#been contemplating posting this for a while but ive finally caved

[idk-ilike5sos]

Dear Will,

Before today, it'd been twenty-seven days since I wrote to you last. You’ve never received any of the letters and - as long as I don’t suddenly die before I get the chance to burn them all - you never will. But since eight am, I've already started and torn up five other first-letters-since. I thought it'd be easy to write down how I feel, let everything exist solely as ink on paper, but it's not. I'm learning recently, since you left, that I'm wrong about a lot of things.

This morning I got another letter from Eleven. It's probably the last one I'll get before seeing you both. It's still scary to think that, in a couple of days, we'll be face-to-face again. It's been so long.

One-hundred-and-ninety-two days, at the time I’m writing this. I wonder if it feels like it’s been that long to you.

But, anyway, in that letter, Eleven went over what she usually does: updates me on school, how she's adjusting so well without me, and she lets me know how you're all doing. Joyce likes her new job, Jonathan is stressed about college, and you're painting something you won't let her see.

She told me that you met some girl in California.

I bet she's pretty. She's got the nicest eyes you've ever seen, and you paint them all the time. You've memorized every shape of her face from how much you draw her. She probably has a nice laugh, but you'd tell her it's cute even if she didn't. Everyone loves her and always talks about how kind she is. She's at the top of all her classes. I bet she's popular and a cheerleader or some cliche-equivalent.

I hope she has dark, shoulder-length hair. I hope she has ugly brown eyes. I hope she has a lot of freckles. And I hope she's got "strong cheekbones", as my mom likes to call them. I hope she looks like me.

I know she doesn't. She's probably the complete opposite, which is what hurts even more. Not only do you not like me because I'm a boy, but because of every single little thing about me.

I was in shock when I found out Eleven liked me - because, I mean, it's El, you know?

She's awesome, and I know that. At first, I thought I’d somehow won at life, because I found this incredible girl and everyone kept bringing up how enamoured I was with her. So, I kissed her - and she didn’t even seem disgusted or anything! A little surprised, but not bad surprised, you know?

Then it got even better, because it turned out she liked me back. Isn’t that insane? A girl liked ME. It’s still hard to believe now. Sometimes, I feel like she’s lying every time she signs her letters with “love”.

In the end, I fucked it up anyway. It all started with a lie and I got so caught up in it that I was too scared to start telling the truth. And, contrary to popular belief, the lie that ruined our relationship wasn’t that my nana got sick. It’s that her feelings grew, but mine dissipated because it turns out they were never really there.

So this is me finally telling the truth, even if no one ever gets to hear it.

And the truth is I miss you. I miss us.

When you left, I kept telling myself you'd come back. At night, I'd hold back tears, whispering to myself that you're gonna come back one day. You'll be in Hawkins again, on that old ass couch in my basement - the one only a couple of feet away from me right now. We'd both look a lot older than we did the last time we were here, maybe even older than we do now, but at some point, we'd be back. We'd be as close as we used to be. It'd be like nothing ever changed. And the worst part is, I really believed it would all happen.

But it won't. You're not coming back. You might visit a few times, but eventually, our zero-contact thing will get tiring for you. You'll find a new Party, a better one. And this girl you like is going to be a part of it - because she's perfect, so obviously she loves all the things you love. She loves all the things that we love, that used to be ours.

I'm not angry. I'm trying not to be angry.

It's not easy.

I want you here. I want you with me. I don't want you with that stupid girl.

I hate her. I hate her so much.

Why am I not good enough?

Please, just tell me. I'd do anything to change. I'll be kinder. I'll be smarter. I'll be funnier. I'll give in to Lucas' ideals of popularity. I don't care what. All of it would be worth it.

And if I’m unveiling the truth, I might as well unveil it all. I like you. This letter has probably made that obvious already, but I had to add it. I think I’ve liked you for forever, even if I didn’t realise. Or maybe I didn’t and one day, everything changed. I don't know. Either way, I exist today with that truth. I like you. I like you and not Eleven.

I need you, Will. Even if it’s just as friends, I need you in my life.

I’m really glad you’re not reading this because I sound pathetic. And that’s because I am. I’m a stupid pathetic mess. The basement's a shit hole. My room’s even worse. My grades suck. I never see Dustin, Lucas, or Max outside of school, but I somehow see my family even less. So, I’m more than pathetic. I’m alone. And it’s my own fault.

I think California's been good for you. It got you away from Hawkins. It got you away from me. And it brought you to your dream girl. She must be pretty special. She's lucky. And if it turns out she somehow doesn't like you back, that's on her. She must've lost her mind or never had one in the first place.

If you ever need to talk about it, have a 2,000-mile-away-shoulder to cry on, I'm always waiting by the phone...

Love, Mike

[sdvharveybby]

It’s all just a waiting game...

(F!Female farmer x Harvey)

Ha ha! Another angsty “farmer is missing and mangled” fic! Honestly I genuinely enjoy this scenario because its the trials between a husband and doctor and how he handles his emotions. 

I will be making a part 2 though, but it would help if I could get criticism or perhaps a bit of popularity for this post just to see if I did well. In any case, I hope you guys enjoy it! 

Words: 2338

“Mayor Lewis, please listen to me- she has been missing for four days now. That’s not like her at all. Something’s wrong- something happened to her.” With desperation in his voice, Harvey gripped the phone harder in his hand. There was a brief pause from the other line and finally, “Okay, I understand. I will contact Marlon and Gil now, and we’ll make up a search party to look for her.” With that Harvey whispered a thank you and ended the call. He paced the floor of the home that he and the farmer had been living in for several months now- he hadn’t showered, his clothes were disheveled, and he hadn’t slept. It was nightmarish and thousands of thoughts ran through his head, he could hardly hold back the worst thoughts. That the farmer could be gravely injured- or worse… dead. He felt hopeless and cursed himself for not being able to do more- besides wait. ‘Be patient, she’ll turn up’ rang in his head that Lewis had told him two days prior. ‘She’ll turn up- you know she’s a busy girl!’ “Just foolish.” Harvey spoke aloud as he sat down in a chair and held his face in his hands. The farmer had never been this late, sure, she may have gone to bed late or turned up early the next day, but nothing like this.

It was currently 7pm, just an hour after his phone call with Lewis, and he put on his jacket to go look around town and Cindersap forest for any sign of the farmer. He walked these areas many times since her disappearance, but he always thought, ‘What if I missed something?’ ‘What if she was lost?’ As he entered into town, attempting to wipe the sleepiness from his eyes, he saw a group of people standing in the center with heavy jackets and flashlights. As he approached, he recognized them as Jodi, Kent, Gus, Lewis, Abigail, Pierre, Caroline, and a few others. “Harvey… you look awful. When was the last time you slept?” spoke Pierre as he walked towards Harvey. Harvey looked to his feet through saddened eyes, “I don’t remember…” Everyone looked to him mournfully until Lewis broke the short tension, “Okay, everyone… Our farmer has been missing for four days now. Let’s split into teams of two and scan the area for any signs of her.” Everyone began adjusting their coats and checking if their flashlights worked. “I’m talking- Cindersap forest,” people began walking, “The beach, by the railroad tracks- we have to find her.” Harvey stood there, watching everyone disperse in their teams, and relief and stress both washed over him. If they find her, what state would she be in? He feared the worst as he had done since the first day she went missing. Lewis approached Harvey and put a hand on his shoulder, “I know you won’t like this, but please go get some sleep at your clinic. When we find her- we don’t need our only doctor exhausted. I have Marlon looking for her in the caves and Gil checking the quarry, okay?” Harvey nodded without saying a word- he was a bit crestfallen, but too exhausted to argue. “I will call you when we find her.”

           Approaching the clinic Harvey unlocked the main door and stepped inside. It was dark and foreboding as he tried to imagine the farmer in one of the beds passed out. He shook his head from his constant thoughts and began prepping the area in which he would work on her if they found her. ‘IF’ they found her is a thought that occurred to him continuously since the search party dispersed. And with that, he finally stepped into bed- passing out from his lack of sleep.

           Awoken by the sound of his phone ringing- Harvey shifted in bed. Disoriented and groggy he rubbed his face when realization struck him. It was currently 4:23am and he shot up from his bed- his blanket flying behind him as he stood and stumbled to his phone. Hastily grabbing it he put it to his ear, “Yes, hello?” “Harvey… It’s Lewis. Marlon found her in the mines on floor 107. Look… she’s really not in good shape- we need you to be ready to perform surgery right away.” Without a reply, Harvey slammed his phone down on the receiver and stood up. It was surreal. They actually found her! But a dark feeling entered his stomach and he tried to swallow the lump that formed in his throat. He felt sick to his stomach almost unable to move, “S-surgery?” he whispered- stunned and emotionless. ‘Sh-she’s so badly hurt I need to perform emergency surgery on her.’ He thought to himself- finally he slapped himself awake and tore open his door and down the stairs into his clinic.

           Turning on the lights and working on preparations for the surgery, the sting in his cheek from when he slapped himself hardly bothered him as adrenaline ran through his body- his nightmare may come true. Thoughts began in his head more profusely this time, ‘What if I can’t save her?’ ‘What if I have to watch the one I love die before me?’ ‘Why couldn’t I protect her?’ As he finally finished what he had to do- the door to the clinic burst open. Whipping around he stood to face Marlon holding the farmer bridal style with Lewis behind him- the darkness from the outside pouring in. Harveys eyes shifted to the farmer and he couldn’t breathe. The lump in his throat grew stronger, the dark awful gut feeling grew stronger, and he could hardly look at her. Her body was mangled, she was caked with blood, and she wasn’t moving. ‘She’s not moving- why isn’t she moving’ he repeated in his head over and over again. Harvey rushed to Marlon and motioned to put her on the bed, “Place her on the bed- I’ll get the IV’s ready.” With a deep gruff- Marlon shifted the farmer in his arms as he had carried her for quite a while- he placed her on the bed and moved her arms beside her. “Harvey… Harvey you need to make sure she’s still alive first…” Marlon sounded grave as he whispered words that rang through Harvey like a loud bell. “I- w-what? What are you saying?” Marlon turned to face him and opened his mouth when Lewis came to put a hand on his shoulder. He closed his mouth, looked away, and stepped aside- folding his arms as they were weak from carrying the farmer. Harvey almost threw up at the thought alone, ‘Make sure she’s still alive first…’ He walked to the bedside of the farmer and pulled out his stethoscope- he was slow- shaking as he put it to her heart and listened. His eyes were wide, and he began to sweat- unsure of what and how to handle the situation. She was the worst he had ever seen, using his eyes to navigate and analyze her body from the surface- he saw multiple fractures, broken bones, cuts, bruises, and a large laceration running down the side of her left arm. Along her left side was a large third degree burn on her upper thigh- having burned through her clothes and began to blister. Blood caked her hair and down the right side of her face- her eyes closed and pained. It looked like she hadn’t slept in days and her body was shutting down. Then… *thump… thump* Harvey cracked a small and worried smile, ‘She’s alive! She’s alive!’ he thought, and he quickly began grabbing IV’s, bandages, ointment, anything to help ease her pain. Harvey heard a short gasp from behind and he turned to face everyone form the search party standing behind him. They looked out of breath and tired, but also relieved that the farmer was found. He looked at Caroline who had given the short gasp and saw Maru fighting through the people to get to him. Through analyzing the farmer he didn’t even hear anyone walk in- and through teary eyes and cracked voice he spoke, “She’s alive, but as you can see- is gravely injured. I…” he gave a short pause and looked away- fighting back tears whilst also knowing he has a job to do, “-need to stabilize her and get her through the night. If she can make it throughout this day then I believe she’ll make it, but if not…” He couldn’t finish his sentence- Maru moved past him and began unwrapping the needles for the IV’s and rummaging through the drawers for antibiotics. Lewis cleared his throat, “We all need to leave and let them work.” Those in the search party were stunned and never broke their gaze from the mangled farmer- hardly hearing the words that Harvey spoke. It wasn’t until Marlon moved in front of them that they realized they needed to leave, and they all quickly herded out of the clinic.

           With just Harvey and Maru they both began disinfecting her words and sorting out her injuries. Maru began working on the farmers right side while Harvey began on the left- analyzing her head injury was his first priority. “Dr. Harvey… You may want to see this.” Pulling back the farmer’s burned clothes from her upper thigh revealed how bad the burn was, “Okay, once we put her on antibiotics and pain relievers, we need to begin debridement.” She nodded in response and began disinfecting the laceration on the farmers arm, instead, to prepare it for stitches and bandages. The blow to the head, Harvey surmised, seemed to be from a fall onto a rock from within the mines- the blow itself didn’t to seem bad, but the blood loss was.

           The process to stabilize the farmer took hours- it was a sigh of relief and her checking the clock that Maru said, “Dr. Harvey, it’s almost 5pm. D-Do you think she’ll be all right?” After scanning over the farmer several times looking for anything they could have possibly missed, satisfied, Harvey sat in his chair just bedside the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. He gave a long-drawn-out sigh, contemplating and reviewing all the steps they did in his head. “By this point,” he began, “It’s all up to her. With the feeding tube, IV’s, and bandages- there’s nothing more we can do but watch her hopeful progress.” He didn’t like the uncertainty towards the farmer and he silently cursed himself for allowing her in the mines time and time again. He felt like he could have stopped her, and this time- he really wished he did. Deep in his mind, he acknowledged that there was no way he could have known, but he tossed them aside. If only he was more persistent or sent her with more life elixirs or-, “Harvey- I know you’ve been in your head quite a bit, but we have done all that we can.” Maru broke through his unhealthy absorption of thought,  “Let her rest… and you should too.” Maru began grabbing her coat, “I’m going to head home. If there’s anything you need… Please call me. I want her alive just as much as you do.” Starring intently at the farmer, he gave Maru a silent nod and she left the clinic. Ever-so-hopeful Harvey wasn’t sure if he should scold the farmer or just be happy she came back in one piece. It was a mixture of both. As much as he loved the farmer with all his being- she continuously neglected the dangers of the mine. Always coming back with scraps and bruises that he’d see when he would give her a massage at night. Most of it he would ignore because they were easy to treat, but over time the scars on her body became clear- by this point, through all the physical therapy and treatment she’ll need, the farmer will likely never be able to go back into the mine again. The thought of that also saddened him though… He knew she loved going into the mine- fighting new creatures and grabbing ore or foraging for rare materials. It was just what she wanted to do and she enjoyed it- she sought out danger, but unfortunately it sought her out too. Looking up her body, it looked like the farmer was a mummy. Wrapped up in gauze with an IV in her arm and feeding tube in her mouth. Even for a doctor it was a rather scary and intimidating sight- it was all just a waiting game. It was all just seeing if she would decide to pull through- there wasn’t anything he could do by this point. Cracking the knuckles on his hands and stretching out his neck, he walked over to one of the nearby beds and scooted it as close to the farmer as he could get it. With the heart monitor in the way, it was a bit difficult, but her slow heart beats gave him a peace of mind. She was alive, and he was going to see to it that he sees all of this to the end. He laid down on the bed and finally took off his “doctor hat”- facing her and realizing the situation he… began to cry. It’s one thing to look at her as a patient, but another looking at her as his wife and the mess that she was in. He couldn’t do anything but watch and be patient- and that was his least favorite thing. Through his quiet sob he reached out his hand to gently stroke her arm, and spoke, “Honey… please come back to me….” He gave a pause to blink through his tears and continued, “It’ll be all right- I’ll take good care of you… Let’s just get through this together, okay? Please?” He kept his hand on her arm, gently stroking it with his thumb- blinking away the tears as best as he could. It’s all just a waiting game…

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 10x04: Silence the Whisperers - Analysis

How did everyone like the episode? As always, I thought it was really good. The first thing I’ll say is that there isn’t nearly as much symbolism in it as there has been in the past few episodes. Not that there isn’t any, but you know how the past few have just been ridiculously overflowing with it? This one just has less. It’s one of those episodes that’s more action-oriented and setting up for what comes next.

***As always, spoilers abound below for episode 10x04. Don’t read until you’ve watched!!!***

Opening Sequence:

So the song playing in this sequence whispers “1, 2, 3” over and over again, which I think it significant. I already talked in an Ask about the wheel decoration behind Daryl, and how I think it represents the death fake out arc, and may show that Beth’s arc is about to come back around. Beyond that, Ezekiel is sad, Magna is having some issues, and a tree comes through Hilltop’s wall.

Hilltop:

We learn that 9 people got trapped in a building when the tree hit the roof and it caved in. They got all the people out, but this could be part of the Hole in the Roof theory. As the episode proceeds, the noise from the tree brings walkers and they’re afraid the whole wall will collapse. It’s already been weakened by the tree and now all the walkers are pushing in on it.

This hearkens back to two things for me. The first is the fallen trees in Them, which I always saw as significant. The second is, of course, when the church fell in S6, bringing down Alexandria’s walls and letting walkers in in 6x08/09.

Why would that be significant? Well, I think it’s obvious why Them would be significant, yeah? I mean, it’s after the storm and the fallen trees that the music box woke up. So if you want to draw a direct parallel, you might argue Beth will arrive after the tree falls. Honestly, I don’t see this as a big enough event to herald that, but it might be one of many small events that lead to her. More on that in a minute.

And how about paralleling it to S6? The biggest thing for me there is that that was smack in the middle of Glenn’s death fake out. After the church fell and let the walkers in, Glenn showed up, miraculously alive, and reunited with Maggie. Just saying.

In terms of the plot, I’m wondering (and this is pure conjecture) if Hilltop will eventually fall too. The Kingdom has already gone down, and I wonder if HT will too, forcing the entire group together at Alexandria. I’m not at all positive that’s where they’re going, but it crossed my mind.

Because the wall actually does collapse, but Michonne’s group shows up to help fight the walkers, and they do talk about fixing it. So we’ll see.

Ezekiel:

Given all the messages and Asks I’ve gotten about this, I doubt I need to explain it in great detail. Zeke has always had heavy parallels with Beth. Just as Daryl and Carol are very similar, so Beth and Ezekiel are too. Here, we have him contemplating suicide, much as Beth did in S2. Much like her, he realized he wants to live. 

As I mentioned in an Ask, this happened on one side of the now-broken bridge Rick was blown off of. So that connects him to Rick. And he wore a green shirt (Beth). So I think that connects him to the death fake outs and this functions as a foreshadow of Zeke’s own coming death fake out.

He also rode a black horse. It ran by Michonne after he let it go. That made me realize something. It’s not anything groundbreaking, but just a detail I hadn’t really thought of before. We’ve always seen as white horse = Beth and black horse = Daryl. The white horse also = life or being alive. But I realized the black horse also = death, despair, lack of hope. That’s how Zeke felt here, and how Daryl felt around the time Buttons died. Again, nothing we didn’t already know, but I just hadn’t thought of it that way before.

When Michonne and Ezekiel talk, she says, “it never would have worked between us anyway. We’re both too stubborn.” He says, “maybe in another universe.” I laughed at that. As in, the comic book universe? It’s obviously the writers’ way of acknowledging that this is a nod to their comic book romance, but it’s not going to happen in the show. (Add that to the list of things TD has been correct about.)

Daryl/Lydia/Alexandria:

This was obviously the biggest story thread in the episode. And I gotta say, I loved it! Gauge and his friends are mean to Lydia and bully her. She talks to Negan about it more and more, which Daryl isn’t happy about.

I was laughing hysterically when Lydia butchered the squirrel in front of them. How much like Daryl is that? Like father, like daughter, I guess. She’s rebellious just like he is. Which isn’t surprising since they come from similar, abusive backgrounds.

Daryl is older and wiser now and advises her not to provoke them, but he himself would have done much the same only a few years ago.

The three bullies attack Lydia and Negan saves her. I gotta say, while I was one who thought it would have been more just for them to execute Negan at the end of AOW, it’s really hard to hate him when he’s being sweet to Lydia. While rescuing her, he accidentally kills the woman who used to be with the highwaymen.

So, remember in episode 1 when I talked about how Negan told FG he didn’t want people’s fear of the Whisperers to blow up in his face so that they blamed him and wanted to string him up? I said that was setting something up and this would happen eventually. So this episode is the fulfillment of that. It truly was an accident and he didn’t mean to kill her, but no way people are going to let it go, now. So Negan takes off.

In truth, I’ve been waiting for him to take off. I’m actually really excited about this story line. Remember last season when Negan escaped and left Alexandria for a while? Judith tried to stop him, and he took her compass? Well, he was only gone a short time, but during that time we saw tons of callbacks to Still, saw him run from dogs, and saw tons of other Beth-ish symbolism. We weren’t exactly sure what it meant at the time, but now I think we do.

That small excursion from Alexandria was a foreshadow of this one. He’ll probably be gone much longer this time and the arc will be much bigger. It’s important to note that we saw not only Beth symbolism, but also saw Negan drink bad water and throw it up. That hints at the radiation/helicopter group stuff.

So I’m not saying Negan will meet Beth in the woods next episode—obviously I’d be great with that, but I’m sure it will be much more complicated and protracted—but just that something about him leaving will lead to Beth. I’m excited to see how it all plays out.

When Daryl talks to Carol, she says all the drama in the communities—both the stuff with Negan and Lydia, as well as the tree situation at Hilltop—are distractions from the true enemy: Alpha. I know there are lots of theories floating around about Carol being the one to have let Negan out. 

While I don’t think we have much evidence of that either way, I certainly wouldn’t dismiss it. It would mirror her killing Karen and David at the prison in 4a. Not that the action is the same, but this wouldn’t be the first time Carol took it on herself to solve a problem in a less than ethical way, because she thinks it’s for the greater good. But no one knows for sure what happened yet. They didn’t tell us in this episode. So we’ll just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, when Michonne and Daryl talk on the radio, she tells him to protect Lydia. She’s afraid that if anything happens to Lydia, or if she leaves Alexandria, Alpha will attack them. Yeah, once again, that’s a setup. Something along these lines will happen eventually and bring Alpha’s wrath.

Near the end, Michonne, Judith and Luke head back to Oceanside because Rachel radioed to say they thought they saw some Whisperers near where the mask washed up in 10x01. So Michonne is going to investigate. She takes Judith and Luke with her. Where Luke is concerned, I kinda feel like he might die. I hope not, but they sure focused a lot on him saying heartfelt goodbyes to his group (Magna, Connie, Kelly, and Yumiko). That struck me as suspicious. Like that group might not all be together again.

Details:

I won’t do a full details post because there were only a handful I saw worth mentioning.

When Lydia said Gauge and his pals deserved what she did (with the squirrel), Daryl said, “I get it.” Obvious Beth line.

When Siddiq had another freak out, he put his face in ice water. Not a huge deal, but another example of water helping to (temporarily at least) heal him.

When Lydia was in medical, talking to Daryl, we see a bunch of IV bags behind her. Just reminded me of Grady.

Oh, and Lydia played around with a worm when she was talking to Negan. (Worm Theory.)

When Michonne talked to Daryl on the radio, she told him to be her proxy for the vote. This really isn’t anything official, but that word caught my ear. It had nothing to do with Beth in the plot, but how often does TD, in our theories, talk about Beth proxies? And I don’t think I’ve ever heard them use that actual word on the show before. So it just got my attention. ;D

When Negan disappeared, FG said the guards reported that the keys were missing. Key Theory. And reminds me a lot of all the keys we saw at Grady.

When Daryl and Carol talked on the steps, Carol had an interesting line. She said, “it’s like time never moves.” I wondered if that might be a reference to the clocks without hands. She also mentions New Mexico yet again.

We see Michonne and Judith fighting walkers side by side. Just look at this. I think it might be a callback to when Rick and Carl fought walkers together (with guns in that case) at the prison in 4a.

Finally, this isn’t really a TD detail, but they’re definitely setting something up with Magna and Yumiko. Their relationship is in a rocky place, but I feel like it’s mostly because Magna is kind of spiraling. She seems angry and like she just wants to kill everything. I don’t know what they’re setting up there, but something.

When Lydia butchered the squirrel, which I already said was very Daryl-like, it specifically showed that Father Gabriel (embodiment of the Sirius symbolism/Beth) was watching her. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but I found it interesting.

I loved seeing Daddy Daryl taking care of Lydia. It’s really sweet and compelling. I’m enjoying his interactions with Lydia. I always feel like he’s on the verge of telling her about Beth. But alas, he doesn’t. At least, not in this episode.

Lydia said she let Negan out, though when Daryl confronted her, she admitted she didn’t. But she ultimately wanted to stay in Negan’s cell because she felt safer in there. It just occurred to me that she currently has a Morgan mindset (from 6x06) where she actually feels more comfortable in a cage. Just kind of interesting.

Ending:

At the end, they repeat the “1, 2, 3” song again. We see Luke saying goodbye to everyone, which I already talked about. Then we see Carol on the roof, looking at a map. (Maybe evidence that she’s systematically looking for Alpha?) Then we see Daryl scrubbing the graffiti off his front door.

Guess what? The vest is back! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

That’s super important, guys. We really haven’t seen his vest in a LONG time. It’s return now, with the missing wing on obvious display, feels really important. Like Beth’s return (the return of his missing wing, perhaps?) is just around the corner.

The camera pans around, showing all the graffiti (there was more than just the stuff on Daryl’s door). It stops on one particular instance of it. And, this might be hard to hear, but if you put on the subtitles, the song ends, followed by the sounds of walkers. Then the subtitles say that a Whisperer is saying, “Shhhhh.”

Yeah, that feels like a very significant setup. I feel like these first three episodes were really intros or setups for the season. Now we’re going to get into the meat and potatoes of things. You know, either really get into the Whisper War, or else something else huge is going to happen. And whatever it is, I think it will lead to Beth. I saw the last sequence of this episode as evidence that the arc where Beth returns is about to ensue. That makes me happy.

Okay. Gonna stop there for today. As I said, I won’t do a details post for this episode. Either tomorrow or Wednesday, I’ll do a post talking about where I’m thinking the events of this episode (such as Negan leaving, Michonne going to Oceanside, seeing Daryl smoke last episode, etc) might be heading. So it will mostly be a predictions post. Sort of. Stay tuned. ;D

[jakiphyr]

Jak (re)plays FE2  [Part 01]

Awright!  It’s been a good four years since I’ve last touched Gaiden fully (late Dec 2013 - Feb 2014), so I’ll be doing a challenge this time around.

This LP is brought here today by HistoryoftheEmblem’s Gaiden event Kickstarter. So feel free to join the ride, or follow along!  Now, without further ado...

Introduction

I will be doing a Gaiden Novels Canon Playthrough challenge.  I will explain what this is, then lay out the rules that are styled similar to a draft now that I look at this back over.

My Motives (a.k.a. why am I doing this) 

This run is based on Fire Emblem: Gaiden’s two-parter novels that were released back in 1993.  Scans of illustrations can be found starting here, the rest are linked from there for those interested.

After @azebraslife ‘s discovery posts about the craziness that is Silque+Kliff subplot being half-siblings, Kamui dying to a necrodragon, possessed!Delthea killing Luthier and snapping out from that…

I meant to record my in-depth findings/summaries from what I read so far off my twitter live log in June but forgot to write them down as more than just quick blurbs.  This liveplay event will help me on being continuously motivated to read these books, from start to finish.  So I’ll be using my posts to record these summary translations, so expect those inserted throughout my LP entries.

Which is OK, the novels are easy enough to read as a beginner for the most part and makes for a fun experience.

It’s time to dig whatever hidden gems there are (and there’s plenty, I’m sure).

Rules, to keep myself organized and for followers to know what I’m doing:

(1)  Whoever dies in the novels dies, and stays dead.  No exceptions.  If you know exactly who dies from the scan posts I’ve made... a~yup, those will be dying at the same story/battle points whenever possible.

(2)  To branch off from 1, if revival springs are used, I will use them for that character to be revived from the dead.  AFAIK, the author didn’t use any, but I’m hoping for a pleasant surprise.

(3)  I’m allowing myself the old-fashion method of the Mila Turnwheel — save states.  Someone dies when they aren’t supposed to?  Reset.  There’re likely other scenarios I’ll keep a mind for when replicating novel events in my play.

(4)  Whatever the novel does — give certain classes to villagers, equip certain items to units, kill a boss with a certain strategy, choice recruitments, lionhead statboost uses — I must replicate those events and actions in my run, thus making it a challenge.  If something’s almost or actually impossible, well... I’ll figure a way around it by having the next closest thing to it.  If nothing’s specified, I’ll use my own discretion (and hope it doesn’t conflict later).

That’s the basis, for now.  I don’t want to restrict myself too tightly so I’ll be a little more flexible — unless, of course, the novels dictates otherwise

The Game

Okay!  Now with that out of the way, let’s begin.

I’ll be going Easy Mode for the ease of training female mages to level 20 to not be hellish again like on my first blind run.

And now... we get to Act 1.

But wait!  The novels have a couple of things to say before I can truly start.

It has a backstory and some pre-game exposition with our favourite Deliverance gang—their own Rise of the Deliverance DLC in novel form.  Let’s have a look.

—

[Novel]

Prologue:

Greek mythology-esque poetic literature that dragons are gods and how their actions affect weather/nature.  A roar brings the rain and lightning storms, humanity questioning why the heavens are always angry.  As the two dragons have always fought as if they were born to, and birthed Valencia to be a reflection of their souls (North vs South fighting mirrors the Duma vs Mila conflict).

It gives a history lesson of how Rigel and Zofia came to be, describing Duma and Mila like oil and water put in a single vase, eventually growing murky and bad as it mixes from being stabilized prior. And now Valencia faces the worst war in its history.

—

Chapter 1 - Liberation Army Part 1-1: 6 Fake Death Pills

[ This entire part is pre-game, contains graphic depictions of events. Warnings for characters contemplating suicide, gritty themes, blood, and graphic descriptions of murders. ]

Starts off with a visible blood splatter on the polished stone floors of Zofia Castle, the military fill the halls leading to the throne room.  An old man with pale skin, has long, hairy legs, and a long white beard, sits on the tall golden throne with a sword lodged in his bleeding chest.  King Lima IV stabbed by none other than Desaix.

Lima IV still draws breath, barely living as he’s groaning painfully and flailing an arm searching for support (but gets none).  His last words condemn Desaix for being ambitious, having stolen the sword of the royal family which he had taken out at the scene as his second sword.  (The royal sword is apparently forged with steel.)  Desaix mocks the king, and his army begins to chant as he takes the next course of action.

The royal sword was then swung to behead Lima IV, the bloodied head rolls to the stone floor, his half-opened eyes looking up at Desaix with resentment.  The usurper declares the rest of the living royal family to be thrown into dungeons or killed.  The defense rebellion broke out immediately after and utterly failed, their numbers whittled down brutally.  Desaix’s reformed royal army heed all responsibility on throwing rebels and other captives in the dungeon (which hasn’t been used for many years in the peaceful kingdom of Zofia).

The anti-Desaix faction’s numbers continue to decline until six (named) knights remained with very few others who were still fighting vigorously.  It is revealed that the six are Clive, Mathilda, Clair, Lukas, Python, and Forsyth.  Eventually, they were captured and got locked up in the cold dungeons.  Frustrated by their circumstances, Clive grieves that death is preferable for the sake of their knightly pride over being tortured by the usurpers.  An old(ish) soldier with graying hair starts talking to Clive (he is the generic looking man in the first illustration).

The six really want to die, as they’re depressed, but the generic soldier makes a deal with them: drink the 6 “death” medicine pills he had made (and calls them lucky he has that many), which will put them in heavy sleep for four hours.  He’ll disguise himself in the enemy’s uniform, cart their “dead” bodies to the graveyard catacombs full of Terrors (the Deliverance Hideout), and buy them time to rebuild forces to liberate Zofia.

He calls six names, the novel describes each one as the following: Clive, the young chief knight, Clair, the Pegasus Knight who was rewarded good luck by the gods for riding a temna, Lukas, a hot-blooded soldier whose spear strikes like a lightning bolt, Forsyth, his character is different from Lukas, whose calm judgment is true, Python, a genius archer whose bow technique is clear [and shoots] with anger, and Mathilda, the female knight who has a brave soul, as beautiful as the night sky, and is as good as Clive.

Clive rejects the offer, shouting it won’t fly with them as knights, still insistent on preferring death.  Mathilda and Clair nod in agreement with them.  A tearful Forsyth insists on all of them dying together as was their knightly vow if it came down to it, the gray-haired man calls them foolish.

The soldier persuades Clive and the others a little more, until finally, Clive makes the first move on reaching for the “death” pill, which then the other five immediately follow suit.  The man tells the knights about Mycen, a holy knight who was banished by Desaix ages past and currently living in Ram, a village located at the cape of the southernmost tip of Zofia.  He tells them to form the liberation army together with Mycen and free Zofia from the hands of Desaix.  The six proceed to swallow their pills and “died” on the spot.

The consumed medicine causes a foul odor to fill the prisons, signaling some had died to the unaware.  The guards drag their six bodies out of the dungeons, sending them to the caves on the far coast from the castle. 

Upon waking, they salvage the caves for weapons, arrows, armour, and garments.  They also attempt to cover up the cave’s entrance with rocks and leaves to keep Desaix’s men from finding the location again.  Lukas was chosen as the messenger because he can hide himself the best from being captured, he is given a map of Zofia that was found and the journey would take three nights.  Lukas and Forsyth hug it out before patting each other’s backs with fists, then Lukas departs.  Clair follows Lukas out of the cave and mentions she is going to find her pegasus.

Forsyth and Clive have strategy talks while waiting for Clair for return and talking about accommodating Mycen.  Python’s polishing his arrows.  Mathilda returns with urgent grim news that the royal army has found their hideout, rushing them to go deeper into the thin, narrow caves.  Meanwhile, Clair did not hear the loud distant yells from Desaix’s army descending upon the caves, chasing her fellow soldiers.

—

[Game]

Whew, apologies for the length so far.  It was to set up the atmosphere of how the chaos will unfold in the future.

If Gaiden’s character endings weren’t potentially depressing enough on their own, we get them from the very beginning...  

So I suppose from that cliffhanger, that was how Clair and Mathilda get captured, which is different from Shadows of Valentia’s depiction where Mathilda was taken hostage before Lukas left, and Clair got kidnapped after his departure for Ram.

These fills in the fe2′s story gaps are interesting to note (as well as the author’s portrayals of the RGB trio’s personalities).

Okay, back to the game...

Act 1 will begin in the next post.  (This one is already long enough, and the next part’s 6 pages long.  In comparison, part 1-1′s was ten pages long.)

To be continued...

—

→ Next installment: Yo, Alm! Listen to this guy! (3x)

[thewalkingsnapplecap]

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The Curious Case of Real Life Ornamental Garden Hermits

In modern times if you want to show off extreme wealth, you may purchase expensive sports cars, buy a private jet, wear flashy jewelry, or, as boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been known to do, travel around carrying suitcases filled with sometimes millions of dollars in cash. Such extravagant displays of wealth are a trademark of the boxer with Mayweather reportedly having a standing arrangement with his bank to have huge sums of money in cash periodically delivered to his palatial home with the primary purpose being to facilitate flaunting his fabulous wealth, instead of using a card like mere plebeians.

Going back a few centuries in Britain, a popular way to achieve a similar effect was to simply hire a random person to live on your property, with their job generally being to cease bathing or grooming in any way and otherwise spend their days sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing but looking like a stereotypical hermit, all for the enjoyment of guests.

While it isn't fully clear exactly how the idea of the so-called Ornamental Hermit came about, author of The Hermit in the Garden, Dr. Gordon Campbell of the University of Leicester speculates, "The idea of keeping an ornamental hermit probably began in Tivoli to the east of Rome when the Emperor Hadrian had a villa. In his Villa, he had a little pond and in the middle of the pond, he had a little house for one where... he could retreat from the horrors of running the Roman Empire."

What does any of this have to do with 18th century Britain? In the 16th century, the villa was excavated and this little villa was discovered. Pope Pius IV then decided he too should have a similar little building in the Vatican gardens to use as a retreat. This was subsequently built, called the Casina Pio IV, helping to set the idea in popular landscape architecture.

This finally brings us to the 18th century. Around this time, famed landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown, who designed nearly 200 parks, some of which are still around today, strongly pushed for getting rid of elaborately perfect, artificial looking gardens, and instead chose to design parks that looked as if the landscaping of the region was completely natural. Of course, everything was nonetheless still carefully planned out, with paths, streams, artificial lakes, and other landscaping carefully done to create an area that looked like something out of a classic painting.

As for structures, these included things like elaborate stone bridges and models of ancient temples, but also often including something much simpler- a hermitage style retreat. These could be proper buildings, but more commonly were things like hobbit-hole type underground homes. They also sometimes were made of stone, occasionally carefully constructed such that existing tree roots would appear to have grown around the stone, with moss placed to grow on it as well. Adding macabre elements was also common, such as using bones of animals as decoration, or even in some cases as floor or wall material.

Inside these structures would generally be placed various items like human skulls, books, hour glasses, etc. In the early going, some estate owners would actually use these structures as a retreat for themselves, to reconnect with nature and relax. But, eventually, somebody got the bright idea to take it a step further.

Instead of making it look like a hermit lived in the structure or using it as a retreat themselves, the estate owners started hiring actual people to live in their hermitages. These individuals would often be asked to dress like a stereotypical druid, though what the druids actually wore isn't precisely known. As noted, they would also sometimes be asked to grow long beards, allow their hair, toenails, and beard to grow indefinitely, etc. etc.

As you might imagine, finding someone interested in wiling away their years sitting around in squalor, and in some cases strictly forbidden from venturing into the outside world, wasn't exactly an easy thing, despite the fact that some land owners were offering a princely sum for an individual willing to do it.

For example, at Painshill Park, Charles Hamilton offered £700 (about a £1.2 million today) to anyone willing to live for seven years in the hermitage constructed in his garden. The specific ad Hamilton placed seeking such a hermit stated the person hired:

shall be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hourglass for timepiece, water for his beverage, and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard, or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr. Hamilton's grounds, or exchange one word with the servant.

Unfortunately for Hamilton, after a mere few weeks of service, his first hired hermit was found hanging out at a nearby pub rather than sitting around contemplating his life.

In another case, one John Timbs of Lancashire offered 50 pounds per year to anyone willing to live in his underground hermitage. Not without creature comforts, however, this particular hobbit-hole apparently included a chamber organ, a bath, unlimited books of the hermit's request, and high quality food from Timbs' own table. Again, as was common, an interested applicant would have to agree not to cut "his hair, beard, toe-nails, or fingernails" for the duration.

In yet another case, the advert noted,

Wanted- Ornamental hermit to occupy natural cave dwelling under waterfall for seven years. The successful candidate shall be provided with Bible, water, spectacles, camlet robe, hourglass, and food from the house. No hair- nail, or beard trimming permitted. Sum offered 600 pounds.

There are also a few known instances of people attempting to volunteer their services as an Ornamental hermits, such as this ad that appeared in the January 11, 1810 edition of the London Courier:

A young man, who wishes to retire from the world and live as a hermit, in some convenient spot in England, is willing to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having one. Any letter addressed to S. Laurence (post paid), to be left at Mr. Otton's No. 6 Coleman Lane, Plymouth, mentioning what gratuity will be given, and all other particulars, will be duly attended.

When a particular property owner could not find a suitable candidate, they often resorted to placing dummies or occasionally fully fledged automatons in the hermitages. For example, in the mid-18th century on Sir Samuel Hellier's Wodehouse estate's 18 acre gardens, he had a mechanical hermit constructed apparently capable of some form of human-like movement when manipulated by a hidden servant.

As for what the flesh and blood ornamental hermits would get up to, this varied based on the requirements of their benefactors. Some seem to have wished them to sit around and do nothing, speaking to no one, as in the aforementioned case of Charles Hamilton. Others only cared that they look the part, and otherwise when guests weren't around were free to socialize with other servants, take the occasional bath in the main house, etc. Still others would ask their hermits to entertain guests with poetry of their own making or otherwise impart the wisdom they were supposed to have acquired through spending their days mostly in solitude.

In at least one case, naturalist Gilbert White actually convinced his own brother, a minister by the name of Henry, to take up the post for a time on his estate in 1763, apparently much to the excitement of his various guests. For example, consider this account by one Catharine Battie upon meeting Henry,

in the middle of tea we had a visit from the old Hermit his appearance made me start he sat some with us & then went away after tea we went in to the Woods return’d to the Hermitage to see it by Lamp light it look’d sweetly indeed. Never shall I forget the happiness of this day ...

While this might seem an awful lot of excitement for meeting a quasi-homeless person, it should be remembered that this wasn't that far away from a time when walking was literally the world's most popular spectator sport. And we're not talking racing someone or walking around and seeing the sites. No- crowds of thousands would gather simply to watch someone walk around quite normally in circles for sometimes days on end, such as in 1809 when one Captain Robert Barclay Allardice famously walked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours.

Going back to hermits, occasionally a given land owner would strike gold and find someone actually interested in living as a hermit. Arguably the two most famous of these being Stephen Duck and Father Francis.

As for Stephen, he was a poet who accepted a position as a resident hermit at Richmond Park, owned by King George II's wife, Queen Caroline. His hermitage was described in 1735 editions of The Gentleman's Magazine,

A subterranean building is by Her Majesty’s order carrying on in the Royal Gardens at Richmond which is to be called Merlin’s Cave adorned with Astronomical figures and characters. The figures Her Majesty has ordered for Merlin’s cave were placed there... 1. Merlin at a table with conjuring books and mathematical instruments, taken from the head of Mr Ernest, page to the Prince of Wales. 2. King Henry VIII’s Queen, and 3. Queen Elizabeth who came to Merlin for knowledge, the former from the face of Mrs Margaret Purcell and the latter from Miss Paget’s. 4. Minerva from Mrs Poyntz’s 5. Merlin’s secretary from Mr Kemp’s one of His Royal Highness the Duke’s gardeners. 6. A witch, from a tradesman’s wife at Richmond....

Her Majesty has ordered also a choice collection of English books to be placed therein; and appointed Mr Stephen Duck to be Cave and Library Keeper and his wife Necessary Woman there.

As for the outside, they state it was made of a

heap of stones, thrown into a very artful disorder, and curiously embellished with moss and shrubs, to represent rude nature. But I was strangely surpris’d to find the entrance of it barr’d with a range of costly gilt rails, which not only seemed to show an absurdity of taste, but created in me a melancholy reflection that luxury had found its way even into the Hermit’s Cell.

Fully embracing the role, Duck apparently grew a lengthy beard and otherwise spent his time reading books from the queen's library, writing poetry, and talking with the many hundreds of people each year who would seek him out at the elaborate hermitage. Unfortunately for Stephen, he ultimately had enough and decided in 1756 to kill himself by jumping into the River Thames and failing to bother to surface.

As for Father Francis, he lived in a cave at Hawkstone Park, belonging to one Sir Richard Hill. Francis spent his time contemplating life and attending to people who would come visit him to seek advice from him. Those wishing to see Father Francis, would, to quote a 1784 account,

pull a bell, and gain admittance. The hermit is generally in a sitting posture, with a table before him, on which is a skull, the emblem of mortality, an hour-glass, a book and a pair of spectacles. The venerable bare-footed Father, whose name is Francis (if awake) always rises up at the approach of strangers. He seems about 90 years of age, yet has all his sense to admiration. He is tolerably conversant, and far from being unpolite.

When Francis died after 14 years of service, a suitable replacement couldn't be found, so he was replaced by an automaton, with it noted by one visitor who saw the fake hermit:

The face is natural enough, the figure stiff and not well managed. The effect would be infinitely better if the door were placed at the angle of the wall and not opposite you. The passenger would then come upon St. [sic] Francis by surprise, whereas the ringing of the bell and door opening into a building quite dark within renders the effect less natural.

How the movement in this case was achieved was apparently to have a hidden worker manipulate the automaton each time someone entered to cause it to stand up. At that point, the worker would then manipulate the mouth using a string, while reading out various lines of poetry.

All good things must come to an end, however, and by the early 19th century, having an ornamental hermit on your estate was already falling out of fashion.

But let us never forget that the human drive to one-up our fellow denizens on our journey to the grave is so strong that for a brief period in history people actually took to, essentially, hiring a random squatter to come hang out on their property, just so they could show off the unkempt individual to guests.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

That Surprisingly Recent Time British Husbands Sold Their Wives at Market

Do People Who Get Knighted by the Queen Get Anything for It?

What Powers Does the Queen of England Actually Have?

“Every Man His Own Stylo” – That Time MI6 Agents Used Semen as Invisible Ink

How the Weird British Tradition of Putting Topless Women on the Third Page of Newspapers Got Started

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[kidsviral-blog]

What I've Learned About How To Be A Girl

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/what-ive-learned-about-how-to-be-a-girl/

What I've Learned About How To Be A Girl

Being a capital-G Girl is something that works for other people, and does not work for me. But it took me a while to get there.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I am 4 or 5, preschool age, running around alone on a playground that only appears in this memory and no others. Two older girls (are they older or do they just seem older because they have long, beautiful hair and the right clothes?) ask me if I’m gay. They laugh, but together, at me. I think “gay” means “happy,” and I am, because it’s fall and I love fall and I am having a good time. I say yes. They’re so surprised, and they laugh more, scathingly, and my skin prickles with shame. “She said she’s gay!” They cackle. “You have hair like a boy,” they sneer, and I don’t yet understand why this is bad. The differences between myself and these girls seem very obvious, and very sharp, in a way they weren’t five minutes before.

I am in elementary school and I spend the vast majority of my time pretending to be someone else — anyone else. Characters I made up, characters I didn’t, versions of myself that I mentally insert into whatever I am reading at the time. Pretty much all of the versions of myself I envision have the following in common: They are older than I am, they are a thin version of myself I erroneously believe I will someday become, and they have Disney Princess hair that never has to be thought about or maintained. They are, essentially, the Perfect Girl version of me I really wanted to be. They’re exaggerated and do not allow for nuance. They’re the version of Girldom that just walked out of a 1950s ad for futuristic dishware. They still have an edge of hope.

I start middle school and my body feels separate from me. Nothing ever fills it, and I have no interest in adorning or primping it. I make a satchel out of felt and twine and tie it around my waist and ride my bike through the woods, pretending I’m an elf. My hair is long and tangles easily and I hate brushing it. My stepmother digs her fingers into it, picking as gently as she can at the rat’s nest it always becomes. I don’t wear jeans or dresses; I wear soft clothes that are too big for me. My mother picks at me — she wants me to be more feminine, she wants me to wear makeup and part my hair and wear nicer things that we can’t even afford, and I understand now that she wanted these things because she believed they would be armor between me and a world that hurt. She wanted them not because I wasn’t enough, but because she was afraid. It will take me 10 years to understand this. For now, I feel like I am not enough.

I am almost done with middle school, which has felt like a never-ending gauntlet. My body has shapes that I don’t like, that feel foreign and wrong. Other people notice. I’ve started wearing jeans and black oversize T-shirts with band names on them. I wear a lot of my father’s old clothing. Other people start calling me a slut in addition to a whale and a hippo. Once in art class a boy who never leaves me alone loosens the screws in my chair, and when I sit in it, it falls apart to a chorus of shrieking laughter. Two girls throw spitballs at me every afternoon on the bus; they jeer and snarl and I understand that this is what I deserve, because I am not good at being like them. I have friends, but only one of them is really nice to me, and even she sometimes caves. She doesn’t want to find herself outside, like I am. I forgive her over and over. I would do the same thing if I was her.

I start high school and I cut my hair short, short, short to my shoulders. I can’t hide behind it as much anymore. I make other friends; one teaches me how to put on eyeliner (incorrectly, it turns out). I start listening to music that makes me feel like there’s champagne under my skin, like I am understood. I learn that I can’t go without a bra anymore; I learn this by not wearing a bra and being quietly, snidely mocked all day. I still wear oversize things, but they’re bright. As time goes on, I find that I cannot be a girl the way that other girls are girls. I can’t find stylish clothes that fit me; I can’t afford them anyway. I start cutting up my old clothes to make them less ugly. They’re still ugly, but now I’ve made them that way, so it feels like a choice. High school is less overtly cruel, but there are still people who hate me on principle and make no secret of it. They are largely men. I don’t know what to do about it. I stop trying.

I am diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when I am 13-almost-14. I start seeing a new endocrinologist when I am 15 and she puts me on a medication that will help with my insulin resistance, a symptom that baffles me. I understand that it has something to do with hormone production, but this understanding is fuzzy. I mostly feel like my baby-making parts are trying to kill me. I’m so bad at being a girl, I think, that being a girl is making me sick. She explains my weight is not my fault. It’s a symptom too. I feel complicated. It is not quite relief.

The medicine that helps with my insulin resistance makes me very sick.

I don’t tell anybody.

I figure: A doctor gave this to me, so it’s OK. She told me I need to lose weight, so maybe this is how.

I don’t feel like my body is really part of me. I don’t feel a connection to it. I don’t touch or look at it if I don’t have to, but there are mirrors all over my house, and I spend all of my time dodging them, because if I get caught I can’t stop looking, with the same kind of revolted fascination I recently saw on the face of a man contemplating a bad taxidermy website.

Everything I eat leaves my body almost immediately, leaving no footprint of fullness behind.

I start fainting.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

Around 15 I dye my hair for the first time. I figure if I have to be different, I might as well be really different. All along, underneath this, there is a kind of level despair — a part of me feels anguished, always, even when I am happy. There is a war in me, and I have learned to ignore it. I dye my hair before my mother gets home one day. It’s red dye. My natural hair color is almost black. I don’t bleach it first, so what I wind up with is this sort of rusty auburn. I love it. I look in the mirror and for the first time I see someone that looks like me.

When I wash it out in the tub, it looks like the tub is full of blood. I think about what it would be like if it was my own, but idly, without any active interest. My scalp itches.

I lose around 70 pounds in six months. (This is a very dangerous amount of weight to lose that quickly, for anyone playing along at home.)

One day I notice my clavicle. I can fit two fingers in the hollows of it. It feels like an achievement.

“You’re doing so well,” everyone says. “You look so good.”

I am doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that there is something very wrong with the volume of food I am taking in versus the weight I am losing. I am hungry all the time. I am so hungry that hunger begins to just feel like something that always has been and always will be. I am the human equivalent of the sound of grinding teeth.

“You’re doing so well,” everyone says. “How much weight have you lost?”

Eventually I see a doctor. I see two, actually — my endocrinologist and a cardiologist, to see if there’s something wrong with my heart. There isn’t, and I’m surprised, because something feels very wrong with my heart.

I start gaining the weight back before we all leave for college and I gain the rest back during my freshman year. My boyfriend — we are trying long-distance because we’re idiots — tells me that I’m beautiful, and maybe we should work out together. (We live two states apart.) I’m stunning, and am I sure I want to eat that? I have never fully believed that I am desirable, and I can feel whatever tenuous certainty I have start to shrink.

I cut the rest of my hair off when I go home for winter break from school. I dye it red again — I had stopped, I hadn’t felt the need, I hadn’t wanted to. But I don’t feel like I have control over myself; I feel myself slipping. Desirability and femininity are so entangled in myself that I feel I can’t have one without the other; if I am failing at one, my attempts at the other must be laughable. Everyone must know. My hair looks terrible, but that’s mostly because the person who cut it didn’t know how to cut short hair on girls. I don’t hate it. I don’t like it, either. I feel, very carefully, not much at all.

When my boyfriend breaks up with me it blindsides me in the way only very obvious things can. I eat two meals in seven days. I want to shrink myself into nothing.

I grow my hair out. I grow my hair out for the better part of two years, thinking that all I want is to look like someone he never knew. I want to finally win at the game of Girldom I have been half-assing for my entire life. I wear dresses, I wear makeup, I get layers and Zooey Deschanel bangs and I blow-dry them. I wear things that fit. I paint my nails. I am aggressively, determinedly Normal. I am sick of being outside. I am sick of fighting.

Being a Girl is so much harder than being a girl and it feels like a Sisyphean task, because no matter what I do I take up too much space. There is too much of my personality, too much of my body, too much of my feelings. I am always, internally, a glass about to spill or a boiling teakettle. This is unacceptable if I want to be a Girl, so I learn to never talk about it. I almost never think about not eating. I almost never think of figuring out a way to make myself sick. (I think about them all the time.)

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I get a job immediately out of college because I am very, very lucky. I feel good; I feel better; I have done a year of therapy and I am not in therapy now but I think maybe I can manage. This is a new feeling. The anguish that has been my constant companion, a tight knot in my chest, a little voice chanting you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong, is not gone, but is quieter.

I dye my hair a couple shades lighter than normal. I don’t have a bathtub in the apartment I’m renting with three friends who are still in college, so I do it in the shower. The color stains the old grout the color of old blood for a couple of weeks. I stop trying so hard to be a Girl and try a little harder to figure out how to be myself.

I move to New York. I relapse — sort of. I pre-relapse. I prelapse. At first I blame the summer sun and the smell of garbage for my lack of appetite, but I know I’m deluding myself. I get my shit together and find a therapist — quickly this time, before I can really hurt myself, and I learn that recovery is not a straight line. It will take me another year and a half to understand that recovery isn’t even a circle; recovery waxes and wanes, goes in and out like a tide.

I learn that being a girl is not a straight line, either. And I learn that being a Girl is something that works for other people and does not work for me, and anyway, such a narrow definition feels like a cage. I decide that I can be a girl, and that sometimes I will be too much, and that’s OK. (I sometimes need to repeat this to myself; I sometimes need a reminder.) I start cutting my hair again. Every time I cut it, I am shocked at how much lighter my heart is. The shorter it gets, the freer I feel.

One night I feel like one of those coiled springs with a fist on the end of it. I feel like I could hurt. I itch everywhere, in my marrow. I feel like there is a tiny goblin sitting on my shoulder hissing in my ear about how disgusting I am, how horrifying, how too much, how not enough. Nothing I do will shut him up. So I dye my hair bright blue. It takes four hours. I don’t do it carefully, and I end up burning part of my scalp (by accident) with bleach. When I’m done, I feel quiet and eased. I feel like enough.

Lately, I feel like this more and more often. It feels normal to feel like enough, and not an anomaly whose end I have to defend against.

I do not have it all figured out, but I am here now, and I am trying.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kayetoal/tbh-gender-is-a-performance-i-forgot-to-buy-tickets-to

[kidsviral-blog]

What I've Learned About How To Be A Girl

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/what-ive-learned-about-how-to-be-a-girl/

What I've Learned About How To Be A Girl

Being a capital-G Girl is something that works for other people, and does not work for me. But it took me a while to get there.

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I am 4 or 5, preschool age, running around alone on a playground that only appears in this memory and no others. Two older girls (are they older or do they just seem older because they have long, beautiful hair and the right clothes?) ask me if I’m gay. They laugh, but together, at me. I think “gay” means “happy,” and I am, because it’s fall and I love fall and I am having a good time. I say yes. They’re so surprised, and they laugh more, scathingly, and my skin prickles with shame. “She said she’s gay!” They cackle. “You have hair like a boy,” they sneer, and I don’t yet understand why this is bad. The differences between myself and these girls seem very obvious, and very sharp, in a way they weren’t five minutes before.

I am in elementary school and I spend the vast majority of my time pretending to be someone else — anyone else. Characters I made up, characters I didn’t, versions of myself that I mentally insert into whatever I am reading at the time. Pretty much all of the versions of myself I envision have the following in common: They are older than I am, they are a thin version of myself I erroneously believe I will someday become, and they have Disney Princess hair that never has to be thought about or maintained. They are, essentially, the Perfect Girl version of me I really wanted to be. They’re exaggerated and do not allow for nuance. They’re the version of Girldom that just walked out of a 1950s ad for futuristic dishware. They still have an edge of hope.

I start middle school and my body feels separate from me. Nothing ever fills it, and I have no interest in adorning or primping it. I make a satchel out of felt and twine and tie it around my waist and ride my bike through the woods, pretending I’m an elf. My hair is long and tangles easily and I hate brushing it. My stepmother digs her fingers into it, picking as gently as she can at the rat’s nest it always becomes. I don’t wear jeans or dresses; I wear soft clothes that are too big for me. My mother picks at me — she wants me to be more feminine, she wants me to wear makeup and part my hair and wear nicer things that we can’t even afford, and I understand now that she wanted these things because she believed they would be armor between me and a world that hurt. She wanted them not because I wasn’t enough, but because she was afraid. It will take me 10 years to understand this. For now, I feel like I am not enough.

I am almost done with middle school, which has felt like a never-ending gauntlet. My body has shapes that I don’t like, that feel foreign and wrong. Other people notice. I’ve started wearing jeans and black oversize T-shirts with band names on them. I wear a lot of my father’s old clothing. Other people start calling me a slut in addition to a whale and a hippo. Once in art class a boy who never leaves me alone loosens the screws in my chair, and when I sit in it, it falls apart to a chorus of shrieking laughter. Two girls throw spitballs at me every afternoon on the bus; they jeer and snarl and I understand that this is what I deserve, because I am not good at being like them. I have friends, but only one of them is really nice to me, and even she sometimes caves. She doesn’t want to find herself outside, like I am. I forgive her over and over. I would do the same thing if I was her.

I start high school and I cut my hair short, short, short to my shoulders. I can’t hide behind it as much anymore. I make other friends; one teaches me how to put on eyeliner (incorrectly, it turns out). I start listening to music that makes me feel like there’s champagne under my skin, like I am understood. I learn that I can’t go without a bra anymore; I learn this by not wearing a bra and being quietly, snidely mocked all day. I still wear oversize things, but they’re bright. As time goes on, I find that I cannot be a girl the way that other girls are girls. I can’t find stylish clothes that fit me; I can’t afford them anyway. I start cutting up my old clothes to make them less ugly. They’re still ugly, but now I’ve made them that way, so it feels like a choice. High school is less overtly cruel, but there are still people who hate me on principle and make no secret of it. They are largely men. I don’t know what to do about it. I stop trying.

I am diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when I am 13-almost-14. I start seeing a new endocrinologist when I am 15 and she puts me on a medication that will help with my insulin resistance, a symptom that baffles me. I understand that it has something to do with hormone production, but this understanding is fuzzy. I mostly feel like my baby-making parts are trying to kill me. I’m so bad at being a girl, I think, that being a girl is making me sick. She explains my weight is not my fault. It’s a symptom too. I feel complicated. It is not quite relief.

The medicine that helps with my insulin resistance makes me very sick.

I don’t tell anybody.

I figure: A doctor gave this to me, so it’s OK. She told me I need to lose weight, so maybe this is how.

I don’t feel like my body is really part of me. I don’t feel a connection to it. I don’t touch or look at it if I don’t have to, but there are mirrors all over my house, and I spend all of my time dodging them, because if I get caught I can’t stop looking, with the same kind of revolted fascination I recently saw on the face of a man contemplating a bad taxidermy website.

Everything I eat leaves my body almost immediately, leaving no footprint of fullness behind.

I start fainting.

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

Around 15 I dye my hair for the first time. I figure if I have to be different, I might as well be really different. All along, underneath this, there is a kind of level despair — a part of me feels anguished, always, even when I am happy. There is a war in me, and I have learned to ignore it. I dye my hair before my mother gets home one day. It’s red dye. My natural hair color is almost black. I don’t bleach it first, so what I wind up with is this sort of rusty auburn. I love it. I look in the mirror and for the first time I see someone that looks like me.

When I wash it out in the tub, it looks like the tub is full of blood. I think about what it would be like if it was my own, but idly, without any active interest. My scalp itches.

I lose around 70 pounds in six months. (This is a very dangerous amount of weight to lose that quickly, for anyone playing along at home.)

One day I notice my clavicle. I can fit two fingers in the hollows of it. It feels like an achievement.

“You’re doing so well,” everyone says. “You look so good.”

I am doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that there is something very wrong with the volume of food I am taking in versus the weight I am losing. I am hungry all the time. I am so hungry that hunger begins to just feel like something that always has been and always will be. I am the human equivalent of the sound of grinding teeth.

“You’re doing so well,” everyone says. “How much weight have you lost?”

Eventually I see a doctor. I see two, actually — my endocrinologist and a cardiologist, to see if there’s something wrong with my heart. There isn’t, and I’m surprised, because something feels very wrong with my heart.

I start gaining the weight back before we all leave for college and I gain the rest back during my freshman year. My boyfriend — we are trying long-distance because we’re idiots — tells me that I’m beautiful, and maybe we should work out together. (We live two states apart.) I’m stunning, and am I sure I want to eat that? I have never fully believed that I am desirable, and I can feel whatever tenuous certainty I have start to shrink.

I cut the rest of my hair off when I go home for winter break from school. I dye it red again — I had stopped, I hadn’t felt the need, I hadn’t wanted to. But I don’t feel like I have control over myself; I feel myself slipping. Desirability and femininity are so entangled in myself that I feel I can’t have one without the other; if I am failing at one, my attempts at the other must be laughable. Everyone must know. My hair looks terrible, but that’s mostly because the person who cut it didn’t know how to cut short hair on girls. I don’t hate it. I don’t like it, either. I feel, very carefully, not much at all.

When my boyfriend breaks up with me it blindsides me in the way only very obvious things can. I eat two meals in seven days. I want to shrink myself into nothing.

I grow my hair out. I grow my hair out for the better part of two years, thinking that all I want is to look like someone he never knew. I want to finally win at the game of Girldom I have been half-assing for my entire life. I wear dresses, I wear makeup, I get layers and Zooey Deschanel bangs and I blow-dry them. I wear things that fit. I paint my nails. I am aggressively, determinedly Normal. I am sick of being outside. I am sick of fighting.

Being a Girl is so much harder than being a girl and it feels like a Sisyphean task, because no matter what I do I take up too much space. There is too much of my personality, too much of my body, too much of my feelings. I am always, internally, a glass about to spill or a boiling teakettle. This is unacceptable if I want to be a Girl, so I learn to never talk about it. I almost never think about not eating. I almost never think of figuring out a way to make myself sick. (I think about them all the time.)

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I get a job immediately out of college because I am very, very lucky. I feel good; I feel better; I have done a year of therapy and I am not in therapy now but I think maybe I can manage. This is a new feeling. The anguish that has been my constant companion, a tight knot in my chest, a little voice chanting you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong, is not gone, but is quieter.

I dye my hair a couple shades lighter than normal. I don’t have a bathtub in the apartment I’m renting with three friends who are still in college, so I do it in the shower. The color stains the old grout the color of old blood for a couple of weeks. I stop trying so hard to be a Girl and try a little harder to figure out how to be myself.

I move to New York. I relapse — sort of. I pre-relapse. I prelapse. At first I blame the summer sun and the smell of garbage for my lack of appetite, but I know I’m deluding myself. I get my shit together and find a therapist — quickly this time, before I can really hurt myself, and I learn that recovery is not a straight line. It will take me another year and a half to understand that recovery isn’t even a circle; recovery waxes and wanes, goes in and out like a tide.

I learn that being a girl is not a straight line, either. And I learn that being a Girl is something that works for other people and does not work for me, and anyway, such a narrow definition feels like a cage. I decide that I can be a girl, and that sometimes I will be too much, and that’s OK. (I sometimes need to repeat this to myself; I sometimes need a reminder.) I start cutting my hair again. Every time I cut it, I am shocked at how much lighter my heart is. The shorter it gets, the freer I feel.

One night I feel like one of those coiled springs with a fist on the end of it. I feel like I could hurt. I itch everywhere, in my marrow. I feel like there is a tiny goblin sitting on my shoulder hissing in my ear about how disgusting I am, how horrifying, how too much, how not enough. Nothing I do will shut him up. So I dye my hair bright blue. It takes four hours. I don’t do it carefully, and I end up burning part of my scalp (by accident) with bleach. When I’m done, I feel quiet and eased. I feel like enough.

Lately, I feel like this more and more often. It feels normal to feel like enough, and not an anomaly whose end I have to defend against.

I do not have it all figured out, but I am here now, and I am trying.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kayetoal/tbh-gender-is-a-performance-i-forgot-to-buy-tickets-to