his carved cast, cooing at him.

“And even if you had the grossest, most repulsive face in the history of every creature alive, your heart of gold wins above everything. You care so much about all your friends, and definitely about your girlfriend, and that’s all that matters.”

“And don’t forget you, you crazy old geezer,” he snickered.

“Oh yeah? Call me a geezer one more time and I’ll kick your ass,” she laughed, standing up off her chair and plunging her hands into his hair, messing it up in the everlasting aunt move of rufflement.

“Geezer, geezer, geezer,” he prodded.

“Oh you’re just asking for it!” she yelled, messing it up even more.

They settled down and she patted his head in a finishing touch.

“Okay,” Rhon said, “One more thing. What the hell is up with the freckle thing?”

Her nephew chuckled and shyly answered, “Ah, yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to offend you or anything..”

“Freckles, dear Jay, are like the beauty spots of the waking world. Nobody hates freckles. They are a damn blessing.” She tugged on the wraps on one of her arms and wrapped it off quickly.

“Holy shit,” he marveled, seeing her freckle-invaded arm.

Rhon gasped and smacked him upside the head.

“What was that for-?”

“You don’t just say shit like that!”

“But you do- you JUST-”

“Just because it’s me, doesn’t mean it should be you,” Rhon growled.

“Aw, come on,” Jay was smiling, an eyebrow narrowed. “I’m VERY grown-up.”

“The minute you say grown-up you lose the ability to BE grown up,” she commented back. “But anyway. How is your charm coming along?”

He picked it up and placed it in front of her. It was very intricately carved, a dragon with the dot in its jaw in line with the flow of the shape.

“Okay, good,” she said. “Now we have to put this in the oven so it hardens.”

~

Scree A. Buckbeak III soared above the monastery on his midday hunt. His independence from Rhon was only certain times, usually in the relaxation periods of the day. Relaxation for her, that is. He flapped down to perch on the roof. His claws scraped the fresh brick, still so smooth and perfect because of how recent the monastery had been rebuilt. He twitched his head sideways so that his eye faced the commotion of the humans below.

A newly-old-bodied Sensei Wu sipped some tea under the shade below. In the shade beside him, Rhon leaned against an outer wall. Wu put the teacup down and closed his eyes in a focused thought.

In the blazing sun, six brightly-dressed ninja were already standing aside, weary. They had already grown tired of their previous excitement for the brand new training equipment, and as it moved and mechanized in the searing heat, they whined.

“But Sensei,” Jay, Scree’s favorite, argued. “We’re already so… trained up and old and learned. Do we have to still..?”

“Yeah,” the red one agreed. “Isn’t there better things to fight around the island somewhere?”

The green one stepped forward, looking a little reluctant. “I’m afraid I have to agree with them, Sensei. Why train on useless things when we could be saving people and fighting crime out there?”

Wu opened one eye, gazing at the ninja. “I am quite aware that you wish to be the heroes of every crime in Ninjago,” he replied, “however not every nuisance needs a ninja.”

Scree turned his head and scratched the back of his neck with his claw. As the ninja began to train like police dogs the sun sunk lower into the afternoon, lengthening their shadows across the course.

He watched as Jay stumbled over to the girl, exhaustion evident in every one of his limbs. “The FSM is merciless,” he groaned.

She giggled and patted his back. “What happened to all that spunk you always had after hours of working?”

“It’s just not the same anymore,” he replied, smiling. “I don’t feel like a student anymore. This is basically a profession. We’re on the end of eighteen.”

“Come on,” she said, but her hopes looked like they fell a little. If Jay was the most positive ninja, him being negative usually meant a real emergency. “Just because we’re a lot older doesn’t mean we have to be so serious all the time. We can work without the weight of people’s lives or possessions in our hands, and just have fun like we used to.”

“That’s much deeper advice than I signed up for, Nya,” he joked. “I’m just… tired.”

“We always are, but we gotta keep pushing,” she responded. She lowered her voice. “Especially because of old guy and old guy junior over there.”

They both laughed, glancing over to where Wu and Lloyd were working on moves.

“Think they’ll care if we just run and ditch the rest of the day?” She asked.

“Oh, yeah. We’ll be in trouble, big time,” Jay answered.

“What’s life without a little risk?”

“No, seriously. Let’s not.”

“Okay. Well in that case, let’s do what we have to!” she quickly kissed him on the cheek before jumping up and getting in a position with her weapon.

With renewed strength, Jay too jumped into action, facing her, ready.

The two worked like magic, in and out, back and forth. Fighting against each other was a rare thing for them now, that was sure. It was different from fighting alongside each other. They knew each other’s moves to well and rarely struck.

Scree hopped off the roof and flew away to hunt again.

    ~

After the clay had been heated, hardened, cooled, carved, and all the works, the gold had been poured and set out to cool the same, twice. Rhon slid the second golden half from the cast, handing it to Jay for him to ink in some black designs.

“Can’t believe you’re really growing up, buddy,” she commented as he focused on the intricate patterns.

“Don’t be nice, it’s creepy,” Jay said, but smiled. He put the inking instrument down and smiled as he looked at the two halves. He picked them both up in his hands, studying them as if he were an archaeologist studying an artifact. They were precious to him.

He looked up. “Thanks to the ends of Ninjago, aunt Rhon,” he said slightly nervously. “I’m actually really glad I was able to think of things and you know. Make it myself.”

“It’s all gotta be from the heart,” she pointed to her chest.

Scree soared in through a window and greeted Rhon with a nuzzle after landing on her shoulder. She patted his head.

“Now get outta here, kid. Show her how much she means to ya.”

[juniper-and-lamplight]

Recent Reads - May 19, 2018

Multifandom--Dirk Gently, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, a bit of Star Trek--and a mix of old and new, as usual. I've already recced some of these fics individually, but life's too short not to be effusive about the things you love, so I'm including them here too <3  Recs under the cut...

The Answer to a Question - @a-candle-for-sherlock​ - 22k, T, Holmes/Watson

"These are the stories behind the story we know: what really happened to Watson's marriage, and what made him follow Holmes to Reichenbach; what secrets were hidden in the mountains, and what a dead man wrote to the man he left behind." This fic made me Feel Feelings and also made me (almost) late for work.

To Join These Men in Holy Matrimony - A_Candle_For_Sherlock - 10k, T, Holmes/Watson

"Sherlock Holmes is a contradiction, an enigma, a force; at once the most generous spirit and the most self-contained man I have ever known. I've known more of him, I think, than anyone on earth. Yet for years I'd learned nothing about his boyhood, nor his fears, nor his future hopes, nor his father’s name. I never felt it as a lack until I knew he loved me." A moving story about family, forgiveness, self-acceptance, and historical queer marriages.

The Narrator - candle_beck - 8k, M, Holmes/Watson

"Watson is a degenerate gambler, a reluctant romantic, and the least reliable narrator in the history of the written word." A brief, gritty glimpse of my favorite Victorian disasters.

where the falling angels meet the rising apes - @cosmicoceanfic​ - 26k, T, AU (crossover, Dirk Gently & Discworld)

"A story of Death and the boy who could see him, through the years." In my sadness over finally finishing the Tiffany Aching books, I allowed myself to indulge in Discworld/Dirk Gently fics, and this one was an especially satisfying blend of the two universes. Highlights include Dirk & Bart's friendship, and Farah having a stare-off with Death.

you could bring my healing - cosmicocean - 38k, T, Dirk/Todd, AU (fantasy)

"Where the whole thing takes place in a fantasy world that is not unlike but not quite mostly for legal reasons Ankh-Morpork, Dirk is generally an existential dragon, Todd is a washed up electrical lute player, everyone is kind of awkward and useless except maybe for Amanda, and there is a boatload of fantasy references, plus one (1) Star Wars one." Sheer escapist delight.

Start at the Beginning - @dont-offend-the-bees - 61k, T, Dirk/Todd (AU, fake relationship)

”Y’know, make it up. Pretend to be in a relationship with someone. Can’t be that hard to fake, right?” it was still a stupid idea, but Todd was actually pretty invested in it now. He leaned forward, folding his arms. “C’mon, think about it- you got any other desperate homeless friends?” Takes a wacky ensemble piece and transforms it into a different sort of wacky ensemble piece. Sparing use of fake dating tropes makes this fic all the more enjoyable.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder: A Lovely Sentiment, But Rarely Applies To Anniversary Gifts - DontOffendTheBees - 7k, M, Dirk/Todd

"In which Dirk and Todd celebrate three years together- but forgot they were supposed to be doing that." Featuring: Todd Brotzman's "funhouse of self-loathing," Dirk & Todd's mutual uselessness, Amanda & Farah's mutual exasperation, winks to Douglas Adams canon, and a clever meta twist.

How We Go Together - ekb112 - 3k, E, Kirk/Spock

"'Have you ever been in love, Spock?' A series of moments in Jim and Spock's relationship." I like a semi-annual spot of K/S. It's a classic ship for a reason, and this fic scratched the itch just right.

Easy As Breathing - electricteatime | @kieren-fucking-walker - 1k, G, Dirk/Todd

"Their days start together. Warm and close, but all elbows and knees, tangled in covers and noses buried into hair. It takes time to swim up through the pull of sleep to break the surface, but when they come to they wake up to each other." A lovely soft distillation of a relationship.

Dress You Up in My Love - electricteatime - 3k, T, Dirk/Todd

“'So, what? Your solution is a pair of skin tight leopard print pants? How is that better than anything I’ve worn?'

Dirk just grins wildly at him, it’s the most like himself he’s looked in days. 'Put them on.'” A fluffy missing scene fic with a wonderful sense of interiority. (How is electricteatime is so good at characterization?!?)

A Flame Undamped - Frayach, read by wench_fics - 5k, 40min, M, Harry/Draco

"A happy ending. Because I can finally imagine one." Hurt/comfort doesn't even BEGIN to cover this sequel to The Price We Pay for Wings. No one does pain and poignancy--and sometimes, healing--like Frayach.

Saturn in Retrograde - gooseflesh - WIP series, M, Dirk/Todd

"As with most things in Dirk Gently's life, things are fine until they're not. A mystery and minor inconvenience for Todd Brotzman takes a terrifying turn when Dirk insists on investigating, and it'll take more than a hunch for them to hold onto to all that they've built." I'm not typically an angst gremlin, but I can't stop reading this WIP, even as the characters' situation worsens exponentially.

Death by Kittenshark - howldax - 1k, G, Dirk/Todd

"'You know,' Dirk says sternly, 'if you murder me, there will be nobody around to feed you.'" Cats (even cats who are also sharks) are gonna cat. Charming and fluffy.

i was born in a summer storm (i live there still) - janeseyre - 10k, G, Farah & Todd & Dirk

"Farah confronts the vestiges of her past as she, Dirk, and Todd travel east to visit her mother. It turns out Farah isn’t as over her father’s death as she thought she was." A deeper look into Farah’s families, both biological and chosen; full of lovely little smile moments and Farah getting the closure she deserves.

The Burning Heart - @may-shepard​ - 119k, M, John/Sherlock, AU (post s3 fix-it)

"Although he’s certain he’ll never get over Sherlock, John plans to move on, and build a new life with Mark, unaware that Sherlock is not quite as dead as he appears, and that Mark is hiding secrets of his own." As is my habit with zeitgeist-y fics, I didn't get around to this one until well after the rest of the fandom, but I'm glad I did. Here's to an assassin plot that's actually plausible and compelling!

The Easiest Way - nntkiwff - WIP, T, Dirk/Todd, Farah/Todd (“basically OT3”)

"'Is that everything?'

'Yes, essentially,' Dirk says, as Todd is saying, 'I don't have magic powers.'"  A slow burn WIP, set immediately after the return from Wendimoor, featuring multiple perspectives (including Ken!), in-depth characterization, and some excellent lines, like this one about Farah: “She says all of this as though she is ashamed of being cursed, instead of proud that she blew up an evil warlock.”

Blood Magic and Rebirth (or, The One Where They Are All Feminist Academics) - @notcaycepollard​ - 1k, G, gen (Harry Potter)

"Moon cups, Luna thinks. Moon cups and blood magic. And she remembers the old itch under her skin, and a music box fluttering into a flock of birds, and wonders just how powerful it could be." This is 1000% headcanon for me now.

A Little Bit Scandalous - @oneprotagonistshort - 1k, E, Dirk/Todd

"Dirk Gently was self-aware enough to admit that he had… a thing. A quirk. One of those idiosyncratic little peculiarities that made up a tiny part of his personality. A kink. He just liked that extra edge; the need to be quiet or someone might hear, the blood pounding in his ears while he stayed hyper-alert for footsteps, the way Todd kissed him so urgently that he lost his breath." I especially appreciated the characterization behind the kink in this one.

Relative Distance - Quesarasara | @itsnotgonnareaditselfpeople, read by @lockedinjohnlock-podfics - 45k, 5hrs, E, John/Sherlock

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." One of the author's tags on this fic is "What if everyone just acted like a damn adult for a change?", which really clarifies how the fic differs from the later seasons of the show.

it's an institute you can't disparage - @shortcrust - 19k, T, Dirk/Todd

"Todd wakes up beside Dirk Gently four years to the day after having met him realises - abruptly and with categoric certainty - that he wants to do so every day for the rest of his life. What the fuck, he thinks."  Hilarious, insightful, and absolutely nails a) the ridiculousness and pathos of Todd Brotzman mired in needless self-doubt, and b) my favorite Ship Dynamic: compatible disasters.

there's cell reception on this widow's walk - strix_alba - 2k, T, Farah/Tina

"In which Tina sort-of-kind-of asks Farah to stay with her in Bergsberg, and Farah kind-of-sort-of wants to say yes." Awkward flirting, Farina styles! Tina mentally describes Dirk & Todd & Farah as a “bunch of hot, uptight weirdos,” which is p e r f e c t.

Just Like That - @sussexbound (SamanthaLenore) - 8k, E, John/Sherlock

"For the first time in what feels like years he WANTS." The perfect combination of unf and feeeels.

Further fic recs | Fic Bookmarks

[graceivers]

Review #88 - #Starstruck

#Starstruck Author: Sariah Wilson Genre: Celebrities, College, Contemporary Romance Rating: ★★★★★ Recommendation: worth reading; would read again Summary: Zoe Miller is just a normal girl. Chase Covington is a Hollywood hunk. What are the odds that someone like Zoe would catch the attention of a celebrity like Chase from one simple tweet? And love? It’s one for the tabloids.

Female Lead: Zoe was awesome. This girl was what I wanted and needed out of a new adult female lead. She was the perfect balance of qualities that might or might not have made her too good to be true, but nonetheless, Zoe was absolutely someone I would like in real life. Hard-working, passionate, motivated, shy but self-confident. My goodness, that last quality. Zoe admitted to being socially awkward, but when it counted, she had faith in herself and had no trouble standing up for herself and her perspective, particularly in the finality of her decision to wait until after marriage to have sex. I loved this so, so much. Here was a perfect example of a character who could be on the quieter and insecure side and yet still held her ground when it came to her morals and integrity. That kind of attitude alongside her humor, love of trivia, and kind nature? Yeah, Zoe was pretty much perfect in my eyes. Male Lead: Chase was pretty much perfect too. For a renowned celebrity, Wilson wrote him with honesty, integrity, and a lot of depth. There were a couple of points I wanted Wilson to explore a little more—namely the fact that Chase was an alcoholic and went to rehab—but I guess it was left in favor of highlighting his relationship with Zoe, so I couldn’t complain too much. Naturally, what I loved most about Chase was that he was patient, caring, gentle, and respective of Zoe and her wants. It could be so easy for him to push her, persuade her, utilize his celebrity status to amaze her until she couldn’t say no. But he didn’t. Chase genuinely liked Zoe and actively got to know her and spent quality time with her rather than push for the physical. And yes, Chase made a mistake and hurt Zoe when he reacted without thinking at the climax, but like any fantastical gentleman, he realized the error of his ways and made sure to make it up to her. As far as celebrity crushes go, Chase was definitely a good choice. Plot & Writing: #Starstruck was one of the most fantastically fantastic romances I have ever read. Girl meets her longtime celebrity crush, and they fall in love? Good. Lord. It cannot possibly get any better than that. Wilson made all my dreams come true in this fantasy with great characters, an amazing relationship, a lot of nice depth and exploration, and even throwing in some feminist talk! Everything was so wonderful.

I couldn’t get enough of Zoe and Chase’s relationship. There was Zoe, the girl who had dreams of love and marriage despite her shyness and resolute abstinence-until-after-marriage decision supposedly working against her. There was Chase, the guy who had seen relationships fail time after time and yet knew he wanted to pursue something with Zoe even though she didn’t fit the typical criteria he was looking for. Zoe was rightfully hesitant to start anything with Chase because she felt insecure and didn’t know what she brought to the table, especially when sex was out of the question for her. But oh, she let herself fall, and it was so beautiful and enjoyable to read how much she wanted and loved him. And seriously, reading about Chase’s patience, respect, and admiration for Zoe was so sweet. She got him to change his mind about love and marriage! To have a guy you love love you back so much that he’s willing to change his perspective to be with you? That was the ultimate fantasy come true.

And because this is me, I must talk about the whole abstinence thing and the feminist discussions Wilson inserted into the book. My favorite part of that whole thing was Zoe’s confidence in her decision. She wasn’t going to waver no matter how people tried to tear her down or change her mind. I enjoyed the discussion Zoe and her classmates had on whether choosing to abstain until after marriage was considered feminist or anti-feminist. And despite people attacking her point of view, I loved that Zoe spoke her mind and owned her decision. And of course, I loved so much that Chase respected her decision and still wanted to be with her even though he didn’t believe in and want to get married at that point in his relationship with Zoe. The second discussion Zoe had with her classmates regarding the dramatic media fallout of her temporary breakup with Chase also spoke volumes. Not only did that conversation highlight positive female relationships and the issue of slut-shaming, but it also allowed the feminist talks to come full circle. There were no loose ends here. Wilson tied everything together neatly and wonderfully.

There were so many little things that I loved about this book too. The social media aspect Wilson inserted was fun to read. I loved Zoe’s love for trivia. I loved Chase being a total weirdo over cookies. I loved that they spent time with Zoe’s younger siblings. I loved that the couple actually talked and got to know each other since there was no sex. I loved that this was a clean romance! I loved them getting married and the epilogue. I loved that Chase’s celebrity status was apparent but not flaunted. I loved that the characters were grounded. I could go on and on. Favorite Part(s): Honestly, no one specific scene comes to mind. My favorite part of the book was just watching a beautiful relationship unfold between Zoe and Chase. They had their ups and downs, their moments of jealousy, their arguments. But ultimately, they were two people who liked each other, got to know each other, fell in love with each, and never wanted to be apart. That was my favorite part. The romance. Final Thoughts: Please read #Starstruck. I loved it so much. The book had amazing characters that led to a beautiful relationship. There was humor and fun but also an equal amount of depth and seriousness. I didn’t need sex scenes when I had Wilson crafting this great romance for me to swoon over. Who doesn’t love a good book about getting the chance to fall in love with your celebrity crush? Seriously. I highly recommend #Starstruck.

[annashipper]

Megapost 25/02/18

Anna:  I’m putting all of these asks together, because I wasn’t online yesterday and don’t want to flood everyone’s dashboards taking around in circles.  These are the last asks I’m putting up on the subject.

~*~

Nonny Nr. 1:   "Benedict has been referred to as arrogant [...[ that he was ‘up his own arse’". Also the rest of the cast of "A:OC" thought he was being arrogant when, instead of staying in the place they rented for the whole cast (to give themselves a feeling of being a family), BC chose to remain, by himself, at a hotel. But, I don't go to team shit because I'm shy. I think most actors are arrogant, some just hide it well, but think of the ego it must take to think the whole world will love you.

Anna:  Yeah, I remember that, although of course Meryl Streep never characterized him as arrogant.  She just mentioned it casually in conversation:

Meryl Streep was actually quite gracious when talking about Ben on another instance:

By the way, I don’t think Ben in particular is one of those actors who assumes the whole world loves him.  Quite the opposite in fact.

~*~

Nonny Nr. 2:  Re Arrogant. He has reportedly "not mixed well" on ONE movie (in all others he's described as nice, friendly, and helpful). In promos Streep said he wouldn't stay in a house w/ the rest of the cast. But it was at the start of the shamwow, he might have been worried about what stunt she might pull in front of mega stars. I wonder how many comments got to her employer. Does anyone know if she still has a job? Also aggravation with someone can seem like arrogance, she could just be a twat.

Anna:  As far as Meryl Streep goes, see above.  

By the way, as far as I’m aware of, Weirdo wasn’t in the picture back then.  I might be wrong cause this all happened before I ever became a fan.

~*~

Nonny Nr. 3:  It is very strange. When somebody write Sophie is arrogant, we say, well she is Weirdo, gold digger, so avant-garde and so on, what do you want from her? But when somebody say Ben is arrogant.. well he is just a human, he has a bad day, it is not professional to say that and so on. This is not the first time when somebody say he is arrogant and think about himself too much. 

Anna:  Nonny, I believe I’ve made it perfectly clear that I take no issue with the journalist’s opinion of Ben.  My issue was with her lack of professionalism.  If anyone has a soapbox to stand on and share their personal opinions with the world, that is journalists.  The fact that she didn’t do it on an article, but chose to do it on social media tells me everything I need to know about her journalistic integrity  ;o)

~*~

Nonny Nr. 4:   I remember one interviewer at the flower show he attended with Wanda saying he was stroppy. But then I found out later she had done a butcher piece on him previously. Yeah I wouldn’t be to nice to someone that wrote something nasty about me previously.

Anna:  I don’t remember that particular instance Nonny, but I’m with you, in that I wouldn’t blame any public figure who’d be cagey when confronted with a journalist who’s done a butcher piece on them in the past.  That’s just human nature.

~*~

Nonny Nr. 5:   I don't mind the hair but oh boy whatever he is doing for his face is working. Looked great in both the high and unfiltered low res pics!

Anna:  I agree Nonny.  I think he looks much more relaxed nowadays and decidedly younger than he did (especially a couple of years ago).

~*~

Izzy:   "What I’d really like to know is this:  at what point did she decide to add tags to her post? "-The 2nd set of tags she made was in the form of a comment and it's at the top so she did that before the Ubers chimed in. And if u look at her other posts she does the same thing whenever she posts a pic of a celeb. She tagged a pix of Dakota Johnson with unrelated people like Emma stone & ScarJo. She seems like a flake and unprofessional but she didnt do anything special against Ben w/the tags

Anna:  Thanks for putting things into perspective Izzy!  It always helps with weeding out an attention seeker  :D

~*~

RAA:  I have finally watched Black Panther, I loved it! I am pleasantly surprised by Martin's character, he was a bit bland in Civil War, in BP he has more than 2 sentences, do some humour and he even get to do some action! It sometime reminded me of the Hobbit, especially with the battles. Loved the story, does anybody knows if it's like the comic? Lupita is fantastic, and we get to see her, unlike when she was in Star Wars.

Anna:  I haven’t read a single Marvel comic in my life RAA, so I have no idea about BP in particular.

With regards to Martin, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how much screen time he was allotted.  I wasn’t expecting his role to be as significant.  Then again, that only goes to show that Ryan Coogler wasn’t messing around when writing the script.  There’s a reason none of the characters in the film feel like two dimensional cardboard cutouts.

[writsgrimmyblog]

To Celebrities Opining on Fanfic: Please Stop

Okay. I will probably always stan Nick. I have written hundreds and thousands of words of fanfic featuring him, his radio show gives me an enormous amount of happiness and I think he’s great. At the same time, I don’t have to unequivocally love my fave and accept sometimes they will do things that jar with me. Louis certainly has. Harry has. Nobody’s perfect and sometimes we hold people up to unrealistic standards. This post is NOT an excuse to bash Nick. Garbage about Nick is not something I welcome or support. I’m not here for any of that. What I do want to do is open up a discussion about celebrities opining on fanfiction.

In my post on RPF and Fandom’s Fourth Wall (or why breaking the fourth wall in the interests of shipping pursuits is nobody’s friend) I wrote about how frustrated I get when fans themselves deliberately break the fourth wall, tagging and linking celebrities to things which bring them into our private spaces. Rarely, if ever, has this resulted in celebrities developing a positive, well-reasoned view of fandom. Instead it gives them a skewed view of fandom spaces as controlled people who have no concept of personal, private boundaries when it comes to celebrities. Celebrities then (perhaps rightly) feel at liberty to opine on areas they know very little about in ways that can make fandom participants who are respectful about the celebrities they love, keeping under the radar and just enjoying creating transformative works for the fandom community feel small.

Listening to Nick talk about fanfic on the radio this morning - something he’s done before - actually gives me hives and it’s very difficult not to have a personal, visceral reaction to it. When Nick decides fanfic is weird all I hear is “Nick thinks I’m a weirdo.” Nick doesn’t know me, it’s illogical and ridiculous, but it’s what I hear all the same. When he seems fascinated (in a negative way) by the length of the stories and the time investment put into creating transformative works, it makes me feel like I’m personally wasting my time. It has the impact of making me question a private space which gives me so much pleasure. It feels like a punch in the gut, like being called out by someone you admire. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. I’ve heard Benedict Cumberbatch give his completely misinformed views on fanfiction and fandom demographics. I’ve had to eye-roll at some of the opinions on shipping coming from the SPN actors at fan conventions. I’ve gritted my teeth through countless moments of talk show related ‘hilarity’ where everyone from Tom Felton (a rare celebrity who respectfully engages and interacts with his fan communities, shipping and transformative works) to Tom Hiddleston get shown fanart or conduct readings of fanfic which people never intended to be ridiculed on such a wide, public level. Let’s be honest, it’s usually just another case of dudes mocking women, and we get plenty of that already, thanks.

This issue extends far beyond a throwaway conversation between Nick and Niall this morning. It runs much deeper because it happens, all the time. Fan communities are consistently utilised on the one hand for the commercial power they wield and denigrated on the other for their ‘strange and unusual’ pursuits. You see it everywhere from the rise in terms like slash-wink, ship tease, fan service and queerbaiting to the misogynistic and ageist stereotyping of fandom participants. I remain desperate for celebrities to actually educate themselves on fandom communities to the extent they plan to talk about them, even just a little. Fandom demographics are consistently misunderstood, together with fannish pursuits. I long for someone in the public spotlight to be able to engage with the broad and rich history of fanfic, to speak back to fandom in its own terms, to understand the creative importance of these largely female populated spaces, the positive impact of accessible, queer narratives, when the mainstream lag behind, on the one hand queerbaiting and on the other providing representation couched in stereoptypes and tokenism (with one or two exceptions). I have a whole paper on the meta-textual fangirl in Supernatural, but that’s another discussion.

I rationally understand that for the celebrity stumbling across fic, it must be very strange to find stories people have written about you with explicit content. But let’s be abundantly clear. These stories may be written about you but they are certainly not written for you. They are works of fiction which have been inspired by aspects of your public persona but they are fiction. Please also understand most fans do not write from the perspective of hoping you’ll find their stories and fall in love with the person you’re paired with. Most writers would really prefer it if you didn’t find their stories at all. They would definitely prefer not to be mocked for writing them. While we’re at it, as you’re already online, you’re just a google search away from actually figuring out a bit more about this ‘crazy, odd, fanfic’ thing.  If it’s so fascinating and hilarious you think it’s worthy of a mention, actually do some bloody research about it and understand there’s an increasingly growing field of scholarship on this stuff, a whole history of suppressing women’s writing which ties into discourse on fanfic and some pretty good stuff out there.

To celebrities engaging with the alien worlds of your RPF fandoms (all celebrities, not just Nick, Niall or whoever else wants to speak about fanfic in public spaces). Please, please, stop using fanfiction to get a cheap laugh. Please stop making fun of these spaces unless you understand them and are prepared to engage with their complexities and nuances. Please understand the people who are creating these works are your fans. If you’ve got time to find stuff to make jokes about, take five minutes to find an article - any article - written by an actual fan and understand the history and importance of transformative works before dismissing them so easily. Think about the people who put hours into creating something and respect their privacy as they (hopefully for the most part) respect yours.

Now I’m going to stop feeling annoyed, put on my ‘I’m an adult’ hat and remind myself. I do not need or want a male celebrity I love to validate how I engage with fandom. I go back to articles like Elizabeth Minkel’s excellent Why It Doesn’t Matter What Benedict Cumberbatch Thinks of Fanfiction and revisit similarly fan-positive discourse from writers such as the always excellent Aja Romano. I go back to my books, like Rhiannon Bury’s ‘Cyberspaces of Their Own’ and Anne Jamieson’s ‘Fic: Why Fanfic is Taking Over the World.’ 

In RPF fandoms in particular there is an enormous fourth wall issue and it’s becoming ever harder to maintain, but I’m still keen to try. The fans who are respectful about the celebrities they love do not need anyone to validate what they do creatively within these fandom spaces. I just sometimes need to take a breath and remind myself of that.

[yes-i-also-miss-our-talks]

You Will Be Found: S/O Tag

The kiddos of YWBF decided to sit down together and answer a few questions about their relationships for a video. Enjoy!

(I’m going to do this in transcript form if you don’t mind. There’s just so many of them talking.)

Key:

A: Alana

B: Ben

C: Connor

E: Evan

J: Jared

K: Kaeto

L: Libby

Z: Zoe

J: This is going to be a clusterf**ck. I’m calling it now.

A: Have a little faith!

K: So how are we going to do this? In what order are we gonna go?

J: Twitter asked that we do it in chronological order, by who’s been together the longest. (to L and K) We know they love you more, but this is a group effort.

C: (accusatory) Spotlight hogs.

K: Not on purpose!

C: (doubtfully) Uh-huh.

Z: Boys, play nice. So, to make sure we and all the nice people at home are all on the same page, that’s Jared and Ben, then Lana and I, then Connor and Evan, and Kaeto and Libby last.

B: We win!

K: You hate competitions.

B: We’re still winning.

J: (to camera) Do you see why I love him?

*cut*

Q: How long have you been together?

J: Two years? Two and a half?

B: Something like that, yeah. It was early 2015. Sometime in March.

A: June 3rd, 2015. 10:22 a.m. Zoe had been eighteen less than twenty-four hours.

Z: Aww, you remembered the time. And you waited until I wasn’t jailbait! Okay, Con?

C: Since what, mid-August last year?

E: Yeah, it was right before you went to rehab for the last time.

C: No mind-altering substances and no boyfriend. Double torture.

E: But worth it?

C: (fondly) Like you wouldn’t f**king believe.

Z: *gags* Are you guys done being gross?

C: For the sake of not making this video three hours long, yes.

J: Kaeto and Libby’s turn!

L: What was the question?

J: ‘How long have you been together?’

L: Not long. Since what, early September? More towards the middle? There wasn’t an exact day.

K: I wrote it down, but I can’t remember exactly right now.

Q: What was your first impression of the other?

B: “Why is he smiling like that?”

J: “He’s looking at me like I’m a weirdo but it’s f**king adorable.”

A: “Green hair? That’s someone braver than me.”

Z: “This girl is so nice. How is she friends with my brother? How am I friends with my brother?”

C: Well, fuck you, too.

E: That better not be your official answer.

C: That better not be yours.

(E and C stick their tongues out at one another)

C: But for real, the first thing I remember was like, first grade, maybe? You were always really quiet at school, but then one day your mom came to pick you up after school, and she had this Golden Retriever with her. You lit up a like a g**damn Christmas tree and barreled right into that dog. After that, I always subconsciously kept a list of things that made you happy.

E: Is it still there in your head?

C: Yep.

E: You think it’s accurate?

C: I’d bet my life on it.

E: Well, are you item number one?

C: (blushing slightly) Don’t you have your own f**king question to answer?

E: [referring to ‘first impression’ question] You were always a dark cloud over a room.

C: (sarcastically) Thanks, babe.

E: But you know how I love gloomy days!

L: You two are actually sickening. I’m going to puke.

E: It’s your turn to answer.

L: Nooo, it’s gonna make me seem bitchy.

K: My first impression of you was that you were kind of a bitch.

L: Okay, I feel less bad about it now.

K: Now I don’t wanna hear it.

J: Just spit it out!

L: My first impression of Kaeto - and I warned you that it’s not the best - was “who the fuck is still wearing a giant maroon jacket at the end of May?”

[the kids wince]

Z: Yeah, I can see how you wouldn’t want to share that one.

L: And screw you all for making me say it.

*cut*

Q: When was your first kiss?

J: Like, three minutes after we established that I was not in any way joking about liking him and was dead serious when I said I wanted to date him.

B: (grinning) I have terrible self-esteem and think everyone hates me!

[Michi, laying with her head in his lap, reaches up and licks his cheek]

B: Thanks, Michi.

Z: We kissed for the first time maybe two weeks before we started dating (with air quotes) “officially” or whatever. And then it was another three weeks before we actually told anyone.

A: And by told anyone, you mean being forced to tell the truth after your roommate walked in on us making out.

Z: Yeah, she never talked to me again after I got assigned a new dorm.

A: Connor? Evan?

[they shift uncomfortably]

C: It’s really sappy and kind of personal.

E: Yeah.

J: Alright, you’re allowed to keep it vague.

E: It was like when we got together, in that it was right before Connor went into rehab, but this was literally right before.

C: (nodding) Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it. Let’s just leave it at that; it’s a story for another video.

E: Yeah. Kaeto?

K: I know what the next question is gonna be, and it ties in with this one, so we’re gonna skip and get back to it in a bit.

L: Yay! Less talking!

*cut*

Q: Who said “I love you” first.

Z: Ooh! I vote we let Kaeto and Libby go first just to settle the anticipation.

E: Zoe, we set up an order. We have to stick to it.

A: Or else society crumbles.

E: Exactly.

Z: (grumpily) I can’t believe I chose the two of you as my favorite humans.

J: Can we go now?

C: Please do.

B: It was Jared. I made him do it.

J: That’s...not far from the truth, actually. I mean, you guys all know this, but the people watching might not, so I should explain that a lot of communicating with Ben requires total bluntness and honesty. It makes you really aware of everything you say and do, as well as often forcing you to really analyze or actions. And for me, who’s socially inept and a self-centered dick, it’s been really helpful to be able to acquire this awareness.

L: Aww, Jay, I don’t think you’re a socially inept, self-centered dick.

J: (flatly) Lib, I’m telling a f**king story. And that’s literally what Asperger’s is.

[caption reading “it is and it isn’t” appears at the bottom of the screen momentarily]

J: (more light-hearted) Anyway, when I realized I was in love -

L: Awww

J: - shut the f**k up - with Ben, I kind of freaked out a little bit. It was all internal, so I did start acting weird, Ben picked up on it, worried he’d done something wrong, and then started freaking out himself.

B: (grinning) I’m crazy like that.

J: Nah. But I had to simultaneously calm him down and deal with the fact that I was scared out of my mind because I’d never told someone who wasn’t family that I loved them before. It was a big, emotional mess and I’m glad it’s over and that we’re still here.

[B nods in agreement and leans his head on J’s shoulder]

A: In the case of Zoe and I, I’m pretty sure it was actually me who said it first.

Z: Yeah, it was one of those cases where it slips out on accident over something kind of mundane. Do you remember what it was?

A: You fed my cats so I could sleep in and then brought me Ovaltine.

C: You never tell me you love me after I feed your cats.

A: That’s because you complain the whole time! Jared steals all my Ovaltine, but at least he’s nice to my cats.

C: We are not having the cat argument again right now!

E: (laughing) Hey, Connor, I just realized that not only did you say “I love you” first, but you did it right after our first kiss.

J: You two moved way too f**king fast.

Z: Give the boys a break, they were holding onto three consecutive years of romantic and sexual tension.

E: You do realize that you’re implying that even while you and I were -

Z: I knew it as soon as I said it, but I’m not gonna take it back.

E: Okay, then. Kaeto, now are you going?

K: (nods) Yeah. So, it was -

L: (interrupting) Kaeto said it first, then I proceeded to grab his face. Not even ten seconds in between and way less sappy than these two losers (points at C and E).

J: (shudders) Why do you have to say everything so bluntly?

L: Why do you have to take such issue in the way I do things?

*cut*

Q: What’s your favorite trait about the other?

B: Jared puts a unique but positive perspective on everything. Except for when he doesn’t, but pure optimism is bad for the soul.

J: Definitely his butt.

[a stuffed rabbit flies from behind the camera and hits J on the head]

J: Sorry, Lily. I was kidding. But really, I’m going to go with either his smile or the way he indirectly forces me to see the world differently and think a bit more before I speak.

A: Zoe takes everything in stride, but not in a way that embraces chaos, per se. She can be met with a problem or situation that seems chaotic or plain overwhelming, but has no issue taking a step back and finding order in it. I don’t do super well with disorganization and chaos, and she’s helped me have more faith in myself when faced with it.

Z: Lots of people have pointed out that I’m basically dating Hermione, and that’s literally the greatest thing anyone could ever say to me. I was obsessed with Hermione as a kid, although I think everyone expected me to want to be like her, not date her. Whoops.

C: For me, Evan is kind of a calming presence, so I’m at ease with him around and having a stabilizing force has really been helpful as I’ve been going through recovery. He’s also very aware of others, which can be his fatal flaw when it makes him ignore himself, but I’ve found it really helpful. Oh, and he makes me go outside. I like going outside, but I need someone to force me to do it a lot of the time. It works out.

E: Connor makes me put myself first in situations where my concern is generally elsewhere. And he draws on sticky notes and leaves them all over the house, which never fails to make me smile. A walking partner is always nice, too.

C: I forgot to mention that you’re a space heater. Sleeping next to you in the winter is the best.

E: And the rest of the year?

C: Well, then it’s just you that’s the best.

Z: (pretends to gag)

L: I would like to set the record straight and inform everyone that my boyfriend has the softest freaking lips I have ever encountered in addition to the best dog on the planet. What else do you need?

K: (shrugs) I’ll take it. I don’t think I necessarily have a part of Libby that I like more than the rest, though. It’s a mix of features and traits that came together just so to make her who she is, and that’s someone I love who love me in return and makes me happy simply by being.

[L hugs K and peppers his face with kisses]

J: (stage whisper) That’s how you know they’ve been together the shortest period of time.

[supercultshow]

Hello Supercult West! This is Supercult South Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Hitting Stunt Men with Cars” with a minor in “Saving the hot girl, and leaving the guy to get eaten by a Mummy”) and I’m reaching out to you from across the country to help hype tonight’s screening of basically the best genre film in the world, the Seventh Curse! Which genre, you ask? All of them.

Released in 1986, this Hong Kong adventure film is based on the Dr. Yuen adventure novel series by Ni Kuang. The film is basically a Chinese language fusion of Indiana Jones, Alien, and Army of Darkness and if that description alone doesn’t keep you in your seat for the next 78 minutes then you may need to get your head examined. But just in case, let me give you the low down on why this is probably a better film than all three of those films combined.

They have to put actual film on the poster so people won’t think that they’re advertising a book, or a stageplay, or a cutlery set or something.

Superfluous! How dare you! Removing even ONE of these ridiculous action set pieces would ruin this film!

Hahaha! What a great story! Now tell us the one about the time your leg exploded on your one night stand!

It’s almost as creepy as that baby dinosaur muppet from the Dinosaurs TV show.

I don’t think this guy got the memo.

Now THIS GUY! This guy got the memo!

Send back the cult guy opening act! I came to see The Cure!

Look, I know you’ve got some sort of mystical death curse or whatever, but can I get a refill of scotch?

Overacting is relative. If everyone hams it up, nobody’s hamming it up.

Don’t worry, the film has a lot more squares than this. Like at least 3 more squares.

First off, Seventh Curse has the pacing of an avalanche on methamphetamines and enough blood to give a young Peter Jackson a hard on. The stunts, explosions, and gore are cranked up to eleven, there’s a fight scene every couple of minutes whether it makes sense to have one or not, and from the opening titles onward, it never lets its foot off the gas. This film has kung-fu doctors, pool parties, blood curses, fighting shaolin monks, mutating cups of KFC gravy, evil effeminate Chinese Marilyn Manson cult leaders, gruesome practical effects, flaming pillow fights, pants wetting-ly scary skeleton zombies that know kung-fu, neon green cave lighting, bazookas, alien monsters, demon babies, alien monsters fighting demon babies, and a magical shrine heist straight from the cover of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. Depending on the release version (the original, the first video release, or the DVD edition) there are even 3 different endings to this film. Don’t worry though, every single one of them ends in a cheesy 80s freeze frame. It’s pretty much a perfect film from a Supercult perspective.

But what’s the story you ask? What’s all this about an adventure novel series? Well you see, all you needlessly logic seeking weirdos, Ni Kuang is an incredibly prolific Hong Kong writer. He’s written over 300 chinese-language wuxia and novels and more than 400 film scripts. To put that into perspective, Steven King has only published a measly 63 novels and 200 short stories. *cough* Get Rekt! *cough*

Ni Kuang, my nominee for Supercult Saint

So anyway Kuang wrote an amazing sci-fi, supernatural, action, comedy, horror, mystery, thriller, 145-book series about a guy named Wisely. He also wrote a completely different 32-book adventure series all about this other guy named Dr. Yuen. Sometimes these two globetrotting bad asses go on adventures together. They’re basically Sherlock Holmes and Watson and they go around solving mysteries, defeating evil, and then telling groups of glamorous women about their adventures at their mansions over glasses of cognac that sponsored the making of the film. Because both characters take part in this film, technically every other film adaptation of either character’s story is technically in the Seventh Curse series, which means that Supercult classic The Cat, also known as Wisely’s Old Cat in Chinese is technically a distant sequel to The Seventh Curse.

So who the hell can they get to represent these beloved, long-running characters? Well, first they get the amazingly talented actor and martial artist Siu-Ho Chin to play Dr. Yuen, which is all fine and good, but then they top it by grabbing Chow Yun-Fat to play Wisely. Yes, that bad ass, shotgun wielding, baby-saving Chow Yun-Fat, star of Supercult Classic Hard Boiled (oh yeah, and some other random film called…uh…what was it…Crouching something Hidden Whatever)! Chow Yun-Fat’s job throughout the entire film is to just show up when things are getting rough and save the day like a handsome Chinese Aslan the Jesus Allegory Lion. It’s fantastic. But wait, order now and we’ll also add in Lam Kgai Kai, the director of Supercult Classic Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, aka the one where a guy disembowels himself and tries to strangle Riki with his own intestines, so Riki Mortal Kombat X-Ray punches him in the skull.

Seeing as this is an older, obscure, foreign movie, there is little to no box office or review numbers online. Even if there were it wouldn’t matter though. Because I have now thoroughly convinced you that this is the best film you will ever see in your entire life…or at least in the next hour and a half or so, anyway.

Don’t forget to bring your guns and grenades to this mystical cult fight, everyone!

Supercult West is proud to present, The Seventh Curse!

The Seventh Curse Hello Supercult West! This is Supercult South Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Hitting Stunt Men with Cars” with a minor in “Saving the hot girl, and leaving the guy to get eaten by a Mummy”) and I’m reaching out to you from across the country to help hype tonight’s screening of basically the best genre film in the world, the Seventh Curse!