#edit: also you best believe they do not get along with silver the dog

[mm2305]

Hi Mil!!

I thought those Meet Cute asks were so much fun!! I am glad you did too!! If you have time I would like to request #35 for Ethan and Olivia.

Thank you!!

-Kate

Please drive!

Pairing : Ethan Ramsey x f!mc (Olivia Valentine) ¦¦ Words/Rating : 1.4k / T ¦¦ Warnings : mention of aggressive dogs ¦¦ Setting : Alternate Universe ¦¦

Prompt : They jump into your car breathless and tell you to keep driving

A/N : Hello!! I'm sorry this took so long but it's here now and I really hope you like this Kate! I certainly had lots of fun with this. Request from the meet cute prompt list (requests still open). Happy reading!

Disclaimer : all characters belong to the rightful owners. Also the Thomas Mendez headcanon here is by @jamespotterthefirst

Masterlist

-/-

It was a warm, sunny afternoon, the sun high upon the sky, the air unusually filled with humidity. A dreadful combination, for sure. The street was mostly empty, the sight of another soul, rare during this time that the heat was at its fullest. Most people would be sensible enough to not go out at 103°F, but as much as he needed to be one of those people, Ethan was on borrowed time that day.

Being an intern at a hospital was probably the hardest - and let's be honest, shittiest- situation you could be in, right? The answer is a big fat no. At least that's what Ethan Ramsey, a doctor who at just his second year as an attending was at the top of his game and highly successful, would say. Why? Because someone has to deal with the interns and that brave soul has to deal with a lot. He speaks from experience.

Hence why this was the only moment he could slip in his schedule to take a break and get some decent coffee. His best friend Tobias, had suggested he go to the new place in the suburbs to get his caffeine fix. Of course, Ethan didn't believe him at first. A coffee shop in the suburbs? Sounds like one of Tobias' usual pranks. Still, his curiosity won and he drove all the way to the suburbs in search of the infamous coffee shop.

He would die before he admitted that Tobias was right, but that was some pretty good coffee. Content and somewhat more ready to go back, he began walking to his car. He could hear some barking in the distance, but that was to be expected. All those rich people around here sure would keep a dog or two. "Well maybe I should adopt the pup Thomas stole. I could use the company of someone not constantly talking" , he thought to himself as he unlocked the car.

Ethan quickly got in and immediately turned on the air conditioning. He sinked into his leather seat and closed his eyes for a minute, finding some relief from the unbearable heat. Suddenly he heard the door of the car open and close along with some very loud barking and he instinctively jumped in his seat, turning to look at the person who jumped in his car.

He didn't even get to utter a word before the woman turned to look at him with pleading eyes.

"Oh my God I'm so sorry for barging in but please please drive ! I'll explain everything I promise!"

Not even thinking about it, he started driving, while keeping an eye on the woman next to him, who was breathing heavily and looking out of the mirrors. It was then that he saw six big dogs running after his car and all that barking he had heard started making sense.

The dogs stopped following them after a few more minutes, their endurance making them seem understandably terrifying. Only then did she relax and take a deep breath.

"Thank you so much for this. I'm so sorry for jumping into your car.", she thanked him with a small smile.

"Uh… it's no problem. Glad I could help."

"I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Olivia Valentine, nice to meet you.", Olivia extended her hand towards him in a handshake.

Turning his eyes on her he briefly shook her hand. "Ethan Ramsey, it's…certainly interesting to meet you"

She laughed slightly at that, shaking her head and looking out of the window.

Ethan couldn't help but really notice how attractive she was. Her hair was gold blonde and tied back into a high ponytail, shaped in loose curls. Her eyes were big and green and her skin was spotless. Olivia wasn't wearing much makeup but what really stood out was her plump, bright red lips, perfectly contrasting with her fair skin. She was dressed in a simple, professional, dark blue , form-fitting dress with black high heels that accentuated her long legs. She was wearing a silver, elegant wrist watch and in her lap rested a black briefcase.

"Would it be okay if I asked what just happened to you, Miss Valentine?", the urge to solve mysteries whether it was regarding medicine or this beautiful woman, propelled him towards asking her this question. Besides she just came out of nowhere, I have a right I ask her. Right?

"Please call me Olivia."

"Only if you call me Ethan"

She grinned and nodded. "Deal"

"So, Ethan , I am a real estate agent. I had an appointment with a client to show him a villa that was for sale but I had been waiting outside the house for thirty minutes and he hadn't shown up. And of course, he didn't even call to let me know that he wouldn't come, instead of letting me roast in the sun. Anyways, I decided to leave and I walked a couple of blocks down the street in hopes of getting a cab. You can guess how well that went in this time and area, so I called a colleague to come pick me up. I was waiting for her to come, when two of these huge ass dogs escaped their homes, thinking I was an intruder just because I passed by and began coming closer, teeth bared and all. Since I am so lucky today, somehow more dogs gathered so I panicked and ran. They started chasing me… and then Olivia met Ethan", she finished her story with a dry chuckle.

Ethan was left speechless. His surprise must have been written all across his face because next thing he knew she was bursting into laughter.

"I'm-I'm sorry… it's just--that you should see your face", she said in between laughing.

"I mean. Wow. And all because of that jerk of a client."

"Definitely a jerk and not only because of that. He's a plastic surgeon and he's all about how successful he is or some shit. "I'm Dr. Thorne and I'm one of the leading plastic surgeons in Massachusetts." As if I give a damn. ", she rolled her eyes hard.

"Dr. Thorne you said? Ugh he's one of the worst of his kind"

"You know him?!"

"Yeah unfortunately. He works in Edenbrook, as do I. I'm a doctor."

"Ohh interesting! Let me guess. Internal medicine?"

"Actually… yes. How did you guess?", he turned to give her a surprised look.

"You previously said of his kind. I know enough about doctors that one working in internal medicine isn't particularly…fond of surgeons. Am I right?", she asked giddily.

Ethan chucked at that. "Yes, you are. Mostly at least"

"Nailed it."

Valentine. Where had he heard that name though…?

"You work in the big firm downtown don't you?" , he stated rather than asked after a moment of silence.

"I was wondering when you would figure it out Dr. Ramsey.", Olivia teased him, smirking.

"I am a diagnostician Ms. Valentine. I notice things. And your firm is difficult to miss"

"Technically not mine. My father owns the business."

"So it's safe to assume, your mother is the doctor?"

"Bravo, Doctor. Yes indeed. She works at Mass Kenmore."

"I see… So. Want me to give you a lift? We're already in the car and your work is on my way.", he raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"Sure! Thanks Ethan", she replied, grinning widely.

They spent the rest of the way comfortably talking to each other, both genuinely enjoying each other's company. For someone who was so talkative and gregarious, Ethan found himself interested in anything Olivia had to say. She was smart and confident, but in the most charming way possible. At last they reached the firm and Ethan pulled over.

Both turned to look at each other and started talking simultaneously

"Olivia--"

"I --"

"Ladies first.", he motioned for her to say what she wanted.

"Right. Thank you once again Ethan, both for the save and the ride. It was really nice to meet you.", her hand reached and squeezed his arm.

"You're very welcome, Olivia. I uh… wanted to ask…only if you want to of course… can I have your number?". He was quite visibly stuttering, but he tried to hide it behind a cough.

Olivia looked him in the eyes, clearly seeing through him and smiled. "Yeah, absolutely. Can I have yours too?"

He smiled back at her. "Yes of course"

They exchanged cards and after saying goodbye, Olivia got out of the car and walked back into the office. Just as she sat down at her desk she received a text message.

Ethan : Meet me this Saturday at 8, in "Gaston's Bistro"?

Olivia : I'll be there :)

Ethan : Perfect :D

She put her phone away and got down to work, smiling all the way, already excited for her date this weekend.

-/-

A/N : Of you made it till here, then thank you for reading! Likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated :)

Taglist :

Perma (all OH edits and fics) : @romewritingshop @codykosuckmytoe @sophxwithers @actuallybored @potionsprefect @ethansramsey @crystalwillow @gryffindordaughterofathena @kiara-36 @mrsethanfreakingramsey @writer-ish @panda9584 @genevievemd @jamespotterthefirst @queencarb @shanzay44 @nikki-2406 @starryeyedrookie @coffeeheartaddict @schnitzelbutterfingers @mysticaurathings @starrystarrytrouble @lsvdw-blog @izzyourresidentlawyer @silma-words @stygianflood @headoverheelsforramsey @maurine07 @natureblooms24 @a-crepusculo @barbean @choicesaddict5

Fics only : @alina-yol-ramsey

+ @choicesficwriterscreations @openheartfanfics

Please let me know if you want to be moved to another category or totally removed. No hard feelings promise.

[danddymaro]

Addiction | Old Snake x Reader

An Ending to MGS4 that ends in happiness for our good boi Snake

Fixed/Edited

BTW: Let’s shift the events around and pretend he went to go talk to Big Boss Before Meryl's wedding.

Thoughts are italics in quotations = 'Example'

Flashbacks are in italics = Example

Word Count:  2225

Addiction

From betwixt the snug place of his lips, the smoke in which he took pleasure from was snatched, aggressively pulled out in a single motion,

"Snake," A familiar male's voice said in a harsh whisper, sounding frustrated and disappointed all together, "Just what in the world do you think you're doing!?" Otocon added with the same tone of exasperation.

Silently, Snake's blue eyes drifted right to see the bespeckled brunette male giving him a half-hearted glare, his entire expression full of annoyance as he glared onto the man that seemed many years older than what he truly was.

"You know you shouldn't be smoking," Hal said while shaking his head in the same disapproval, making sure to exaggerate a low dragged out sigh, "Honestly...Snake, you'd think that at least today you'd make an exception." He added.

'Today...' David started, 'Today is a special day... for not just me, but for her too,' He thought while grunting, knowing just what the other man meant, feeling guilt weigh down over his shoulders as he recognized his selfishness.

With a dull gaze as a response, Snake returned the look back to his long-time friend, 'I know this already...don't think I don't,' He silently told the man while pressing his lips together tightly.

Tearing his eyes from the hardened dark chocolate orbs, David then trailed his oculars down to the discarded nicotine as it now lay on the floor, a small, thin line of smoke still rising from its end, a gentle flicker of a red spark still visible as well.

He could pick it back up. After all, it was salvageable, but even so, his reaction remained prolonged.

He stared at it for a few moments before he closed his eyes to rid himself of the tempting image.

"You will end up smelling like burnt ash and tobacco. I don't think she'd like that," Otacon continued to speak, convincing him to make the right choice.

Dropping his shoulders, Snake nodded in defeated agreeance, knowing it to be true.

After a few silent minutes passed, he then gave a frustrated sigh and stepped on it, crushing it under his shoe and making sure it was put out by the stomp.

"yeah yeah," David grumbled, because he was well aware of the fact and had already mentally kicked himself for it.

"I know you're nervous," Hal then said with a soft, understanding smile rising, "it's understandable," he said while placing his hand on his friend's shoulder, "But you should do it for her. " He added, truthfully, also being concerned for Snake's health.

"Now come on, " Emmerich said with brightened brown orbs, "It's about to begin," he reminded the other male, his index finger tapping the little face on his watch as an exited grin overtook him.

Having spent almost his entire life in battle, it wasn't like he could fit into the normal world with ease. He couldn't just chuck himself into an easy everyday life as simple as that, no matter what anyone tried to tell him.

He'd been told to live his life, to enjoy what bits he had left and to salvage it the best he could, but he hadn't the least bit of an idea as to how to do so,

'how? ' He wondered helplessly, uncertain as to just how he could go on so simply.

What could a man that's known nothing but battle do in the normal world?

He couldn't go back to his family as other soldiers would often do, because he had none. He had no mother, father, brothers, or sisters, to fall back to. 

Heck, he didn't even have a damn dog to go back to and run toward at the end of the day.

All in all, he had nothing. So, he couldn't just join into the masses of civilians and blend in, because it just hadn't been in his plans.

He'd never thought that far along, and for a long time, he'd thought there was nothing there for him.

But of course, life had its crazy, little surprises, especially one he'd never anticipated... 

"Marry me!" She said out loud, her voice rising with plea, the sudden proposal stopping his movements entirely. 

His steps came to a complete halt, and the foot that had almost touched the ground stayed suspended for a moment, hovering over the placement by just a centimeter.

He then took two slow breaths before he placed it down to the Earth, turning to the woman with confusion, his brows knotted together to show a visibly painted look of dumbfoundedness,

"wh..what?" He breathed, almost inaudibly as he tried to comprehend what he'd heard.

 He was certain that it was just his old age playing with him.

 He just knew it was the only explanation as to why he heard her say the words because it was just unfathomable to him,

'I must be hearing things,' He thought to himself, deflated at the sudden realization that dawned upon him.

Dementia; he probably had dementia.

He'd thought he had just a bit more time before then, but it seemed that he wasn't lucky enough, and surely the old age he presented himself with had finally fully beaten him,

"What...what did you say?" He asked slowly, staring at her with furrowed brows.

She took a step forward, inching herself closer to him with anxiousness, seeming uncertain on coming near,

"Did...did you not hear me?" She squeaked, face turning beet red, seeming mortified at the fact that she had to once again repeat herself.

" Perhaps... but I could have been mistaken." He grumbled, watching her continue to move closer to him.

Slowly, and tentatively she stepped forward, soon standing three feet from him, staring up at him with a harsh swallow, a small lump gliding down her throat before she spoke yet again,

"I...I...I said ...I ... I said ... will you marry me..." she repeated with strain, sounding much smaller the second time around, losing all the sense of confidence she'd previously fueled herself with.

"Marry you..?" He repeated, still at a loss.

At her side, he noticed she held the white bouquet full of flowers tightly bound within her hold, and it was the same bunch that Meryl had thrown up in the air not a few moments ago.

When she realized just what he had been staring at, she held it up with a rather quirky smile, " I think this kind of means I'm next, and I don't see anyone better around," she said while raising both her brows to dance up and down until he turned away from her, not in the mood for the show of playfulness,

"Huh?!

- What! Please don't go!" she cried out, rushing after him, soon managing to stand before him, her arms widespread to stop him from moving past her,

"I'm being serious!" She declared, looking up at him with frantic (e/c) colored eyes, "You have to believe me!" she added, continuing on with her story.

She reminded him of the fact that they'd met before. It had been a while back, an event that had embedded itself deep within her heart, even if he'd forgotten,

"Because..." She started, " Because I've thought of you every day after that," she confessed. "And then I spoke to Hal, and he brought me here, he told me that now...Now was my chance to tell you. " She confessed to him.

She'd waited years, pinning for the man through each and every one of them, waiting for the day she'd one day stand before him again.

And it all began to make sense by then, why Otocon seemed so insistent on him joining the ceremony, despite his own refusal to show because he'd had other plans in mind, all of which didn't include infecting everyone with his miserable air.

"I'm not exactly meant for romanticism, " he told her. " And even if I were..." He trailed off, keeping his eyes drawn away from her, his words dying out as he let her fill in the blanks.

Even if he had been willing to take the risk, to suddenly go off and get hitched to some strange woman he just vaguely remembered,

his life was draining, and all in all, he had nothing to offer her.

"You're better off with someone else... " he said lowly, " someone who has the time," he added with the same dejection, moving to leave her behind before she stopped him again,

"Wait," She said with a stilled breath.

Her two hands both grasped his, stopping him and effectively holding him back. The soft, warm palms of her two hands enveloped his own hand which was much rougher and less dainty, " Let's at least try?" she said with hope,

"I already know," She told him, " I've already known about your condition...but still..." She went on, daring to step closer, " Still... Even then, it doesn't change the way I feel, and, in fact, It just fuels me to want to be with you even more, " She admitted.

"It's sudden, I understand, but at the very least, give me the opportunity to come closer to you." She tried to compromise,

"If you begin to feel the same way I do...then... then we can make something of it. " She told him, slowly convincing him with the lovely stare of her pleading, (e/c) colored eyes.

He reflects back to her proposal far more than he cares to mention because it had been the moment his life took a complete turn, going from muted grey and black to cheerful, colorful vibrancy in every step that she accompanied him in.

And it all lead him to where he was now, standing before her, dressed properly and prim, left awestruck at her beauty, moreso than he typically was, reminding him that perhaps his luck wasn't so bad if it had somehow aligned their lives together.

she held his hand in hers as she slid the silver band onto his finger, the smile she wore on her red painted lips never faltering, not once losing its lovely show of fulfilled happiness, because she couldn't be any more joy-filled, something everyone commented on.

- There wasn't a happier bride in the planet.

Her cheek was then pressed to his chest, her nose scrunching up as she let out a soft sigh, not sounding angry, but he knew she wasn't all too pleased either,

"You were smoking..." she said softly, closing her eyes slowly as she let her body be led by his slow movements.

He wasn't a dancer, and she wasn't either, but nonetheless, they rocked together, bodies pressed close as their friends watched the couple's first dance together.

"I can smell it on you," she added with a small sound of exhaled air produced from her nostrils.

She hated loving the scent, the smell of smoke making her think just of him and nothing more.

"I was nervous," he said in defense, his response making her giggle softly,

"Don't tell me you want out already?" she asked him, drawing back slightly to look up at him, saying it in a joking manner, but even then he could hear the uncertainty in her voice. 

"Because I think it's a little too late for that," She reminded him.

"...Do you?" he asked her back, and he watched her shake her head in denial,

"Of course not silly," She said earnestly.

And he loved what followed, what always came after she looked up at him,

"I never would," She breathed, her gleaming eyes soon straying down to her wedding band, lovingly eyeing the silver piece, " David, I loved you then..." she started sweetly, her gloved hands sliding up from his chest to his cheeks, " and I love you now..." she reminded him, rising up on her already heeled feet.

His paled blue eyes closed, his mouth melted onto hers before she brought him the tender heat of their plumped goodness.

His two hands then fell over her hips but didn't stop to land on them, instead, they slid around her, his arms taking complete hold of her during their loving connection in an embrace that spoke more than words ever could.

"I'll love you always," she managed to murmur between their mashed mouths.

A squeal of enjoyment left her as he squeezed her tightly within his arms, loving all the attention he fed her.

She lived for it; Blossoming beneath his rays of affection.

"David..." she said again, drawing back, her eyes brightened with a type of light he knew existed only when he stared at her, because the woman adored him, something he'd always found to be unbelievable, yet a bliss.

He'd gone days without the death stick, days which later turned into months, and finally years.

He'd gone the rest of his breathing days without so much a thinking of them, but not a single one of those passing dates did he resist her, always caving in to her, even in their darkest days.

By then he'd found out that there was something far more addicting than nicotine, and it was the sweet flavor of her lovely lips, the warmth of their tender press, and much more the dedication behind each one that she let graze him.

All in all, she became his one fixation, the one thing he couldn't ever dream of living without.

[my-infp-world]

INFP Music Collaboration Project: Complete!

The INFP Collaboration Playlist Project is now complete! 

In total we had about 200 songs submitted and that completely blew me away! Thank you all so much for participating, I had no idea that it would get this many responses! 

Thank you especially to @rokokokokolores,  @stillnotknowing, @anypassingthought, @2nerd4this, @sonsoftie, @aseratreasures, @infp-relatable, @lunagirl0013, @idunno-justpicksomething, and @namhamjoon (please let me know if I accidentally forgot to tag you)

These are just the participants who were okay with being named but also thank you to all of the anonymous participants!

Here’s the final playlist from everyone’s suggestions, including some of mine that I threw in even though some of you beat me to the punch for a few songs.

Here is the INFP Music Collaboration Project!

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2F8xgXYEKiJSBOo7g8IvON

I was thinking of doing another one of these in the future but just make up my own prompts and put them all in one form and leave it open for a while or forever and just update the playlist twice a month or something like that. If you have ideas, just drop a comment or an ask if you want it to be anonymous. 

For those who want to know what the playlist turned out to be, here’s the list of songs with their categories below this break:

PROMPT #01: A SONG YOU LIKE WITH A COLOR IN THE TITLE

Silver Dagger - Live at Cecil Sharp House - The Staves

Today I Sing the Blues - Aretha Franklin

Pink Moon - Nick Drake

White Flag - Joseph

Black Swan - BTS

Indigo - Origa

Everything Black - Unlike Pluto

Red Sun - DREAMCATCHER

Yellow Lights - Harry Hudson

Red Hill Mining Town - U2

PROMPT #02: A SONG YOU LIKE WITH A NUMBER IN THE TITLE

.stage 4 fear of trying. - Frank Iero

Symphony No.5 In B-Flat, Op.100: 2. Allegro marcato - Sergei Prokofiev

One More Time with Feeling - Regina Spektor

100 Bad Days - AJR

R.I.P. 2 My Youth - The Neighbourhood

+THNX190519+ - CL

100 Ways - Jackson Wang

Day 1 â—‘ - HONNE

18 - Anarbor

Two - Sleeping At Last

Three Tree Town - Ben Howard

PROMPT #03: A SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF SUMMERTIME

Fumes - EDEN

Summertime Sadness - Lana Del Rey

T-Shirt Weather - Circa Waves

ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco) - Taylor Swift

Dream - Priscilla Ahn

Carnival Hearts - Kayla Diamond

Yam Yam - No Vacation

Motivation - Normani

Wake Me Up - Avicii

PROMPT #04: A SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF SOMEONE YOU'D RATHER FORGET

Alligator Alley - Michael Daugherty

Because of You - Kelly Clarkson

Sincerely, Me - Mike Faist

Cheerleader - OMI

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

Over You - Ingrid Michaelson

PROMPT #05: A SONG THAT NEEDS TO BE PLAYED LOUD

Shine A Little Light - The Black Keys

Dynamite - BTS

Prelude in E-flat minor - Dmitri Shostakovich

Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet

Salute - Little Mix

Smother - Daughter

Ship To Wreck - Florence + The Machine

I Am The Best - 2NE1

Baba O'Riley - The Who

Mr. Brightside - The Killers

King - Years & Years

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) - Whitney Houston

I'm Coming Out - Diana Ross

PROMPT #06: A SONG THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO DANCE

Rain - MIKA

My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up) - Fall Out Boy

Jump in the Line - Harry Belafonte

We Are the Tide - Blind Pilot

I'm A Believer - Radio Edit - Smash Mouth

PROMPT #07: A SONG TO DRIVE TO

So Much More Than This - Grace VanderWaal

Open Road - Lost & Found Music Studios

Vasoline - Stone Temple Pilots

Walk in the Night - Kaori Kobayashi*

Fáinleog - Live - The Gloaming

I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers

Kiss - Prince

Olalla - Blanco White

Sweater Weather - The Neighbourhood

PROMPT #08: A SONG ABOUT DRUGS OR ALCOHOL

Whiskey and Morphine - Alexander Jean

Meds - Placebo

High - Sir Sly

June - Florence + The Machine

Here's to Never Growing Up - Avril Lavigne

Void - The Neighbourhood

Clouds - BøRNS

PROMPT #09: A SONG THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY

Love Wins - Carrie Underwood

Shukumei - Official HIGE DANdism

Boy With Luv (feat. Halsey) - BTS

The Man Who Can't Be Moved - The Script

Love Come Down - Kalafina

Here Comes The Sun - Remastered 2009 - The Beatles

You Are the Best Thing - Ray LaMontagne

Pokemon Theme Song - The Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet

PROMPT #10: A SONG THAT MAKES YOU SAD

Someday - From "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"/Soundtrack Version - All-4-One

How We Love - Ingrid Michaelson

Everything You Ever - Neil Patrick Harris

Bluebird - Sara Bareilles

The Christmas Shoes - Newsong

Amen - Amber Run

Empty - Ray LaMontagne

In Dreams - Roy Orbison

The Beach - The Neighbourhood

PROMPT #11: A SONG YOU NEVER GET TIRED OF

Kimi Ga Hikari Ni Kaeteiku - Kalafina

Memories - Maroon 5

No Choir - Florence + The Machine

Should I Stay or Should I Go - Remastered - The Clash

Love On Top - Beyonce

Keep Your Head Up - Ben Howard

PROMPT #12: A SONG FROM YOUR PRETEEN YEARS

Fight Song - Rachel Platten

Samson - Regina Spektor

One More Sad Song - The All-American Rejects

No One - Alicia Keys

Poison Prince - Amy Macdonald

Love Story - Taylor Swift

7 Things - Single Version - Miley Cyrus

Rude - MAGIC!

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

PROMPT #13: A SONG YOU LIKE FROM 70s

Lean on Me - Bill Withers

Cat's in the Cradle - Harry Chapin

More Than a Feeling - Boston

Killing Me Softly - Frank Sinatra* 

PROMPT #14: A SONG YOU'D LOVE TO BE PLAYED AT YOUR WEDDING

How Sweet It Is - Michael Buble

This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) - Natalie Cole

I'm A Believer - Radio Edit - Smash Mouth

Hold You in My Arms - Ray LaMontagne

Never Stop (Wedding Version) - SafetySuit

PROMPT #15: A SONG YOU LIKE THAT'S A COVER BY ANOTHER ARTIST

Skinny Love - Birdy

That's the Way It Is - Cassidy Janson

Angel - Darren Hayes

Titanium - Madilyn Bailey

There Must Be An Angel - ORIGA*

Mr. Tambourine Man - The Helio Sequence

Rude - Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox

Bad Guy - The Interrupters

PROMPT #16: A SONG THAT'S A CLASSIC FAVORITE 

Africa - TOTO

Beautifully - Jay Brannan

Creep - Radiohead

Cupid - Sam Cooke

Your Favorite Thing - Sugar

Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi

I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston

PROMPT #17: A SONG YOU'D SING A DUET WITH SOMEONE ON KARAOKE

For Good - From "Wicked" Original Broadway Cast Recording/2003 - Kristin Chenoweth

Take Me or Leave Me - Idina Menzel

Something To Believe In - Jeremy Jordan

Dancing with the Devil - Wolf Gang

Holding Out for a Hero - From "Footloose" Soundtrack - Bonnie Tyler

PROMPT #18: A SONG FROM THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN

A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton

Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) - Train

Waterfalls - TLC

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day

Wannabe - Spice Girls

PROMPT #19: A SONG THAT MAKES YOU THINK ABOUT LIFE

Memories - Maroon 5

Men Of Snow - Ingrid Michaelson

The River - Kyla La Grange

Saturn - Sleeping At Last

Landslide - Fleetwood Mac

The Fear - Ben Howard

Dog Days Are Over - Florence + The Machine

The Good Part - AJR

Build It Up - Ingrid Michaelson

PROMPT #20: A SONG THAT HAS MANY MEANINGS TO YOU 

Freckles - Natasha Bedingfield

Happy Home - Lukas Graham

Barely Breathing - Duncan Sheik

The Road - Hurts

Lost in My Mind - The Head and the Heart

Love Like You (feat. Rebecca Sugar) - End Credits - Steven Universe

PROMPT #21: A SONG YOU LIKE WITH A PERSON'S NAME IN THE TITLE

Esmeralda - The Hunchback of Notre Dame Company

West Side Story: Act I: Maria - Leonard Bernstein

Nina Cried Power (feat. Mavis Staples) - Hozier

Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond

Roxie - Renae Zellweger

Grace - Florence + The Machine

PROMPT #22: A SONG THAT MOVES YOU FORWARD

Sukiyaki - Kyu Sakamoto

Fuckin' Perfect - Melanie La Barrie

Who's Got a Match? - Biffy Clyro

Into The Fire - Thirteen Senses

Bang The Doldrums - Fall Out Boy

I Was Here - Beyonce

PROMPT #23: A SONG YOU THINK EVERYBODY SHOULD LISTEN TO

Neon Gravestones - Twenty One Pilots

Danzon No.2 - Arturo Márquez

Most Girls - Hailee Steinfeld

(Finally) A Convenient Truth - Get Well Soon

Stand by Me - Otis Redding

PROMPT #24: A SONG BY A BAND YOU WISH WERE STILL TOGETHER

Such Great Heights - Remastered - The Postal Service

To the Beginning - Kalafina

Here Comes a Regular - 2008 Remaster - The Replacements

Night Rather Than Day - EXID

Wonderwall - Remastered - Oasis

PROMPT #25: A SONG YOU LIKE BY AN ARTIST NO LONGER LIVING

Waiting for the End - Linkin Park

All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

Human Nature - Michael Jackson

The Longest Time - Billy Joel

Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me - Rosemary Clooney

Before Our Spring - JONGHYUN

PROMPT #26: A SONG THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO FALL IN LOVE

girls - girl in red

Conversations in the Dark - John Legend

Just like Heaven - The Cure

On The Street Where You Live - Frederick Loewe

Still into You - Paramore

PROMPT #27: A SONG THAT BREAKS YOUR HEART

Five Variants of "Dives and Lazarus" - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Black Woman - Danielle Brooks

Eyes Nose Lips (feat. Taeyang) - Epik High

Empty - Ray LaMontagne

Just a Dream - Carrie Underwood

Landslide - Fleetwood Mac

Requiem - Laura Dreyfuss

PROMPT #28: A SONG BY AN ARTIST WHOSE VOICE YOU LOVE

Hurt - Christina Aguilera

I'M OKAY - SAAY

So Much More Than This - Grace VanderWaal

Pretty Hurts - Beyonce

Just like Heaven - The Cure

i'm lonely - Luz

Skylark - Aretha Franklin

Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine

Ship To Wreck - Florence + The Machine

PROMPT #29: A SONG YOU REMEMBER FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD

Going Under - Evanescence

Muddy Hymnal - Iron & Wine

Rush - Aly & AJ

Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas) - Santana

Who Let The Dogs Out - Baha Men

She Looks So Perfect - 5 Seconds of Summer

PROMPT #30: A SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF YOURSELF

Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine

Vienna - Billy Joel

The Pros and Cons of Breathing - Fall Out Boy

In Dreams - Roy Orbison

Car Radio - Twenty One Pilots

Sweet Nothing (feat. Florence Welch) - Calvin Harris

Lonely Dance - Set It Off

*Could not be found on Spotify

[jq37]

i know you posted your thoughts on the big arguing scene in “we need to talk about pete” but i was wondering if you were going to post a full breakdown? that episode was a lot and i love hearing your thoughts on eps. ignore this if you have done a breakdown and i’m dumb and just missed it lol

**spoilers for the war of bugs and rats and we need to talk about pete**

What’s up denizens of Magic NYC? Now, I unfortunately live in normal NYC where I have to pay bills and stuff so I’ve been MIA with recaps for the past few eps but, no sweat. We’re gonna do a double feature of the above two eps and then I’ll group in the last battle episode with the upcoming episode. So lets catch up on what’s been going on in The Unsleeping City There’s a LOT to get through so vámanos y'all.

First up, we have our big bug fight in Queens, which Sophie enters with a camelback full of box wine because Emily is Emily.

“I’ve heard of gentrification but this is crazy!”

Brennan enjoys making those gross, chittering, bug noises way too much.

Have we talked about Pete’s cowboy hat? Because, for real, what is up with Pete’s cowboy hat? It seems absolutely apropos of nothing. Was he just like, “Sick,” and he decided to wear it everywhere? That seems to be how he makes all of his decisions.

“Butthole 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

Emily clocks the cat *immediately*. Like to the point where I’m almost thinking, “Did this cat exist before Emily mentioned looking for one?” And I want to say yes because La Gran Gata seems very fleshed out, specific, and intentional. But folks, we are living in a post-Avanash world so idk what to think. (Edit: The cat does have a mini now that I’ve gotten to that but idk, that insert shot could have been shot post ep so like, who knows?)

Anyway, Emily’s entire mission objective immediately becomes saving this cat she’s vaguely aware of.  

“5E you crazy.”

The Cast, Knowing Emily just rolled a 25 and still has a 1d8 Bless in Her Back Pocket if She Needs It: Brennan, Just Ask.

The horror on Emily’s face when she realizes that she just called an attack on the cat cocoon.

So Emily goes off on a very Emily side quest to rescue a random cat but happens to unlock a very cool NPC–La Gran Gata–who is like the spirit of all the bodega cats out there. Sophie immediately calls upon the entirety of her limited Spanish skills to try and make friends with the cat, and succeeds.

The, “To arms, to arms my brothers!” thing kills me every time. Are all rats just Like That? Is that what they’re like when they’re out and about too?

Kingston rolling a nat 20 to literally walk across the store is wild.

Oh also, Pete failed a wild magic surge roll which just lets him fly. So far, those wild magic surges have really been working out for him.

Anyway, Bug Boss Becky turns Ricky into a “buff-ass” dog.

Zac playing dog-Ricky with almost exactly the same self-awareness (or lack thereof) as normal-Ricky is so funny. He’s an Akita and I was expecting Dalmatian but that makes sense too. Ricky, the very good boy, attacks Becky and–as a Sentinel–stops her in her tracks.

Emily does a ton of damage and Brennan, about to describe her attack, is like, “Are you still drunk?” Emily shuts down the opportunity to look cooler and is like, “I am a messy, drunk bitch. Describe that.” Emily isn’t here to be cool. Emily is here to roleplay.

I had never heard the word brindled before now and Brennan uses it to describe two separate animals in this ep.

Siobhan rolls a nat 20 to dispel magic on Ricky which is objectively good but also I would have loved for him to be a dog a little longer. Also, this moment makes me really, really want to get some backstory on Misty. Like, clearly there are some serious Fae Shenanigans going on with her and I need specifics yesterday.

Also, Ricky comes back with pointier ears and wolfier senses and I’m just picturing Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending.

Before I forget, Sophie, Pete, and Misty yoink magical items from the magic bodega within the bodega La Gran Gata opened up. Sophie’s is a magic ring that amps up her punches. Misty took a mirror and Pete took a grill (like for your teeth). Not sure what those do yet.

The fact that this whole fight wasn’t under the Umbral Arcana and there are people out there that remember is a little concerning for me. I can’t quite tell if it’s the sort of thing that will come back or more of a warning of what can happen if the U.A. goes down again.

Post-fight, Sophie asks La Gran Gata for mismatched David Bowie eyes like the cat has. Siobahn goes, “That’s what you’re gonna ask? You drunk bitch.” But Sophie has her wish granted. I’m sure that won’t raise any questions with people who have known her her entire life. 

“She’s gonna fuck that cat.”

So the fight’s over and they realize that the Key to the City is missing which I can’t imagine is a good thing.

This brings us to the RP ep, We Need to Talk About Pete, which picks up directly where the previous ep ended.

Ally and Emily go for the exact same joke of getting Guinness’s post-fight. Kingston–as a medical professional, Vox Populi, and sanest adult of this troupe–loudly objects (smacking the beers out of Pete’s hands multiple times) and wants to know what the hell is going on with the bugs they just fought.

Sidenote: Sophie took a level in Warlock with La Gran Gata as her patron because of *course* she did. I wonder if this was the plan from the beginning or if Emily was watching all her friends spellcasting and started getting the jitters from magic user withdrawal.

Murph’s “What?” face when Emily says, “I’ll be waiting, but not in an impatient, desperate way,” is gold.

They search the bodega and find a thing of 1000 Hour Energy and Kugrash gives it to Ricky over Pete’s objections. They also find Holy Grail Laundry Detergent (Kingston pays for it), The Grill I mentioned earlier (Kingston hates this), and this bagel. 

All the magic users show up. Alejandro wants an explanation pronto and everyone points a finger at Pete who explains everything in his typical, nonchalant, vague, kinda spaced out way which Alejandro is not digging at all. He starts to go off on the enormity of the situation and Pete starts dropping acid.

I’m gonna stop here for a sec to talk about how Ally is playing Pete. There are moments when I feel like Ally is doing something as a comedian for a bit. And there’s kind of a sense of, is this funny? Obviously. But what are the in game implications of this move? Like the running joke of Pete constantly being high on something is funny, out of game. But,  in game, it’s massively concerning. And I’m really curious about where Ally is choosing to draw the line between doing the funny thing and doing the prudent thing. I almost said the in-character thing but Ally made a character so consistently bonkers that whatever he does could plausibly be the in-character thing. Pete is kind of a massive disaster.

Anyway, Alejandro drives home the point that Pete’s actions have consequences and have caused actual deaths at this point. Pete’s magic is internally going wonky as he gets more distressed (I really wanted to see a wild magic surge fail here but alas). But he’s still outwardly like a 4 on the giving a damn scale when the situation is a 13 out of 10. Pete is only half listening to this because he’s halfway out the door, smoking. Alejandro plans with Kingston to discuss Pete later.

Misty, always sowing seeds of chaos, suggests Alejandro stock up on Juul pods before they stop selling them completely. Kingston hates this (this is basically his mood for the episode).  

Outside, Pete gets a text from Priya which ends with them planning a meet up for later after leaving her on read for a while. Pete dips without saying anything to anyone but Kingston who ignores him (and also Sophie who Emily hilariously guilts Ally into including out of character). Dipping on the conversation about how to fix YOUR mess isn’t the wisest move but Pete isn’t the wisest guy.  

In the meantime, Ricky does the Twilight Bark to summon a dalmatian (yes!) to help him find the stolen key to the city. Kugrash turns into a busted ass dalmatian who has trouble keeping up.

Ricky doesn’t have the plate mail armor that usually makes a Paladin so unstealthy but he is so hot as to have the same lack of stealthiness which is one of my favorite adaptations of the game for this setting. Anyway, Ricky does the superhero thing of running through the city, helping everyone with a problem along the way, and loses the key in the Financial District which smells like death (feels about right).

Siobahn playing Misty as, “Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was Emma Lazarus,” when, in reality, she was the first person who made the connection was great. S/o to ppl who separate player and character knowledge. Misty partied w/ Emma of course because she partied with every historical figure that’s passed through NYC since she showed up.

Post adventure, people need to go to their day jobs. Misty has a +10 to performance but rolling a 3 is rolling a 3. It’s not her best work. Later, her assistant brings her holly, silver, and assorted other stuff which sounds like Fae BS if I’ve ever heard it. Misty cuts her off before she can elaborate more. I know we’re getting a secret spilling episode next time so I’m really hoping we get some Misty lore because she is being frustratingly cagey. She talks so much but says so little that means anything.

Kugrash sneaks into his son David’s house (while Emily learns a rat fact she clearly didn’t want to know) and Murph  and Brennan tag team go for the proverbial emotional jugular.

Murph rolls a nat 20 on his investigate and so he gets a lot of his old files and puts together that Robert is Robert Moses–a famous historical figure in NY who I actually heard about for the first time very recently. Or maybe I should say infamous. He did a lot with NY infrastructure–especially highways–(Emily connects this to the Highway Hex immediately) and he wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. His bread and butter was working the system. There’s a Pulitzer winning book called The Power Broker about how he was able to amass power and influence. I don’t know enough about NY history to run my mouth off about the guy but the little I do know is in character with his T.U.S. incarnation. Also, just FYI, irl this dude died in the 80s. So, you know. That’s interesting.

Brennan, I guess: Why invent new bad guys when history is full of terrible people I just have to give magic to?

Brennan, continuing his tradition of letting people get emotionally destroyed by nat 20s, has Murph find a crushing letter from David to Kug which was never mailed.

Note: So, as I was writing this, my video timed out right at the line, “I don’t expect this letter to find you before my funeral,” which is kinda good bc idk if this is what I need at 1 AM. Anyway, back to the pain.

The letter reveals that David has devoted his life to stopping crooks like him (Kug) and that he’s mostly upset about how his leaving has affected the younger, more fragile Wally.

“I leave the letter because I’ll remember it.” Yeah I bet you will.

It looks like Kug is gonna confront Wally next ep which I am now even more excited to see.

So let’s move onto the SECOND big gut-punch of the episode. Kingston goes down to the station to give a statement about the Santa Incident. He sees a shit elemental in a lineup which isn’t super relevant to the main events but I can’t not mention something like that.

Anyway, guess what? Kingston’s ex (Liz) isn’t dead! She’s an attorney for the justice system of The Unsleeping City and she’s pissed the hell off. During their interview, he stops the tape recorder to cuss out Kingston for going on a “date” with Misty and for getting her involved in all the magical junk which means she has to do things like fingerprint shit elementals instead of being on track to be D.A. like she originally was. The way she described it made it sound like she was press ganged into it which seems like it shouldn’t be how this works, you know? Is there no blue pill option here? Also, not to be all grass is greener but I actually am a lawyer in NY (closer to Kug’s job, minus the crime) and I would swap with Liz in a heartbeat.

The fact that anything Kingston says as Vox is per se admissible is a cool detail. 

Sophie fights an old man (Jackson) in a CVS and joins a monastery which sounds like a shitpost but it isn’t. With La Gran Gata’s blessing she is now a member of the Order of the Concrete Fist.

I saw the Staten Island joke coming the second Brennan started talking but it was still hysterical when it landed.

At the same time, Pete is getting knuckle tats because, sure. And he also goes to see Priya who I am baffled was with him for any length of time. Maybe it’s the artist thing?

Also, Sophie keeps postponing her meeting with Mario which is concerning to me. The story is still happening when you’re not interacting with it. Brennan specifically said when she texted him that she got no response which doesn’t make me feel good about what’s going on with him.

Ricky has three super jacked, fratty firefighter bros, all named John who are like woke as hell. I wish I could follow the dude around for a day because every single facet of his life is wild.

Well, this episode promised we were gonna talk about Pete so let’s talk about Pete.

The gang, sans Pete, meet up with the magical powers that be to discus the destruction the newest Vox his leaving in his wake.

Sidenote, wild that Sophie has been magic for like 15 minutes and got to go to this meeting.

Alejandro wants to know what the plan is for if Pete’s powers go off the rails again. Kingston, who has clearly seen Old Yeller, offers the most drastic solution immediately: if it comes to it, we take him out. (Cut to Ally’s “Yikes” face). Kug, Sophie, and Ricky push back on that.

Misty, hilariously (and also suspiciously), is mainly concerned about NY because she needs theater to keep happening. This woman is chaotic something and I’m not convinced it’s chaotic good yet.

Anyway, I already did my big write-up on this part of the episode, but I’ll say it again: Kingston is right. He’s harsh but he’s right. This is some Phoenix Force BS that’s happening and do you know how that arc ends (the OG one, not the million other Phoenix Sagas that have happened since)? It ends with Jean Grey killing herself so she doesn’t lose control and eat another planet. Ricky is too dangerous for his own good and he doesn’t seem to have the emotional maturity to care (or at least to care at the correct level). Like, he was a drug dealer when this started which is already not ideal. He caused a huge mess and then just bounced without trying to help fix it. He thought that a week was enough time for human casualties to be water under the bridge. Frankly, not considering the nuclear option and just having to figure out if killing him is something the group is willing to do on the fly would be the more irresponsible option.

And not including Pete in the discussion would bother me more if he hadn’t openly blown off every serious discussion people have tried to have with him so far. If he’s not going to take things seriously, it makes sense they don’t invite him to the serious discussions.

The version of this story where Pete accidentally gets a bunch of people killed, finds out what he did, cries about it for a full day, and then finds out they’re talking about possibly killing him is a story where Pete is more sympathetic imo. But still, finding out that people talked about killing you under any circumstances has got to be rough.

IMO, the order of things that should be done right now are (1) putting magical training wheels on Pete, (2a) getting Pete trained or his powers transferred if it’s possible/he wants out, (2b) either way, getting Pete into therapy (like, he needed therapy before he got magic. now it’s just a matter of life and death–besides just his own), (3) talking to Pete again about the stakes and telling him point blank but not in while heated that there’s the possibility of a scenario where his powers go out of control and you have to understand that at that point it’s a matter of saving as many lives as possible. Like, Kingston can say, with conviction, “If I go rogue, you should do the same to me.” They’re in the same boat. Kingston’s just been rowing longer. Well, similar boats anyway. I imagine the Vox Populi powers are less inherently chaotic. And maybe the knowledge that a nuclear option is on the table would make Pete not want the job or want him to have his powers muted or something. Cool. Then you have that discussion at that point. Just, these are the conversations that need to happen. And maybe his own mortality will be the thing that helps get Pete’s head in the game. 

What jewel did Ale take out of his pocket during this conversation? Taking note of that. (Juul, not jewel. Duh. Thx thethief )

Pete gets in touch w/ Alejandro’s granddaughters who tell him that Alejandro’s still pretty pissed (which is surprising to Pete but like, bro. People died). Then, Robert shows up to sweet talk Pete and show him the video (that he somehow has) of Kingston talking at the Pete Meeting. When I was watching this the first time I was like, “How long before this blows up in their face–oh, almost immediately. Cool.”

He takes Pete to his vampire nightclub and hits him with Pete’s own “I didn’t create the demand” line that you just know Brennan put a pin in to hit Pete with that Uno Reverse card.

Robert tries to get Pete to summon Nod and then just does it forcibly with some kind of blood magic when Pete is hesitant. Pete wild magic surges, kills a bunch of vamps, and Nod (super injured by being in the waking world) teleports them both to the subway.

The group (including Alejandro) meets them there so they can catch the L train to Nod but Epona shows up. And you already know from Fantasy High that Brennan is on the ACAB train (or is that AFCAB?). Epona is now wearing a crooked badge–crooked badge for a crooked cop. She wants Nod. No can do. The gang gets ready to–to quote Mr. Cubby-make some bacon while Alejandro tries to cast a spell to summon a train to Nod (the place not the person).

So I’ll see y’all next time (whenever that is) for some subway fighting and some backstory unlocking! 

[sistercelluloid]

Welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY! This week, we’re off to see The Wizard of Oz again on the big screen, courtesy of TCM and Fathom Events. For tickets, just click here!

But before you head out, let’s take a peek at what was really going on behind the wizard’s curtain.

The tornado in Kansas was nothing compared to the blizzard of cast and crew changes—not to mention the many mishaps, including a couple of near-fatalities. Even Toto didn’t escape unscathed…

So hang on to your hamper—here we go!

Dorothy: Both MGM unit head Arthur Freed and music maven Roger Edens fought for Judy Garland, but Louis B. Mayer—who often derided the painfully insecure teenager as “my little hunchback”—pressured producer Mervyn LeRoy to do whatever it took to land Shirley Temple for the lead. Fortunately, all attempts to get 20th Century Fox to loan out the wildly popular moppet went nowhere. (However, the long-standing rumor that MGM offered to swap the services of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow for Temple is false; Harlow succumbed to renal failure in June 1937, before MGM even had the rights to the book.) Deanna Durbin, whom Mayer openly preferred to Garland, was also considered—but because the film initially had a sub-plot involving Betty Jaynes, another operatic singer, she was dropped from the running. So Mayer had to “settle” for Judy.  (Oh and her ruby slippers were originally silver, as they were in the book. But in the age of Technicolor, red won out.)

The Scarecrow: Buddy Ebsen was the first loose-limbed, lanky dancer to step into the role, which would have worked out much better for him, as we’ll soon see… but Ray Bolger ultimately carried the day (and the hay). He also carried lines on his face from the rubber prosthetics for more than a year after filming ended. For that kind of grief, you’d think they’d have left his original dance number—longer, trippier, and choreographed by none other than Busby Berkeley—in the film:

The Tin Man: Much to his disappointment, Bolger was first cast in this clunkier role. If he’d only had the heart… but he longed to be the Scarecrow, the part he’d seen his childhood hero, Fred Stone, play in the 1902 Broadway show—which is what inspired him to hit the boards in the first place. “I’m not a tin performer—I’m fluid!” he reportedly pleaded to LeRoy, who finally caved in, allowing Bolger and Ebsen to swap roles. Ebsen was an absolute peach about the whole thing, even teaching Bolger the “wobbly walk” he’d perfected in rehearsals. But no good deed goes unpunished, and this one almost killed him: after about a week of breathing in the toxic aluminum powder that covered his “tin” face, Ebsen was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. (At first, Mayer—who assumed other people’s morals were as low as his own—thought the actor was faking an illness as some sort of contract ploy. So he dispatched his minions to the hospital—where they found Ebsen strapped into an iron lung.)

When Jack Haley, on loan from Fox, arrived to replace him, the make-up artists were much more careful: they protected his face with a thick layer of white greasepaint and diluted the aluminum powder into a paste. (Oh, and they never told him why his predecessor left the film—on a stretcher.) Ebsen didn’t vanish entirely, though: his voice can still be heard in the group vocals, as there was no time to re-record them.

And given all the gruesome drama surrounding the Tin Man, perhaps it’s appropriate that they used chocolate syrup to produce his tears—a technique later used by Hitchcock for the blood circling the drain in Psycho.

The Cowardly Lion: Bert Lahr’s costume was made of actual lion pelts—and weighed almost 100 pounds. The valiant wardrobe team did their best to rinse the sweat out of the sopping-wet suit at the end of each day, but, in the words of one unlucky staffer, “it reeked.”

The Wicked Witch of the West: Initially, the witch was fashioned along the glamorous lines of the evil queen in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When she morphed into something decidedly more hag-like—including green skin, a long, pointy nose and a wart or ten—Gale Sondergaard, MGM’s original choice, pointed her pumps toward the exit. Margaret Hamilton was cast just three days before shooting began. Told by her agent she was up for a part in the film, she asked which one. “The wicked witch—what else?” he helpfully replied. (That 10% they get? It ain’t for morale-boosting!)

She didn’t get much more respect after she signed on: her dressing room was a makeshift canvas tent, while Billie Burke had a hideaway that MGM dreams are made of. “She had a pink and blue dressing room, with pink and blue powder puffs and pink and blue bottles filled with powder and baby oil—and pink and blue peppermints,” Hamilton later recalled, admitting that she sometimes popped in for a nap on the glamorous Glinda’s days off.

And God knows she needed the rest, as she proved to be the second casualty on the set: In the scene where she seems to disappear in a cloud of fire and smoke, she very nearly did. At the last minute, a moving platform was supposed to lower her out of harm’s way, but her cape got snagged and she was trapped amid the flames—which fed on the greasepaint and copper makeup slathered on her face, arms and hands. Before she could be pulled free, the fire had seared into her skin, leaving her with second- and third-degree burns. Wise woman that she was, she later refused to do a post-production pick-up scene that involved a flaming broomstick. So they had to make do with maiming her stand-in: the smoke mechanism exploded, burning and permanently scarring Betty Danko’s legs.

The Wizard of Oz: After Ed Wynn refused the part because it wasn’t big enough, MGM turned to W.C. Fields, who thought the paycheck wasn’t big enough. During a few protracted rounds of haggling—they offered $75,000, he wanted $100,000—the producers burned while Fields fiddled. They finally gave and offered the role to Frank Morgan.

Oh and here’s a story you might have to close your eyes and click your heels together to believe, but some swear it’s true, and if it isn’t (which is probably the case), it should be: When wardrobe staffers went scavenging through second-hand stores to find the perfect tattered coat for Morgan, they returned with an armload of samples for Victor Fleming to choose from. He settled on one he thought conveyed just the right touch of “shabby gentility”—and, idly turning out the pockets, found a label with L. Frank Baum’s name on it. An MGM publicist reportedly contacted the tailor and Baum’s widow, who confirmed it was his (he did live in L.A. for a time), and the studio presented her with the coat at filming’s end.

Toto:  Shirley Temple may never have made it to Oz, but she did meet Toto five years before Garland did. Terry the terrier appeared in 16 films, including Temple’s Bright Eyes, as well as Fury, The Women and George Washington Slept Here. In Tortilla Flat, she re-teamed with Morgan and Fleming, and in Twin Beds, she reunited with Hamilton. Her $125 weekly salary for Oz was more than double than that of the Munchkins, who each earned $50 a week. And as it turned out, Terry should have gotten combat pay: one of the Wicked Witch’s heavy-heeled henchmen stepped on her tiny paw and broke it, sidelining her for several weeks. After filming, Garland, who’d fallen in love with the dog, wanted to adopt her, but the owner wouldn’t… surrender Terry.

All of which bring us to the director. Or directors. Richard Thorpe, whose previous work consisted mainly of quickie westerns, was first at the helm, but LeRoy felt he was shooting the film more like a low-budget oater than a lavish fantasy, rushing scenes along and not giving the production the care it deserved.

While he searched for a replacement, LeRoy left the project in the tender hands of George Cukor—who, in his brief stint as caretaker, made some critical changes. First, he ditched Garland’s blonde wig and heavy glamour-girl makeup, which made her look ridiculous and feel worse.

He also told Garland to relax and simply be herself—a lovely, vulnerable teenage girl—which was just what the part called for. Then he did something less crucial but pretty fabulous: he brought in Adrian to design the Wicked Witch’s costume. Which, if you peer beyond the black-on-black, is a real work of art, with its lace bodice, cut-out mutton sleeves, and pouch dangling fetchingly from the hip. To her pointy hat, Adrian added a long, silky-sheer scarf that floats menacingly behind her, like an ill wind.

Cukor was never meant to stay on when production began in earnest; he was due over at Gone with the Wind. Victor Fleming took the reins in October 1938, and oversaw everything but the sepia-tone scenes (including the Over the Rainbow number) that book-end Dorothy’s adventures in Oz. But the following February, he was called away suddenly… to direct  Gone with the Wind after Cukor was fired. Fleming’s close friend King Vidor came aboard to gently shepherd the crucial Kansas scenes through to completion, but never publicly acknowledged his involvement until after Fleming’s death in 1949.

And as if Fleming didn’t have enough on his mind during the shoot, he also had to protect Garland from her scenery-chewing companions on the Yellow Brick Road, seasoned old vaudeville pros who were none too excited about surrendering the spotlight to her (as she laughingly recalls in a clip from The Jack Paar Show, below). Ironically, her only close friend on the set was Hamilton, a former kindergarten teacher who gave her some much-needed mothering.

Whew! There’s enough material behind the scenes of The Wizard of Oz for a whole other movie… but in the meantime, enjoy seeing the original again on the big screen!

TINTYPE TUESDAY is a weekly feature on Sister Celluloid, with fabulous classic movie pix (and backstory!) to help you make it to Hump Day! For previous editions, just click here—and why not bookmark the page, to make sure you never miss a week?

TINTYPE TUESDAY: Head Off to See THE WIZARD OF OZ Again on the Big Screen! Welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY! This week, we're off to see The Wizard of Oz…

[gukyi]

push your buttons | ksj

⇒ summary: you like dogs, and lucky for you, a cute boy in the park happens to have one that’s taken quite the liking to you.

⇒ high school!au

⇒ pairing: seokjin x female reader

⇒ word count: 2k

⇒ genre: fluff

⇒ warnings: dogs!!!!!

⇒ a/n: this is unedited, because i don’t have time to edit these days (and i’m also too lazy). also, i’m a cat person. requested by anon!

You’ve never exactly been the luckiest person, so to speak. Take, for example, when you were five, and the speaker who came to visit your school was giving out magnets and stickers to every kid they saw, and when you all returned to your classrooms from the auditorium, you were the only one without any sort of goodie in your hands. Or, when you were in middle school, in the cafeteria, rushing to finish some math homework you totally forgot about the night before, and the exact second the sheet fell on the floor, the janitor spilt his bucket full of mop water all over the cafeteria, absolutely drenching everything in its wake and rendering you homework-less. Case and point, you’re not particularly lucky, and your love for animals that your parents happen to be incredibly allergic to is no exception.

So you can’t have a dog. Or a cat. Or even, like, a gerbil. Every single one of them makes your parents sneeze like crazy, noses puffy and voices groggy, and you’re not sure if it’s the shedding, or the scent, or maybe just genetics, but there is no mercy for a pet in your household.

Which is exactly where the local adoption center comes into play. If you can’t get the pets to come to you, you’ll just have to go to the pets yourself. Good thing the shelter was looking for volunteers when you Googled their website. Sure, they’re not your pets, but you love and cherish them all the same, and—shh! Don’t say anything—you maybe sometimes hope that they won’t get adopted, just so you can keep seeing them. But you didn’t hear that from me.

It’s especially handy volunteering there, because smack dab in between your residence and the shelter is the local dog park, and if you said you didn’t get distracted every time you strolled past, you’d be a motherfucking liar.

Today is no different, especially because it’s off-leash day (!!!) and there is nothing more beautifully heartwarming than having a casual walk through a park and then suddenly being surprised by a dog, excited to see a new face in its life. You don’t even own a dog, but you’d rather backflip into a volcano than miss off-leash day.

You’ve given yourself an hour maximum to spend in the dog park before you have to go to your volunteering, an hour of puppy licks and frisbee tosses galore. Time well spent, if you’re being honest.

Setting foot in the dog park on off-leash day is like setting foot in the most wonderful alternate universe ever. It’s your dream world, seeing happy dogs bounding around hills with tennis balls in their mouths. Some of the owners even know you as a regular visitor, and their dogs do too, sniffing you like you’re a familiar being in their worlds, a friend.

You’ve taken to lying down in the dog park—mind you, where there is a clear patch and not a doggie bag in sight—and letting the dogs come to you, getting wonderfully surprised by the ones that you recognize, like Pickle, the German Shepherd who acts more like a Corgi, or Lansdale, who only likes being scratched on his lower back, or even Marshmallow, this tiny little brown Dachshund whose name strangely fits its personality, even if it doesn’t fit its physical appearance. Today, it’s none of them, and your eyes are closed as you feel little paws stepping on your chest, settling down on the the squish of your tummy. When you peek your eyes open, it’s a little white dog, dirty brown on the edges like it’s been perpetually rolling in mud.

“Hello,” you say excitedly, reaching out to let it sniff you. The dog presses its wet nose on your pointer finger, though, judging by its position on your stomach, it’s already made its decision.

“Oh God, oh my God,” you hear, and strangely enough, the voice doesn’t belong to a middle-aged mother, or a jogging man in his twenties, or a friendly senior citizen, like most of the regulars here. “I am so sorry.”

When you look up, it’s a boy, and he’s got this awfully apologetic look on his face as his eyes move from your face, to his dog, to where its sitting. He begins to come in focus more, the blood rushing to your brain as you sit up and regretfully force the dog off your chest, and you recognize him.

He goes to your school, and from the look on his face, he recognizes you as well.

“I’m so sorry, Jjanggu really doesn’t know how to control himself,” the boy says, and you know him, you know him, of course you know him, but what’s his name? “I hope he didn’t bother you.”

Might as well not dwell on it now. “No! No, I love dogs, I come here all the time just for them, it’s fine, I promise,” you assure the boy, reaching down and petting his pup right behind the ear, the sweet spot for any and every canine (except Lansdale). “It’s not a problem.”

“Really, though, I’m still sorry he totally just walked all over you like that,” the boy insists.

“He’s cute, I don’t mind,” you promise. “What did you say his name was, again?”

“Jjanggu,” the boy says, beaming as he looks down at his dog, clearly proud of him.

“And what did you say yours was?”

It’s not flirting. You swear, it’s not flirting. For the most part. Alright, so it’s a little bit of flirting, but it’s not like you’re throwing yourself at him. The best way to a man’s heart is through his pet, anyway.

The boy opens his mouth to respond, but it looks like the words get lodged in his throat, not ready to come out. “Uh, I—um,” he stutters. “I didn’t.”

“So, why don’t you tell me?”

“Me?” He asks, seemingly surprised that you’re still talking to him. “I’m Seokjin.”

“I’m Y/N,” you say, holding a hand out for him to shake. He does, firmly, like he’s promising you something, an offer you can’t refuse. When you lean down and hold out your hand in front of Jjanggu, he gives you a paw to shake as well. “You come here often, Seokjin?”

“I didn’t used to, but I think I might visit a bit more than normal now,” Seokjin says. Oh, so he will flirt with you back? “If Jjanggu gets to see cute girls, of course.”

You snort a little, amused by his banter. “Oh, yes. Jjanggu deserves that.”

“You go to school around here?” asks Seokjin, even though it’s evident that the both of you have definitely seen each other around the hallways.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” you say, checking the time. “I gotta blast, but I’ll see you around?” You ask, smiling.

Seokjin leans down to pick Jjanggu up before shooting you a charming grin. “Make time for me, won’t you?”

---

And make time for him you do. Maybe it’s the mutual appreciation you have for dogs that does it, or the convenient location that the park lies in, or it might even be that sneaking little feeling that sits at the bottom of your heart, the one that gets all disgustingly warm and fuzzy whenever you’re around him, but you can’t seem to get enough.

It’s nice, hanging out with him, walking Jjanggu around the park together when it’s not an off-leash day, keeping a relatively close eye on him as he bounds around the hills when it is. Before this, you didn’t know Seokjin well, only knew him as another boy in some of your classes, rolling with a different crowd. But when you and Seokjin meet in the park to walk his dog around, you don’t talk about that one test you failed or the awful woodworking teacher who doesn’t even know how to remove a splinter. School isn’t a factor in this equation, even if it’s where you see each other most often. Plus, Jjanggu loves you, and if that’s not reason enough for you to spend time with Seokjin, then you don’t know what is.

---

Seokjin’s all cheesy pick-up lines and dramatic gestures when you sit with him on the grass, watching Jjanggu play happily with the other dogs on the last day of school, which just so conveniently happens to be an off-leash day. Seokjin’s a year older than you, which means he’s graduating and you won’t get to have these dog-park-not-a-date-dates much more, so you might as well spend the rest of the day together.

“What’s gonna happen with Jjanggu when you go off to university?” You wonder aloud, fingers plucking the grass from their roots.

“I don’t know. I’ll probably have my parents walk him, or something,” Seokjin replies, shrugging as Jjanggu finds a new friend to tussle with, sniffing the other dog’s ass before determining he is an acceptable pal.

“I can’t believe I won’t get to see him anymore,” you whine, already nostalgic for the first day you saw him, a little white ball with brown edges, an apologetic boy running not far behind. You rest your head in the crook of Seokjin’s neck, and you sit there, swaying back and forth ever so slightly.

“When I come back, we can meet up at the dog park again,” Seokjin promises. “Oh! I forgot, I have something for you.”

You lift your head up, skeptical as Seokjin begins to fish in the pockets of the navy blue blazer he wears, all broad shoulders and crisp lines. “Why? You’re the one graduating, not me.”

“Here, alright,” he says, situating himself so he’s sitting across from you, rather than next to you. “Look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

It’s quite the view.

“What do you notice that’s odd?”

“What is this, Spot The Difference?” You inquire, bewildered at what Seokjin is asking of you. Nonetheless, you begin searching, eyes scanning through his tussles of caramel brown hair, to the little silver hoops in his ears, along the seams of his well-fitting blazer, down to the uneven laces of his shoes. That blazer is really doing a lot of things for Seokjin, and all of them are good. You can’t take your eyes off of it, that itching feeling under your skin that’s telling you that you’re missing something here. “Oh, come on, give me a hint.”

“It’s on my body,” Seokjin supplies, like that’s any help.

“I meant a hint that I can use, Seokjin!” You exclaim, pushing him back slightly, open blazer blowing in the breeze. “Oh no! One of your buttons popped off!”

Seokjin looks down at where you’re pointing, his second button leaving nothing but a loose piece of thread in its wake.

“Maybe if we search the grass, we could find it.”

“Y/N,” Seokjin says, hands coming to rest on your wrists as they begin to feel through the grass. “It’s alright.”

“It looks awful, Seokjin,” you tell him.

“I’m insulted,” Seokjin says, a hand over his chest as he looks at you, pretending to be offended at your brutally honest comment. The expression is just enough to distract you as his hand darts back to his pocket, fist curled around something. “Hold your hand out.”

“Why?” You ask, following his order without even trying to get a response beforehand.

He gently takes your rest in his one hand, placing his fist in your palm as you feel a small object drop into it, hiding in the crevices of your fingers. When he removes his hand, what’s left is a small navy blue button, akin to the ones stitched onto his blazer.

“Your button?” You ask, puzzled at the endearing but somewhat pointless present in your palm.

“It’s closest to my heart,” Seokjin muses, and if that isn’t the cheesiest, cutest thing you’ve ever heard come out of his mouth.

“That’s so… sappy,” you declare, rolling the button between your fingers.

“How about this,” Seokjin says, a proposal on his lips. “How about next time we walk Jjanggu in the park, it can be an official date, instead of just an outing.”

“I like that idea,” you say, smiling as you feel yourself leaning into him, eyes focused on his lips. You tilt your head in a little more, lips hardly a centimeter away from each other’s when a bark sounds out and you’re suddenly tackled, falling on your back. Jjanggu’s on top of you, oblivious to the fact that he just totally interrupted a moment between you and Seokjin, giving you this sloppy kiss all over your cheeks.

“I think Jjanggu likes that idea, too,” Seokjin says, chuckling as he stretches a hand over to rub Jjanggu’s stomach.

And lying here, Seokjin’s heart practically resting in between your fingers, you decide that maybe you’re unlucky with most things, but, you suppose, you have a little bit of luck on your side when it comes to cute boys with dogs that walk around missing the second button on their blazer.

⇒ leave any feedback/requests here and check out my masterlist here!

[borgeslabyrinth]

There’s been a sudden influx of fics where Flint and Silver are detectives and whoops my brain ran away with me last night. I have no idea if this will yield an actual au so I’m posting one part of it. 

In which Flint and Silver are detective partners, Silver is the living embodiment of “steal everything your gay little hands can carry”, Flint needs a vacation, and Thomas thinks it’s hysterical that everyone’s scared of his husband. It’s also slightly a Thin Man au.

(also all mentions of “Beaufort”, “the shark”, and “the mobster” are references to an earlier scene where Silver steals a glass paperweight from a mobster and names it Beaufort because Reasons)

By John’s estimate he had two hours before Max got her hooks out of Flint, which was more than enough time for how quick this job was going to be. He was going to get in, find out if Flint slept in a coffin, find something adequately sentimental to steal, and then get out. If there even was anything to steal; as far as he knew, Flint could just have a charging port like a Roomba and nothing else.

John had the door open in a few seconds and really, he was shocked (Shocked!) at how cheap the locks were. If he didn’t wind up in pieces in seven different dumpsters across the city once his thievery had been discovered, he was going to buy Flint some better locks. And maybe a security system. Or he could just give him Beaufort to act as a watch-shark, though John had a suspicion that Flint was still angry over his theft, judging by the fact that he tried to shatter poor Beaufort when John had suggested they have joint custody over the shark.

John had just closed the door behind him when he heard a noise from inside the bowels of the apartment. He was instantly on alert, one hand on his gun as he crept down the hallway. What were the chances that he walked in on a burglary when he himself was there to burgle? Or perhaps the mobster had hired a hitman to kill them because he was angry about the disappearance of Beaufort. Or maybe Flint really was the violent psychopath everyone believed him to be and he had six women held captive in some kind of torture chamber, or-

“Excuse me, what are you doing in my apartment?” A polite voice inquired behind him.

John didn’t scream as he whirled around, but it was a near thing. The man standing behind him was tall, had blond hair and didn’t seem like a threat, but that didn’t mean anything. John knew lots of murderers who seemed like very nice people on the surface. He also had a dog, but John also knew lots of murderers that had dogs. Dogs were not implicitly judges of good character.

“I’m sorry, what are you doing here? This apartment belongs to my partner.”

The man made a noise of understanding before closing the door behind him and letting the dog off the leash. “You must be John Silver.”

“How do you know that name?” He demanded, this time pulling his gun. This was absolutely retribution for the shark-napping of Beaufort. Flint was right; John was going to be brutalized over a fucking bauble.

If the man was bothered at having a gun pointing at him he didn’t show it. “Because you’ll find that this apartment belongs to my partner. I’m James’s husband.”

They were in the kitchen and “Thomas” was fixing them some coffee, though John was watching him carefully as he wasn’t fully convinced about this husband story. In the first place, Flint didn’t seem capable of showing the basic human emotions necessary to acquire a husband. Secondly, there had been not one, but two instances in which John had been discovered in an apartment that didn’t belong to him and had played the ‘secret lover’ card. Also, Flint didn’t seem like the type of person to own a terrier.

“Whose dog is that?” John asked, refusing to take his eyes off Thomas as he carefully measured out the coffee grounds and filled up the pot.

“Mine. His name is William ‘Billy Bones’ Manderly.” Thomas moved to another cabinet to get out two mugs. His knowledge of the kitchen could mean he was telling the truth, or it could mean that his intel was better than John’s.

“What the fuck kind of name is that for a dog?” John asked.

“He’s a pirate,” Thomas said as if that explained everything. “Sugar?”

“No.” Normally John took four teaspoons, but sugar seemed too easy to poison. He had read at least six books where someone put poison in a sugar bowl. “If you’re really Flint’s husband, why doesn’t he wear a ring?”

“Because, and I quote, ‘that fucking shit already knows too much about me.’” Thomas rolled his eyes as he gave a rather decent impersonation of Flint’s gruff tone.

“I’m the reason he doesn’t wear his ring?” John was decidedly pleased by this idea. It was so… 1950’s lesbian pulp novel.

“No,” Thomas said, bringing both of their coffees to the kitchen table. “He just believes that it is safer for us to keep his home life and work life completely separate.”

“So he has a secret identity? That’s so lame! Who does he think he is? Batman?”

“Well, you see, James used to be MI6, so he has a hard time trusting others.” Thomas said it casually, as if he hadn’t just brought John’s world crashing down. There was no way Flint was a spy. Flint was like the lamest guy he knew! Yeah sure, sometimes he’d bash someone’s head in, but most of the time he yelled at John for stealing things, and used a stupid flip phone, and ate soup. What kind of spy ate soup?

James was exhausted. He had had a very trying day; besides the whole event with the mobster and the hideous glass paperweight, his attempts to talk to Anne about the body in her morgue were foiled by the presence of Jack, who has really watched far too many cop dramas, then he had a departmentally mandated meeting with Max which had gone on much too long, not to mention that he hadn’t had anything to eat because Silver had stolen his soup that morning. James was tired and grumpy and he wanted his husband. Also something seemed to be wrong with the lock on his door.

“Thomas?” He called, dropping his keys in the bowl on the table in their entrance hall and removing his shoes. “Are you home?”

“In the kitchen!” Thomas called. Just the sound of his voice cheered James up. He sounded delighted which meant he probably had a story that would make James’s bad mood disappear entirely.

He expected to find Thomas making coffee or working at the table, not sitting down with the very bane of his existence.

“Silver, what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“I’m having coffee with my new best friend!” He exclaimed with a thousand-watt grin, touching Thomas on the arm. “Is it true that you killed Thomas’s father?”

“I do wish you would stop telling people I killed your father,” James sighed, going to put the kettle on for tea. He had a feeling he would need it. “If your father ever does die under mysterious circumstances, I’m going to be the prime suspect, because you have told every single person you know that I murdered him in cold blood. Including your siblings!”

“But it’s so funny how they always believe me!” Thomas grinned, coming over to press a kiss to James’s neck. “Besides, I’d visit you in prison.”

“You didn’t kill his father?” Silver asked, sounding far too disappointed at the prospect for James’s comfort.

“Of course not. I just threw him out of our home.”

“Technically it was his home, we were just living there.” Thomas corrected, still pressed against James.

“Wait,” Silver said, suspicious. “If that’s not true- were you lying to me this whole time?”

“You broke into my home; I’m entitled to mess with you.” Thomas turned back to him, triumphant and more than a bit smug.

“He broke in?”

“I certainly didn’t invite him.”

“Everything was a lie? Even the spy stuff? Flint, why didn’t you tell me you married a super villain!?” Silver exclaimed.

“You broke into our home; he’s entitled to fuck with you.” James echoed. “Now tea time’s over- get the fuck out.”

Silver stood up and flounced over to them. “I will, but only because I��m morally outraged at this duplicity.”

“Wait!” James grabbed him arm. “Turn out your pockets.”

“Why?” Silver purred, leaning into him. “I can tell you right now; there’s no pistol, I’m just so happy to see you.”

“Turn them out,” James repeated, shoving him away.

From his pockets, Silver pulled out three teaspoons, a bookend, a pair of cufflinks, a block of fancy cheese, and a soap dish. 

James however was unsatisfied; inside John’s jacket he found the clock from the entrance hall, and from the back of his pants, tucked alongside his gun, was a third edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. Stuck into his shoe was a single chopstick.

“Just in case I come across any vampires!” Silver offered in explanation.

James didn’t know if the chopstick was his, but he confiscated it anyways, putting it on the table along with everything else.

“How did he take all of this?” Thomas asked, looking over the spread. “I was in the room with him the whole time!”

[binsofchaos]

‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Introduction by Garance Franke-Ruta. Jump to the start of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay here.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel was best known for her memoirs and essays, especially Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, but after attending Yale Law School in her late 30s she also enjoyed having a voice in the political arena. She was as much an original there as everywhere else, and between 2010 and 2012 she wrote a series of pieces for me at The Atlantic.

A feminist and a New Yorker who had really lived, she looked at the world in a different way from all the boys on the bus in Washington. And she was funny. She would send long text messages written on her smartphone while she was walking through Washington Square Park, an emissary from a more vivid and creative world than the boxy K Street buildings I would pass en route to my office in the Watergate. Sometimes her stories would come in like that too, texted in graf by graf, and I’d knit the passages together in what seemed like the right order and ask for some connective language. The thoughts were always razor-sharp; the understanding of human nature acute.

Over time our editing relationship moved into a long-distance friendship. We met for dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, outside of course so her dog could be nestled at her feet. She had somehow managed to find a lipstick with my name on it — Guerlain’s Garance — and purchased us two tubes encased in elegant silver that sat heavy in the hand. She wore hers to dinner, and when I went to the restroom, I changed my color too, making us lipstick twins. It was how she was and in many ways the secret to her success: In addition to being wildly talented, she overcompensated for being so difficult and never totally in control by being astonishingly thoughtful, and kind, and, well, seductive. She was a seductive personality; hard not to love even as she could be hard to be close to.

When I started working at GEN this fall and living in New York full time, I reached out to her. “I’m in remission!” she’d said brightly when we first reconnected, three years after last seeing each other and nearly five years after she first learned she had the BRCA gene and breast cancer. We drank red wine on her balcony overlooking a giant earthen pit in the ground: The future NY offices of Netflix. We went to dinner at Il Buco on Bond Street (her suggestion); I could feel she was lonely. She and her husband Jim Freed had separated and were in the process of divorcing, a not so happy ending to the happily ever after story she had been astonished to stumble into in 2015, and something she was still figuring out how to write about. She started sending me things she had written as we talked about her writing a piece about Gen X politics and the 2020 race.

“I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

Very soon the piece she’d wanted to write about Gen X politics started to slip. The cancer was back. There were so many tests and scans to undergo. I told her not to worry about writing it and was surprised when she filed. She said it was a good distraction from having cancer. She badly wanted to interview Beto O’Rourke, but by the time he arrived in New York City where they might have had a face-to-face — the Gen X skate-punk candidate and the Gen X icon — he was already getting ready to drop out of the race.

She sent me a long piece about her past year, about her impending divorce and her marriage and her mother and Donald Trump. It was from something longer she was working on, she said.

We talked about her writing an additional passage when she recovered from brain surgery and running the piece on Medium. “I suppose I have to add something about this, since so much of the piece is about cancer,” she texted. “You know, of all my failures of imagination, I never wondered what a brain tumor is like. So I could not have guessed it was this atrocious, the dizziness and the pain.”

Her recoveries from the relentless march of the disease during her final, dreadful month would prove to be brief.

After her first brain surgery — she had two to cope with her metastatic breast cancer and subsequent complications — which she described as a “brain resection,” she was astonishingly herself. She was funny and poetic and articulate and in good spirits. Still dizzy and unstable — the tumor had impacted her balance center and left her clutching the furniture as she walked during her last night in her own home — but also still herself. She laughed with her mother, who took video and pictures of her in the hospital and helped coordinate, along with Jim and some of her oldest friends from college, a parade of sun-up to way past winter sundown visitors so that she would never feel alone.

And the night before the surgery, Jim was the one she stayed with. He was the one who took care of Alistair, her dog, and her black cat, Arabella. When I saw him in the hospital, he was entirely attuned to her and what she might need so that she could recover and have, in the unspoken best-case scenario, another year.

“I can’t get over how great my husband has been with this. He has made it possible for me to get better and not worry about anything,” she wrote in mid-December, after the surgery. “He loves you so much it’s clear,” I texted back, thinking of how attentive he had been, how he was arranging visits with so many people, that look on his face that you cannot fake. “I think so,” she texted back. “It’s good you see. I love him so much.”

But the past year had been a hard one. This is what she had written about it. She had shown it to Jim too, and he agreed, as did a number of her oldest friends, that she’d want it published. She loved to be published.

I Believe in Love

By Elizabeth Wurtzel

Greetings from the chaotic land of marriage come undone.

The caravansary is dismantling, toothpicks flying everywhere, the bubblegum that held it together is unstuck.

Everything is falling.

My husband moved out at the end of December [2018], as the calendar flipped from last year to this [2019], while I was in Miami Beach, strolling the walkways in the shocking morning sun and under the nighttime Van Gogh sky, away from it all.

I knew he was moving out, but still: I was surprised.

I did not see that the game was over. I did not know the clock was running. I never lose, but I do run out of time. It turns out this was basketball and not baseball.

While I looked away, my marriage fell apart.

I fell off my keel. I lost my kilter. I was a kite without a string.

Maybe it’s better.

It is a peaceful purple without him here. But psychedelic with disarray.

Marriage is an organizing principle. It is flow. It is coffee in the morning. It is who walks the dog. It is HBO at night.

And love. Don’t forget that.

Now I am an ombré mess of a person. I am missed appointments and canceled meetings. I am the thing I forgot to do. I am hanging on by a strand of Drybar dry-shampooed hair.

All day long I have to ask people to forgive me, I am flailing and failing at it all. Forgive me, I beg, as I hope my untweezed eyebrows will. Maybe soon, I will even tug at a few strays.

Or maybe wild is the way.

🖤🖤🖤

I still think of Jim as this sweet person I married. He is my trust fall. He is my emergency contact. He is my next of kin. He is my valentine. He is my birthday dinner. He is my secret sharer. He is my husband.

I do not know him anymore so I do not know myself. Who are my friends? Where is my family? I have fallen into a crevasse of nobody nowhere.

I am estranged and strange, strangled up in blue.

I do not want to feel this way. I am going through the five stages of grief all at once, which Reddit strings have no doubt turned into 523. They are a collision course, a Robert Moses plan, a metropolitan traffic system of figuring it out.

I feel bad and mad and sad.

Is this a festival of insight or a clusterfuck of stupid? I change my mind all the time about this and about everything else.

I got married because I was done with crazy. But here it is, back again, the revenant I cannot shake. I feel like it’s 1993, when my heart had a black eye all the time.

26 is a boxing match of the soul.

I did not expect bruises at 52.

🖤🖤🖤

I have blamed myself. I have blamed my husband. I have blamed cancer. I have blamed marijuana. I have blamed sexism. I have blamed Charlottesville. I have blamed my in-laws. I have blamed several men named David. I have blamed my mother who lied to me my whole life about who my father is.

Who would I be if I did not blame Donald Trump?

I am angry all the time since the election of 2016, like it happened to me, like I was gang-raped by Michigan. I don’t want to be angry, but so there, I am.

Who don’t I hate?

Who won’t I blame?

If you are standing there, I blame you.

It is not conservative against liberal.

It is everybody against everyone. Here we are, in it together, alone.

The problem is not arguments I have with people who voted for Trump, who I don’t know anyway. The trouble is the way all of us who agree about everything are bickering. Oh, the narcissism of small differences.

I remember not that long ago when the world was not political. I was part of landmark litigation that was all about a team of Republicans and Democrats working together. I loved everybody. We were all on the same side.

What Alamo did I not forgive? What Masada did I not get over?

Now there is no microaggression too small for me to scream about so the next four neighborhoods can hear.

My husband does something and I am affronted like it matters.

I am sure he does not know how I feel.

And maybe he doesn’t.

But what does any of this have to do with why we got married? We got married to be in it together. Polarization has even invaded love.

I have anger fatigue. I am sick of sick. Like everyone.

The emotional toll of the world we live in is going to do all of us in.

But politics is not about conflict.

Politics is about making the world a better place.

🖤🖤🖤

How could my mother keep a secret for 50 years? What makes someone do that?

She buried herself in it. She grew a wild Victorian garden with thorny bushes of rose and purple larkspur and red snapdragon. There was a lush meadow of lavender that gave a whiff of Aix-en-Provence en été. The dandelions ran rampant and the daffodils glowed yellow like Big Bird.

But underneath it all, beneath the lilies of the valley and the rows of geranium, there is dirt.

There is a secret.

I am a bastard. I am her bastard daughter.

There are things that come along that are a shock.

I believed something for nearly half a century. It was a lie.

I was conned.

I was wrong about myself.

I did not know who I am.

My mother told no one.

It was a lie she told for so long it became true and the secret faded to no-memory. She misremembered who my father was. She did not think it mattered.

When it all came out in 2016, not long after I got married, just after my real father died, my mother could not see what my hysteria was about. She did not understand why I was stunned.

All the while I was trying not to feel the worst way ever, trying not to be overwhelmed by the explosion, my mother could not figure out what was bothering me.

After all, she is the nuclear physicist.

My mother is like everyone else. She thinks she is normal. She is sure her behavior makes sense. She believes she does the right thing. Since she cannot imagine that this is not the case, she is surprised to find out that, yes, she makes bombs.

I scream at my mother, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I do that and she does not know what I mean.

She says, “Oh get over it.”

Her eyes widen until they look like goggles on an herbivore. She is put upon. She cannot believe we have to discuss this yet again.

“Omigod yet again!”

When will I quit badgering her?

I say, “You lied to me.”

She says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Then what?”

“It was a decision!”

Any relationship founded on a lie is doomed. Or not a lie, according to her, which is another lie, a lie about a lie.

That is how it is between us. We are living in the doom.

And yet, we are still at it. My mother and I refuse to give up. She is my only parent. She is all I have.

She made sure of that.

This is the most painful thing ever.

She has made so many inexplicable decisions over the years that I know about, and now I see the ones I did not know.

And yet I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is it for me. She is in the way of everything. I should be interested in my husband, but how can he compete with how much I want to figure out the Once that started all that is upon a time?

🖤🖤🖤

I was a welter of emotions.

I was so emotional.

When I found out that my father is not my father, that my mother lied to me my whole life, that there was so much I did not know, a bomb dropped in my life. Bombs, really, aerial bombardment. It was the Battle of Manila: bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades, tanks, cannons, howitzers, banzai charges, kamikaze tactics, I was shocked and stunned with feeling.

I did not know what to do.

I became a raging lunatic.

I was a mettle of rage.

My rage is my retinue. My rage is a filthy velveteen train I drag around with me, carelessly. It is my ruby tiara. It is my rainbow and my pot of gold.

My rage is cream. It makes Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee that my grandmother brewed in a percolator on the breakfront in the dining room taste not half bad.

It is the coloratura harmony to my singsong days.

My rage is my conscience. I insist on my right to feel.

But I got caught in a Möbius strip of emotion. I was gone round the bend of scream.

It was stuplimity.

🖤🖤🖤

My marriage is crushed beneath the weight of so much. It is delicate, like all relationships. It is not one of those fine elms that blows with the gusts and does not snap.

We are a scattering of branches on the lawn. We are deadwood.

Oh, there is a lot that holds us together, the love and the hours. We got married during chemotherapy. We are bound.

But my husband is not who he was.

Yes, I know: It is always like that. The sorrow of unraveling is the stranger you are facing. What happened? I want to scream. Where did you go?

My husband had a softness. I will not compare it to the feel of cotton balls or the touch of silk charmeuse, because it is better. He was new to love. I could tell. I could see. He was surprised. He did not see me coming. He did not know I was interested. He was alone in a room. His life was small. He had the same six friends he always had. He was shy. He was not brave. He had no expectations.

He was lovely.

The beginning is always like honey, liquid and sweet.

But he was open.

He was not wounded by a million heartaches.

He had not been through it all.

He did not have a wretched past.

He was 34, which is not young. Younger than I was, but a lot could have happened by then.

It had not.

He was fresh.

There was nothing I would not do for him.

There was nothing I did not want for him.

We met in October and got engaged in May.

We knew.

And now he knows he has had enough.

It has been too much.

🖤🖤🖤

Most of all, it is not easy to be married to someone with cancer.

I feel for my husband.

Cancer is so big. Everyone is prostrate before its deadly enormity. It is the answer to every question. It is the reason why. Is it an excuse or is it real? Who is anyone to argue? Cancer is a bully. It is an elephantine disease of body, mind, soul. My husband moved a half a mile away from it. I would love to do the same.

I am stuck until the end.

I do not know what he expected when he married me when I was ill. I am sorry that it has not been what he wanted. I am sorry that I hurt him.

After I got cancer, I was not the same.

I wanted to be.

I wanted my life to go back to what it was.

I was so lively. I was so lovely.

I was so busy. I was so social.

But I could not do it.

No surprise, I changed.

I was withdrawn during chemotherapy and my world became small. It contracted like starvation. It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

I tried. So hard. I called. I emailed. I texted. I showed up.

But there was a diminishment.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

Things broke. My radius. My fibula. My tibia. My spirit.

My cancer came back a year after it went away.

You think people are nice about it? No.

Cancer is misunderstood.

Everyone says the wrong thing. Which is what they do so much anyway.

Then I say the wrong thing back.

There we are, bumper cars of mismatched words.

I can’t believe the stupid things people tell me in an effort to be kind, about something hard they had to deal with that is not the same as having cancer.

The worst thing anyone can do is tell me they are sorry about my cancer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don’t apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

Mostly sorry is just a thing to say. Anything else would be better, including I don’t know what to say.

It is always people who are the problem. What else? Our suffering is small compared to our misunderstandings with others, how they fail to give us a break, know what it’s like, judge us fairly, see the world the way we do. It is not even cancer or especially cancer. It is especially this and even that. If you are looking for absolution, you are going to have to forgive yourself.

I have chainmail from years of frustrating conversations, of people who think something bad has happened to me.

I don’t see it that way.

You could tell me everything that’s bad about cancer, like that it’s cancer, but you could not convince me that cancer has been bad for me.

Cancer has made me optimistic.

These are the days of miracles and wonders, of biopharma fireworks, of immunotherapy wow.

I have been saved.

I am miraculous me.

I will skate figure eights into infinity.

I am all claws I am all fangs.

I am not afraid of cancer. I think cancer should be afraid of me.

This past October [2018], I had a tumor in my shoulder bone that was 5 inches: big! It was threatening to break it.

And worse.

My cancer antigens were at 205, when 25 is as high as the level can go.

I had meetings in the World Trade Center while all this was going on. I hate it down there. Skyscrapers as grave markers. It is an ominous place.

When I went for help in Philadelphia at the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, only Alistair, my service dog, was with me.

My husband said he had to work.

My marriage had already come undone.

I had stereotactic radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It took only three sessions to zap the tumor away. The treatment saved me, but I have a five-inch hole in my bone that looks like a cave in the Thai jungle.

When my husband moved out, I was still healing. I have a rotator cuff tear and pain from the long way home.

🖤🖤🖤

This is a love story.

Every marriage is a love story.

People who run off to Vegas after knowing each other for 10 days and find a drunk outside the Sands casino to be their witness — they really mean it. Marriage is a big gesture. There is no reason to do it except: love.

It is effusive.

I am sorry I failed.

I am sorry for this confederacy of catastrophe.

I am sorry for it all.

I think that my husband can’t believe I hurt. I know what I’m like: I have a powerful personality, it’s true. But he got me.

He made a vow to love me in sickness and in health.

There was great love between us.

And love is hard to stop.

We made a commitment for when we could not remember why we did.

He decided enough.

I am a monotheist. I am in it for life. I am in everything for life. If you don’t stop me, I will not stop myself. I have the kind of faith that you can only have if you have talked your way out of trouble all along.

I feel so much and too much. Deep in my radiated bones.

I cannot believe it is like this with my husband and not like it was that long ago on Halloween, our first date, which he did not know was a date, maybe it was maybe it wasn’t, he showed up at my door not knowing anything at all.

We were resting on our future arms, we were like people who have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, have never seen City of God, have never heard Exile In Guyville, oh what lay ahead.

I remember my husband in the beginning, I know the man I married, I insist he is still there somewhere.

I keep peeling for the pentimento.

Or has this all been a fraud?

Love gone wrong feels like a confidence crime.

That is the worst of it.

Do I have an electron microscope or am I blinded? Do I see more clearly now or is this a distortion? I could ask that about the whole wide world.

Sex and race look different since Trump was elected. We know all the things that we never knew. We were living in a world of trust, we believed we were on a righteous path, that things were incrementally improving, so we did not look so hard into sunlight.

All anything ever is is another way of seeing.

I thought my husband was on my side.

I thought I knew him.

I did.

I don’t.

He changed.

I do not know how to help him.

I do not know how to reach him.

Anything is possible.

I believe in so much.

I am just that way.

I believe in love.

What matters more in this crazy world?

Shame on Casablanca’s ending! I will take the hill of beans.

(This is Garance again.)

Love. Sometimes in our lives when we feel most bereft it turns out that we are not alone at all. It is the kind of cloying Disney sentiment Lizzie might have scoffed at, but it was also the truth with her. She affected a toughness that was both real and a coping mechanism, but which also led her to downplay how sick she was. Even as she was telling me she was in remission in September, spots of cancer had already returned, I have since learned.

“The people who know us when we are not our best selves — what would we do without them? I am so grateful right now for even my mother coming through for me,” she wrote after her first surgery in December. Her mother Lynne Winters and she had a famously complicated relationship, but it was Lynne who took her home to recover both times she was released from the hospital, and who had the difficult burden of having to bring her back, and who sobbed in the sparkling clean MSKCC neuro ward hallway where other parents of too-young-to-die adult children paced forlornly.

“Jim has been the best,” Lizzie texted after the surgery. “I wish you a great first husband. That might be all you need.”

They had, in fact, not divorced. The papers were signed, but not filed. He was her husband until the end, during the final days after it was clear no further interventions would work, when she lay still in bed in what was by then her at least fifth different hospital room, for all the world the image of a big-eyed Renaissance pieta looking heavenward.

“Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer,” she had texted after the first surgery. “And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight.”

She spent her whole life fighting — fighting her parents, society, the patriarchy, social conventions, addiction, depression. But man, did she live big. She had a gift for building love into her life and at the end, her friends built a cocoon of love around her.

And on the morning of January 7, 2020, she was, as she had prayed, released.

[rpsidebloghell]

My last post got me thinking, have I ever introduced you all to my Novel’s characters? Bc I can’t even begin to explain to you how much I love them all so let me break down who they are. (Art isn’t 100% how I picture them but still awesome, commissioned the art like a year ago to help someone raising money for their dog bc of doggo health issues they couldn’t afford)

Elisabeth is the main pov character for the story and the one with the blue as red steaks in her hair. (not always there, done with hair chalk.) And she is a slightly over enthusiastic extrovert(when awake) who loves her dumbass dorky guardians like they were actually family. She also likes to goad Desmond into piggy back rides and usually fails and just jumps on Phoenix’s back and will give people the dirtiest look ever if people as if her and Desmond are dating because “no??? We grew up together??? He’s practically my brother and I’d sooner eat a live chicken????” Elisabeth is NOT the hero of this story, idk she’s just the one who stood out to me for pov bc she would be there for basically all of it bc of Aqua and Phoenis but like, plot is driven by the Elemental Advisors which btw is the name for the novel.

Desmond is Mr. I’m Gonna Wear A Ring Around My Neck Instead Of On My Finger BC I Can. He is literally the definition of an optimist, he prefers to believe that things will turn out fine until proven wrong and even then he’s someone who thinks every thing happens for a reason. He is just as disgusted as Elisabeth if anyone mistakes them as a couple but is better at hiding that then he and will usually just correct them and be like “no we’re just best friends!”. He legit has to drag his guardian out of caves sometimes when he gets into a depressed and brooding mood and once found him napping as a dragon and got Phoenix to do it instead bc “??? Dude I don’t wanna get stepped on and your more durable than me???” Draco has been a guardian to people in his family for generations upon generations, having met a young boy wanting the desert an spending 9 years helping him find his family before deciding he didn’t feel right leavin him behind. So he formed a guardian bond with him and has had one with 1 member of the family at any given time since, though there are sometimes gaps well e waits for a member to e born that he wants to form a connection with or as he tries to find someone in the family that he wants to make a guardian bond with and they with him.

Elisabeth as Desmond are both human beings from the planet earth(or mostly in Elizabetha case but???? That’s more plot centered than character which I’m nothing getting into RN)

Aquarius is the one with the blue hair and elf like ears, and honestly if it wasn’t for her neither one of her dork Elemental advisor partners would get anything done when together because Phoenix just finds it to fun to annoy Draco out of his quietness. She along with Drago and Phoenix are 3 of the 5 Elemental advisors to their king, and also spirits of the constellations of the same names. There is a whole big “Star Spirit Race” lore thing I could get into but YOLO not gonna RN. She is the physical embodiment of the star spirit of Aquarius(best way to explain without getting in depth is its roughly how gems physical form works in Steven Universe but also somewhat different??) and has powers over water and healing. She’s with Phoenix an exclusive though their commitment isn’t a permanent thing yet(which is rare with start spirits bc cause of how long they are around) and at one point when younger she and Draco had a brief relationship. She’s pretty close with the ‘elder’ advisors Perseus and Antila as well, she very much enjoys training with all of her fellow advisors in power combination and always enjoys getting their opinions on an idea that she had involving this. Free time tends to be spent letting herself drift and sink and float on any large body of water she can find.

Phoenix is the dude with the flamey hair and for the most part a giant dork who loves to annoy his best friend and future leader of the advisors Draco, who usually proceeds to try and lift himself away from the annoyance on a column of earth. He however can be a bit F a hot head at times, though it’s only ever once gotten out of control. When Draco’s wife and Polaris’(“King” of the star spirits) half human love child who they’d all come to see as a trusted friend turned evil and went crazy(legit not her fault, her human brain couldn’t cope with immortality) he lost control an Mt. Vesuvius erupted and he destroyed Pompeii and stayed their in isolation not talking to anyone or like 10 years till his mentor (Constellation Leo) got him to leave to help his depressed AF bff. He still feels terrible about what happened and will get broody whenever the city is mentioned. He Phoenix has always had a thing for Aquarius, however he never really said anything until somewhat recently by star standards-about 300 years ago. That’s a minor part in their history together though an they didn’t get together right away anyway so u won’t get in depth any more than I did in with Aqua’s blurb. His powers are pretty obviously fire related but??? He can morph into a Phoenix form as well.

DRACO, my god I had to save this broody little bitch last bc I’ll prob just keep babbling about him. Draco is my self created problematic fav. He is the next leader of the advisors as decided by Perseus, Antila and Polaris. (though TBH Aqua was a close second till se made it known she had no desire to actually lead when the debates about who would be the next leader were going on) He is also such a fucking broody little both these day, okay. Sorry back on track. Part of the reason for him being chosen as an advisor in the first place was his raw power, he has powers over both dirt and dirt like substances and plant life, can shift Ito a dragon and has naturally enhanced strength due to the dragon part of him. All this and he sill can’t stop his wife from going mad from immortality. OKAY OKAY SORRY BACK ON TRACK AGAIN.

Draco was trained in his ability a of Earth by Taurus and Plant life by Libra, later on by Perseus in leadership. He ended up close to ad old friend with Phoenix and Aqua before all the shit happened that made him a broody little bitch. When Phoenix volunteered for and left on an extended mission with Antila he and Aqua grew closer without Phoenix there, they had a brief relationship that had dwindled out naturally after a couple centuries-something not uncommon with their people. After Polaris’ daughter Vega was born the advisors were made her teachers an protectors, it wasn’t until she was nearly 30 the feelings shifted from that for Draco but there with the issue of lifespan and Vega not wanting to start somethings for the sole reason of not wanting to die on him. Eventually with the help of Aquarius and Pisces they found the solution of taking a small part of some stars energy force and replacing it with her own, though not enough for them to really notice. It worked and she was now basically immortal and they could live on happily every after for a thousand year before she went mad and he and she became committed to one and other after a couple centuries and they had matching sets of silver and gold bracelets to signify that except it didn’t last and she went crazy bc her brain wasn’t meant to handle that long of a life.

Because of her threat but neither Draco or Polaris wanting her to die she was sealed away(with help from the constellations Cepheus and Cassiopeia and guarded by Cetus lolololol couldn’t resist the Greek Myth reference bc I’m a dork) until they could find out how to fix the problem of her going mad and then Draco brooded in a cave for a few centuries before meeting Desmond’s ancestor and he wears Vega’s bracelets that he left behind when he refused o help her crazy self along with his own and basically just wonders why existence is so cruel and how to get Vega back to herself even if she still chooses not to be with him bc he’d rather a universe where she was truly herself and not driven mad but not with him than a universe where she is locked away for eternity as sill not with him. He just wants a universe where Vega is truly Vega and not some deranged version of herself driven mad by immortality.

EDIT: Legit 100% only because of her healing abilities that Aqua doesn't have scars like the boys even though she repeatedly tells them to come to her for healing when they are hurt and gives them a death glare when se realized thy have once again not done this each ad every time.

[venusyprime]

On Crowdfunding

So, as you know if you follow me on Twitter, I back a lot of Kickstarters (so much so that Kickstarter has branded me a ~superbacker~. I believe it's really important to support independent artists, and that's the biggest way I do so - along with monthly Patreon payments, and commissions from my furry accounts.

So here's a post I've been meaning to write about what will get me to back a project or not.

Small Teams

I prefer to back games made by smaller teams. This means I'm less likely to back if there's a heavy external developer/publisher presence - not just as help for creating physical boxes, but throughout. I did not back Shenmue 3 because I felt that Sony could have easily funded that themselves. I did not back Mighty No. 9 for various reasons, but the lack of transparency over Deep Silver's involvement was one of them.

Amplitude was one exception, as I felt that Sony would never back that, it was Harmonix fighting for the right to use the name.

I don't have a big problem if a partner gets picked up after the crowdfunding campaign finishes - for a recent example, Frog Fractions 2 getting some additional assistance from Adult Swim Games.

UK Shipping

If UK shipping on your product is half the price of the thing, chances are I'm not backing it - or at least, not at a tier without digital rewards. I would have loved Fidget Cube, but IIRC, UK shipping was very expensive compared to the price of the project. When I first saw the Voyager Golden Record replica, it did not have the digital download tiers - and again, UK shipping was really expensive.

Hierarchy of Sites

I trust a crowdfunding attempt on Kickstarter more than I trust one on Indiegogo - due to no flexible funding, and hardware projects requiring a working prototype.

Fig is an odd one. My stance on Fig is to look at the ratio of backers to investors. For example, looking at the current project, "Little Bug":

What this tells me is that the majority of people interested in this game have dollar signs in their eyes rather than actually wanting the game. I can't see this providing a good return on investment, because if no one wants to pay for the game itself while crowdfunding...

Electronics

I don't back robots, security products, wireless earbuds with voice commands/translation features, or any electronics on Indiegogo (see above). At best, these products are snake oil. At worst, they are actively transmitting any data you give them to a country where you don't particularly want your data going.

With robot crowdfunding pitches, most of them promise the world with things they can't possibly deliver, and are also no match for stairs, and would probably be savagely attacked by my two dogs.

As for wireless earbuds, for starters I'm going to lose those - but also, for the ones offering translation features, they're just connecting to an app on your phone, and the videos usually edit out the few seconds while the app processes. Since it's not seamless, you may as well be using the app on your phone anyway to communicate.

Text and Images

I am very unlikely to watch your video. I will only watch your video if your campaign text is interesting (either in a good sense or a bad one), but there's something I'm missing. In most cases, I'm scrolling through your page, and I've decided if I'm backing or not from that alone.

This doesn't mean the video isn't important. I choose my way, others choose the opposite.

Direct Marketing

If you @ -me on Twitter with a link to your campaign because you were randomly searching for the word "Kickstarter", well... I'm less harsh than some people, I actually usually will check out your campaign, but you're starting with negative a few points towards me actually backing, thanks to the minor irritation. If your project is good, you shouldn't need that, I should hear about it through friends or the other people I follow.

So yeah, those are my basic thoughts on backing. One more: for games, I expect the project to get delayed - but I've never backed one that got cancelled on me yet.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Alan Moore, Louis L’amour, Conan Pastiches, Robots

Super Heroes (BBC): Is it embarrassing for adults to like superheroes? According to Alan Moore – creator of the Watchmen series and widely considered one of the greatest comic book writers – it is. He says superheroes are perfectly fine for 12 or 13-year-olds but adults should think again. “I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying,” he says.

Folklore (The 13th Floor): The ancient lore of the indigenous peoples of North America are as varied and far-reaching as the continent itself, and unless you’re well-versed in native lore, you might not realize how many of those tales are populated by horrifying spirits, ghosts, witches, demons and monsters… and since we’re in the scare business, we’re going to share the most nightmarish ones with you.

Westerns (Crimereads): Some of the difficulties the fiction magazines were experiencing were due to a prewar invention: the paperback book. The Western “dime novels” and “railway novels” (so named because they were sold in train stations) of the nineteenth century were early experiments in this form. True success, however, had to wait until the 1930s, when a pair of innovations were introduced: an effective glue strip used to bind the book together and the adoption of a distribution model invented by magazine publishers.

Fiction (Goodman Games): What makes those stories pastiche instead of fanfic, I suppose, is that many of these writers were paid to write it and the result was distributed widely. You would assume that meant that the work was well-edited and had some kind of consistency, but a lot of people, me among them, would tell you you’re wrong.  Some writers don’t quite get the character, or want to change him, or don’t understand that he actually does change, age to age, and is capable of greater subtlety/humor/intellect than is popularly assumed (just as REH’s writing is more complex than popularly imagined).

Men’s Adventure Fiction (Paperback Warrior): “The idea that genre fiction is somehow inferior in quality to so-called mainstream fiction, and is not as literary, is artificial bull-puckey,” Hayes said. “Mainstream also is genre, psychological studies, social issues, etc. are all genres, and most of that is not as entertaining as other genres. Entertainment is the primary objective of all fiction, the other, lesser goal being enlightenment, which should never dominate the story. If you have a cause to espouse, the proper literary form is an essay or a non-fictional book.”

Pulp Magazines (Dark Worlds Quarterly): I’ve been spending a lot of time amongst the Pulps lately. And it begs the question: what is the appeal of these old, flaking, brown books? One thing strikes me immediately, the collector’s mania that says, “I want them all!” Since Pulp magazines are no longer produced it is a finite proposition to own a “complete Weird Tales” if not a cheap one. But this doesn’t explain everything. The idea of a rare magazine or comic sealed in plastic, unreadable, priced at, say, $1000.00, makes it no more interesting than a rare coin or a bearer bond.

SF RPG (Trollsmyth): Treasure is easy in fantasy realms. Usually, it’s great piles of gold coins, gleaming gems, and works of art. Back in the middle of the 20th century, when the future was nuclear, space powers feuded over fissionables the way 20th century powers fought over oil. Later, when the power of the future shifted from fission to fusion, He3 became the thing to fight over.

A. Merritt (DMR Books): What a difference a century makes, eh? A well-respected book reviewer for “The Newspaper of Record” published that glowing endorsement for the very first hardcover edition of A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool. As I’ve explained elsewhere, the book itself was a “fix-up” novel merging Merritt’s original novelette of “The Moon Pool” with the novella/short novel, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool”. Let’s see what else the reviewer has to say…

Pulp Fiction (Grey Dog Tales): This book opens with an excellent and very informative introduction by Garyn G. Roberts Ph.D., in which he gives a very detailed background of Farmer’s love for and relationship with Pulp fiction. Without wanting to repeat too much of the information in that introduction, it’s worth mentioning here that Greatheart Silver was Farmer’s homage to the great pulp heroes of the 1930s.

Gaming (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Long, long ago I heard rumor of them in the introduction of GURPS. Elements of Melee and Wizard are of course baked into the classic Second Edition GURPS Basic Set and first edition GURPS Fantasy. But strangely enough, the group of high school buddies that went hog wild playing Car Wars and Ogre and Illuminati somehow never went beyond doing anything else beyond creating a few 100 point characters with those gaming materials that were supposed to be Steve Jackson’s magnum opus and the ultimate testament to his design genius.

H. P. Lovecraft (Slashfilm): During an interview with Coming Soon, SpectreVision’s Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah revealed tentative plans for a Lovecraft trilogy, adding that Color Out of Space director Richard Stanely might be involved as well. Wood and Noah said that if there’s “enough of an appetite for these things, and we can keep them going and make at least three of them” because Lovecraft is “such an important voice in horror.”

Folklore (Blog That Time Forgot): Ah, that most feared & beloved of Scottish beasties, the Wild Haggis. Elusive yet ubiquitous, they’re rare enough to be seldom seen in the wild, yet populous enough to feed 5.4 million Scots every Burns’ Night. Some say they are small furry mammals, others that they are little birds with vestigial wings; some say their right (or left) legs are longer than the others to facilitate mountain navigation at the cost of reproductive opportunity, while others suppose that they have only three legs, or even no legs at all; there are those who compare their call with the drone of the bagpipes, and others who equate it with a whistly twittering.

Small Press (Rawle Nyanzi): There’s a particular short story magazine that chugs along like a little engine that could. In spite of financial challenges and some less-than-stellar sales figures, it keeps on keeping on through periodic crowdfunds and targeted marketing. I’m talking about Cirsova, the Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense, founded in 2016 by P. Alexander, a Twitter buddy of mine who did the interior formatting for both of my novels Sword & Flower and Shining Tomorrow.

RPG (Goodman Games): The third book in the Alphabet series is now ready for pre-order! The Cthulhu Alphabet is an organized book of madness that you can incorporate into any role-playing game, Dungeon Crawl Classics or otherwise! The Cthulhu Alphabet is a collection of random tables to inspire your role-playing game, structured around an abecedarian theme. If you are a player navigating an uncaring universe, a haunted setting, or a horror-filled dungeon, you will find new ideas for your character and adventures.

Tolkien (Tolkien and Fantasy): I’m using the term “Tolkienian resonances” in this post’s title to refer to some things that predate Tolkien’s own relevant works, but are certainly not influences. They could perhaps be called precursors, but that seems too expansive a term. In any case, a few of these works with such resonances are interesting, and I recount them here. First, there is the discovery by Mark Hooker of the poem “The Orc and His Globular Island.” Hooker wrote about it in the November 2019 issue of Beyond Bree. The poem is interesting not only for its use of the word orc, but for the orc’s similarities to Gollum in The Hobbit.

H. P. Lovecraft (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): Despite enjoying him as a good read, Lovecraft left Williams out of SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE, his monograph surveying the field, which he was expanding and revising at the time. Doubtless Williams did not make the final cut because Lovecraft had concluded that CW was really not a horror writer at all and also that only committed Xians wd fully appreciate these novels (Lovecraft himself was an atheist and nihilist).

Tarzan (DMR Books): As I stated this time last year, a significant portion of Tarzan fandom considers November 22 to be the ape-lord’s “real” birthday. That’s fine with me. It makes a perfectly good excuse to talk about my favorite works of Tarzanic art. I considered going through my faves in the order I first discovered them, but it was long enough ago—and much of it was in a fairly short span of time—that I decided to go chronologically as they were first published. Thus, the iconic cover for the first McClurg edition of Tarzan of the Apes has to start things out.

Pulp Art (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The first Pulp magazine to offer robot stories was not a purely Science Fiction mag but Weird Tales, which featured the first robotic brain, giant robots and robot despots in Edmond Hamilton’s “The Metal Giants” and Ray Cummings’ “The Robot God”.

Fiction (Don Herron): The other day Brian Leno mentioned that he’d heard good things about the novel Relic by Preston & Child — but even more specifically, he got the major tip-off from me.  I found the novel much, much better than the movie and could not believe that the movie cut out the role of Pendergast, an FBI guy who for all practical purposes may as well be Sherlock Holmes. My god, the best character. I could not believe it, and I still cannot believe it — who’d buy rights to The Hound of the Baskervilles and then delete Sherlock? What genius does that?

Ian Fleming (Mystery File): Thunderball was the eighth James Bond novel and followed a break after Goldfinger where the new James Bond had been a collection of short stories, For Your Eyes Only. In fact Thunderball was the result of the author’s dwindling enthusiasm for his creation after a series of bitter disappointments about Bond’s screen fortunes. A proposed Hitchcock film of From Russia With Love had fallen through (Hitchcock ended up doing North by Northwest instead), and while sales for the Bond novels had rocketed with Doctor No and Goldfinger, the television series pilot “Commander Jamaica” that fell through had become the plot of Doctor No.

Weapons (Pulp Rev): Swords are cool. That alone would be enough reason to include swords in fiction. And you can’t have a street samurai without a sword. But my preferred aesthetic, that of the military technothriller, demands greater justification than just ‘cool’. And for good reason: soldiers must justify every piece of gear they carry on a mission. Unnecessary gear just slows you down and takes up space.

Sensor Sweep: Alan Moore, Louis L’amour, Conan Pastiches, Robots published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[peacefulheartfarm]

Traditional Healing Wisdom

Traditional Healing Wisdom has been with us since the beginning of time. Exploring where we are with that today is my main topic for this edition of the Peaceful Heart FarmCast.

I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to all of the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast every week. I appreciate you all so much. I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week.

Today’s Show

Homestead Life Updates

Traditional Healing Wisdom

Stinging Nettles Infusion

Homestead Life Updates

Wytheville Farmer’s Market

Life is moving along at a rapid pace here at the homestead. The Wytheville Farmer’s Market is having the last winter market this Saturday. We will be there from 10 – 12 noon. The following week the market opens up for the summer season. We will be there each and every week from 8 am to 12 noon.

I have decided to let go of a lot of the celery starts I planted a couple of months ago. Celery is hard to get started but pretty easy once you get it going. Stop by and pick up a plant or two. Celery grown in your own garden is nothing like what you would buy in the store. 110 days and you will have wonderful celery.  Fresh celery is so different from store bought.  It has an intense flavor and smell that is almost peppery.  I planted Utah Tall. It is the standard for green celery.

Dairy Cows

Yesterday Claire’s udder was so big and tight it looked like it was about to burst. We thought, “surely tomorrow it will happen.” And . . . It did. She had trouble last year and I wasvery anxious at this point for her to deliver without issue. Shortly after I got to the Farmer’s Market to set up, I got a call from Scott. Claire had her calf without issue. Yet another bull calf. Two more to go. Will we get a heifer? That’s a girl calf for those who are not farm animal savvy.

Katahdin Sheep

We are still waiting on one ewe to have her lambs. Oh, and the triplets are a unique situation. A couple of days ago I noticed one of the triplets was hunched over. He was also much less bulky than the other two. I’m sure he got colostrum in the first day or he wouldn’t have made it as long as this. It is absolutely required for any young ruminant animal to survive more than a few days. But his mom was definitely not standing still for him at this point, or perhaps the others were pushing him out.

Lambert

That brings me to the interesting situation. We started giving him a bottle to supplement his nutrition. However, we left him to run with his mom and siblings. She doesn’t let him nurse but she let him hang out. He is very fast and keeps up with her very well. He stays closer to her than the other two. We were hoping to get him to come running to us so we didn’t have to chase him down to give him his bottle. Our sheep are not wild, but they are not tame to our touch either. We can get to about 10 feet from them before they all run off. We have a Shepard’s hook to catch him up. We get close to them and then I get a little closer and kind of force them to a point where they will run past Scott. He reaches out and snags the little guy as he runs by. Once we have him, he eagerly drinks that bottle. He knows where his food is coming from. 

This morning we had to alter that plan a little. He is just not thriving. He is still very small compared to all the other lambs. We decided to keep him close and feed him more often. Scott caught him up again and put him in a dog cage that we have for just this situation. Lambert has straw bedding and is keeping Scott company while he lays blocks for the creamery.

The Garden

The strawberries are now all planted in the garden. We bought straw to use as mulch. Bad purchase. It was full of seeds. We have all kinds of wheat grass growing in the strawberry bed and also in the potatoes where I piled it high to cover the potatoes. Using straw mulch on potatoes is normally a great idea. Using straw instead of dirt is much lighter cover where the potatoes will form. There is less resistance for those potatoes so they can grow really big. That is if we can keep the wheat grass pulled out.

As far as the Herd share status, we are working with the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Organization to get our contracts in order. They are a great group of people that help small farmers all over the country with legal issues. As soon as the contract is ready, I will let you know so you can purchase your part of the herd and get going on having your own milk products available for weekly pickup. I’m experimenting with yogurt and I must say it is the best yogurt I have ever had. And I eat a lot of yogurt.

Another plug for the Farmer’s Market. I will have samples for tasting each week. These cows truly are unique and your yogurt, butter and cheese will reflect that.

Traditional Healing Wisdom

Today I want to talk a little bit about traditional healing wisdom from days gone past. Much of the issues with health care up until the later part of the 20th century revolved around access to care. I know it seems like people died from all sorts of things that we can treat easily today, and there is truth in that. But I want to point out that much of the problem in the past was how spread out people were and how little access most people had to anyone who had any knowledge at all about medicine. It was all herbal medicine back in the day and a lot of it worked pretty well. But again, if you weren’t at least an herbalist, your chances of getting medical care in a timely manner were greatly diminished.

I want to take a moment here and point you in the direction of a resource that I have used for many years. Herb Mentor and Learning Herbs.com. I started with them shortly after they started their mission to see an herbalist in every community. There is so much valuable information on their website, I couldn’t begin to fully describe it here. There are courses from the vary basics all the way to advanced courses for full-time herbal medicine practitioners. 

The Village Herbalist

Village or community herbalists are the mainstay of herbalism, the nurturers and protectors of good health. Their ideal to have someone educated and experienced in the use of herbs for general health and minor illness and injury is a very noble one. The role of the herbalist complements the work of other holistic care providers and even modern medical providers. A community herbalist can be invaluable in educating people about good health practices and in helping them recover from common family ailments. They are first in line to give people answers about how plants can assist in their basic care.

When I was growing up, I was fortunate to have a mother who was not afraid of practicing some home care medicine. While she wasn’t a village herbalist, she was educated in what to do for cuts, bruises, colds, diarrhea and so on. She even knew exactly what to do when, at 12-years-old, I burned by left hand very badly. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital healing from that. But her quick thinking, calmness is the face of disaster, early action with cold water and ice, and a methodical but hair-raising drive to the local clinic were invaluable to my healing process. The hospital treatment was an age-old one. Silver nitrate. It forms a crust on the burned surface where skin used to be. Leaking fluids due to no skin to hold it in runs neck-and-neck with infection as the leading cause of complications and death in extensive burns.

Traditional village herbalists can and do provide education and healing techniques to their local communities. I want to stress the importance of education. Again, because I had a wonderfully educated mother when it came to basic first aid, I benefited and also learned much of the basic medical knowledge that I believe every woman in the world should have. Teaching basic first-aid for everyday use and using herbs for specific therapeutic purpose has long been the province of the village herbalist. However, many people today either never had it or have lost this traditional link with basic survival skills developed over millennia.

Return to Our Roots

The desire for a return to this basic understanding—moving away from conveyor belt apparatus that is our modern healthcare service—to a simpler and more natural lifestyle grows ever stronger as human experience becomes more complex and the further removed from our connection with the Earth. Western culture pushes incessantly for more modern access to medical care, but how much of those costs would be reduced if we were simply educated in what to do for a fever, a cough, diarrhea. More will always be balanced by less somewhere else. Today’s “less” is less knowledge of how to take care of ourselves and our families during the simplest of illnesses. And don’t let me forget to mention that a HUGE part of that education is knowing when you need that specialized medical care that can only be obtained from someone with far more education. Context matters. Looking at our medicine—how we care for ourselves—reveals the need for greater knowledge and more personal responsibility for the health of ourselves and our families.

A functional health care system, first and foremost, takes place nearby. Caring begins with people who know us. This is where you or someone you know can be that village herbalist. Certainly, conventional medical care serves a good purpose in apt situations. We definitely want that 7 to 9 minutes with a doctor should the need arise. Yet somewhere between our body’s innate ability to heal itself with a little knowledgeable support and conventional medicine’s high-dollar attempt at a cure lie many situations that can be bridged by common sense and a compassionate connection to the community we serve.

Alternative Medicine

Is it truly “alternative” or is it simply a return to the basics of what has worked throughout our time here on earth?

More than 83 million Americans reported using what is termed “alternative medicine” in 1998, according to a nationwide survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The therapies most commonly used were chiropractic, herbs, massage, and relaxation techniques. Yet the numbers are not the telling consideration here. People are turning to healing modalities that work effectively, cost less, and do the desired good with fewer side effects than mainstream medicine. The term alternative medicine is revealing, for it completely overlooks the fact that from the perspective of someone born in the 1800’s it might seem as though the medical profession threw out the baby with the bath water as each modern technique became the new miracle, the connection to the simpler forms of health eroded. History shapes all cultural destiny, and medicine is no exception. Shall we examine the thousands of years of herbal knowledge garnered from plant-based experience that preceded the allopathic doctoring to which many now turn to in times of illness or injury?

Doctors have been quoted as saying that a good three quarters of the people coming to see them have come to the wrong place. Patients often come at the first sign of discomfort or irregularity, expecting a quick fix for obvious symptoms. Over-the-counter medications possess all the glitter that advertising can muster, yet a pill prescribed by a doctor carries a heavier stick. Naturally people want assurance, and to understand the current predicament of their bodies. We are fearful, inconvenienced, and downright whiny. We place our responsibilities at the feet of professionals and pay for expensive services rather than take it upon ourselves to learn a little bit about the human body and how to work in harmony with it.

To Doctor or Not to Doctor

It has been estimated that 70 to 80% of the people who go to doctors have nothing wrong with them that couldn’t be cleared up by a vacation, a pay raise, or relief from everyday emotional stress. This is the education and support that a local herbalists could easily provide. Education and coaching. Only 10% of patients visiting their doctor for that 9 minutes—that required half a day off from work—require drugs or surgery to get well, and approximately 10% have diseases for which there is no known cure. Most illnesses run a benign course if left to what the Hippocratic physicians called the healing power of nature. The natural healing mechanisms of the body build in an 80% recovery rate from all illnesses regardless of medical intervention. . . . But the mothers and other caretakers would need to know how to treat at home and when it is beyond their knowledge. It’s a scary thing, I know. It’s so much easier to just go to the doctor and be done with it.

We are thankful for good doctors. Medical intervention proves itself whenever the surgeon repairs bones or remove stones, the internist uses antibiotics or insulin appropriately, or the pediatrician spots a problem and nips it in the bud before it can cause greater damage. Yet many situations call for more personal involvement and homegrown understanding.

Interfering in the natural processes of the body can cause trouble. Iatrogenic (treatment-caused) harm is every doctor’s worst nightmare. The listed side effects of pharmaceutical drugs often gives us pause to consider the additional health risks incurred to obtain a predicted benefit. Working humbly within these limitations makes physicians good at what they do. I do want to point out however, that doctors are as human as the rest of us. They are not infallible. They do not know your child the way that you know your child. Educate yourself or find a local herbalist to help you understand. It will be well worth it.

Responsibility for Ourselves, Our Families, Our Communities

Taking care of yourself and your family for the majority of everyday health needs is both plausible and sensible. Empowerment begins with knowledge. Herbalists can help people use plant remedies respectfully and intelligently. Going to medical school is not essential to be able to help people feel better. We have deeded the legal practice of medicine to an elite group on the basis of one type of training.

Interest in an herbal approach to health is growing rapidly. However, this high regard for natural living is often accompanied by an allopathic perception of illness we’ve been raised to view as routine. We now take this herb for that condition. Modern medicine insists upon a physical explanation for each cause and effect. Symptoms are treated accordingly. Yet the whole of the matter often goes unresolved. Holistic plant medicine goes well beyond this kind of narrowminded, simplistic thinking. Each individual has a different Constitution. Different therapeutic strategies for seemingly similar conditions must take into account the biological, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of each individual. A good herbalist not only helps people become medically self-sufficient but also shares the journey into the big picture of who we are. There is no one-size-fits-all in good health care.

Traditional Healing Wisdom

Using plants as medicine predates written history. Anthropologists believe that people learned how to use plants for healing by trial and error and by watching birds and animals. Many wild animals possess an instinct to seek out plants that are good to eat and filled with vital nutrition, while avoiding those that might be poisonous.

Plant by plant, humans have added to a collective knowledge that is been handed down through the ages by word-of-mouth and later in written documents. Regardless of a given cultural understanding of plants, where blood flowed, Yarrow stanched it. When influenza raised its head, garlic was universally applied. Plantain for bee stings is another treatment that spanned continents. Such plant remedies showed their effectiveness time and time again.

Western Herbalism

Here in North America, the aboriginal people had a multitude of uses for the plants of this continent. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and other tribes on the planes were the first to discover and use Echinacea for its immune-stimulating ability. You saw the Eastern Woodland tribes boil wild mint and inhale the steam to help relieve congested lungs and sinuses. The Apache, Hopi, and Navajo rubbed powdered cayenne on arthritic joints to help block pain and reduce swelling. The Chippewa and other Great Lakes tribes boiled willow bark and drank the tea to reduce fevers and headaches. Modern science has identified many of the plant components that validate the use of each of these treatments exactly as they were prescribed.

As the European population of the US grew, many learned the Indian ways of using the local herbs. These treatments were passed along to eager settlers and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs needing knowledge of native botanical medicine. European herbal lore and Native American plant wisdom joined together. They united many traditions under one banner and Western herbalism was born.

Modern Medicine

Today much of the world population continues to use herbs as their primary source of medicine. The world health organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of the world’s people rely on herbs for their health. An unbroken chain of herbal knowledge has continued to be passed down in many, many cultures around the world. Take for instance, the long-standing teachings of Chinese and Ayurvedic health practitioners. Unfortunately, for many of us in the Western world this chain has been broken. We have fooled ourselves into believing that synthetic medicine made in a lab by people wearing white coats has more worth than the humble dandelion in our backyards.

We still need the perception and conscious intelligence of our ancestors to be embodied anew in every generation by women and men who are called to be healers. They include the country doctor who is well-versed in spending time with patients; the village herbalist who uses plant medicines for treating an array of disease; a midwife who assists with home births in the home. We don’t have to go back very far in time to find such these healers who diligently cared for their communities to the best of their ability.

For many of us it was our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers that taught us the basics but we dropped the ball. We dropped the ball for the quick trip to the doctor’s office instead of the continuing education that is readily available in our modern society. The internet offers any amount of education in the body and its systems. Books galore on your kindle can provide the basics that a mother needs to know about how to treat a fever and when to abandon home remedies and get to the ER immediately. What better way to pass the time during pregnancy than educating yourself in the care of your children? Too often I see that women have been convinced that attention to a career is so much more important. I just can’t see it. Caring for my family seems a much better choice. 

Women: Traditional Keepers of the Hearth

Traditionally women are the keepers of the hearth. The responsibilities of cooking, tending the herb garden, drying the herbs, making medicines, and brewing the brews traditionally have been met by their loving hands. Women tended to the birth of babies and care of the sick in the homes of their families and friends. The unique ones heeded a call to serve the wider communities. Are you one of those? Is it brewing inside of you and you haven’t responded to the call? I urge you to reconsider.

People will always need good medicine. Accordingly, a process of trial and error has been going on for thousands of years, always directed at the same goal of making us well. Therapies that worked were passed down to subsequent generations; those that did not were forgotten. Plant remedies that survived this test of time, and especially those shared by different cultures from around the world, have tremendous validity. Coming to understand how these remedies work—the job of objective science—will never alter the fact that they do work. Let’s bring back these traditions. Why don’t we get away from the cold, impersonal medical office and return to the native community support provided by your village herbalist.

Nettles Infusion

This is an energizing infusion. It works on the adrenals to build energy and stamina. Conversely, with strengthened adrenal function you can expect to rest better and to experience less anxiety. Four to five quarts of nettle infusion weekly can yield results in 3 to 6 weeks. That’s right. Three to six weeks. True health is not a pill that you take. You didn’t run yourself down in one day. It takes time to return your body to balance. But return it will.

Nourishing infusions ensure that your body stays in tip-top shape. Once you’ve achieved a balance, a quart a week should be sufficient. Using nourishing infusions becomes part of your daily lifestyle.

As far as I know there are no contraindications to stinging nettle infusion. However, you may experience side effects such as thicker hair, softer skin, stronger veins, an uptick in your enjoyment of life.

What You Need

1 oz of dried nettle herb

1-quart boiling water

Salt (optional)

What To Do

Place the herbs in a glass quart jar. Fill the jar with boiling water.

Steep for at least four hours; More is fine. Overnight is fine.

Strain herb from the water with a cheesecloth. (You can use an old white T-shirt as well.) Add salt if desired.

Compost the herbs and drink the infusion. Refrigerating and then drinking cold is great but finish it within a day or two lest it ferment.

Final Thoughts

No matter how stressed fast life goes for Scott and myself, we just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Our life together here on the homestead is everything we could have ever dreamed of and more. We are blessed each spring with the gift of life in your animal offspring and the plants in the orchard and gardens. I invite you all to go to our website and sign up on our mailing list. We’ll let you know when our farm tours kick off. We’d love to meet you in person and hear your stories, your hopes and your dreams.

In the meantime, you can come to the farm and shop our grass-fed meats on Tuesday mornings from 10 am to 12 noon and on Saturday afternoons from 3 to 5 pm.

I hope you incorporate nourishing infusions into your daily routine. You might consider replacing your infusion of coffee with an infusion of nettles. Well, that may be too far for some of you, but at least give it some consideration.

I have not spoken before about my herbal formulas. As I continue to grow the website, I will be adding listings and information about the herbs I use. You can join our mailing list at www.peacefulheartfarm.com to stay up to date. Currently, there are 3 formulas that I use regularly. Echinacea and goldenseal, a formula I call Sleepwell, and a heart tonic I call Heart Health. I’d love to talk with you about what they contain, when I use them and why.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to iTunes and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I’m here to help you “taste the traditional touch.”

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Recipe Link

Stinging Nettles Infusion

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NEW!! Peaceful Heart FarmCast Episode. Enjoy!!

[alexdmorgan30]

11 Ways to Heal a Broken Heart in Recovery

Heartbreak. At 14 or 54, we’ve all been there, but today we push through the pain, one-day-at-a-time, cold brew sober. And here’s what’s helping me now, because, despite what still feels like an endless volley of water balloons hitting concrete beneath my breastbone, the fibrillation is in my mind, not my chest cavity, and that scrappy muscle thumps on, still propping me upright each morning to face my new reality.1. Find that God of Your Understanding and Glom OnWhen I reached Step 3 with my sponsor, I got an assignment: flesh out your concept of a higher power, in writing. Lisa M. wanted detail, a God I could see and talk to, and grab by the elbow. And because I’m neither original nor progressive, I came up with a male God in human form — a cross between Santa Claus and Mr. T. to be exact. With a twinkle in his eye and a glint off his gold tooth, my HP is jolly and generous, strong and sexy, and funny as hell.And at this moment, when I’m finding myself on the sucky side of one-sided love, it’s not bad to have a real hunk who loves me for an HP. After an especially vicious salvo, when the heartbreak balloons start to leak out the eye sockets, I can HALT, remember the in-breath, and picture HP (and yes, predictably, I’m looking heavenward). Funny, his response is always the same: with bronzed torso and silver beard, forearms flexed and crossed over a white undershirt, the big man in the sky stares down at me, then starts nodding reassuringly. Suddenly, he flashes that easy smile and I know I’m good.2. Slam the SlogansH.A.L.T., Easy Does It, Turn It Over, Just for Today, Live and Let Live, This Too Shall Pass, When One Door Shuts Another Opens, Fear Is the Absence of Faith, The Elevator Is Broken - You’ll Have to Use the Steps. I’ve become something of a short-order chef when it comes to using a few well-chosen words to support my sobriety. Day and night, I sling slogans, flip affirmations, and call out quotes from famous dead people. I’ve scotched them to the inside of my kitchen cabinets, along with the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 11th step prayers. They are the comfort food my soul craves now. “Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill. “If you want to be loved, love and do loving things.” - Ben Franklin. Words that nourish, as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Having well-chosen words highly visible in the kitchen (or as a screensaver) can be a real lifesaver!3. Phone TherapyAnd here’s a slogan I’m slamming hard today: “We drank alone, but we don’t stay sober alone.” The old timers carried quarters, and I make sure I leave home with my phone fully-charged. I listen to a morning meditation walking to the train, text three newcomers on the platform, compose a longer text to my sponsor in transit, then dial my best sober gal pal as I push through the turnstile on the final leg to work. I send silly GIFs to lift spirits, including mine, and add a trail of emoji butterflies, praying hands, and peace signs. By 8:00 a.m., the lonely in me already feels not so alone.4. Explore PodcastsRecovery Radio Network, Joe and Charlie, and the Alcoholics Anonymous Radio Show are three in my queue. On my lunch hour or driving upstate, I take 30-60 minutes to laugh, cry, and identify…5. Make a Gratitude ListMy first sober Christmas, going through a divorce with two kids still believing in Santa, the above-mentioned sober gal pal suggested I find ten things for which I was grateful, save them to my phone, and recite them like a mantra through the Twelve Days of Christmas. I did:1. My sobriety 2. My sons 3. AA program of recovery 4. AA fellowship 5. Food in my stomach 6. Roof over my head 7. Colombian coffee 8. My dog 9. My extended family 10. God (HP has since moved up to the #1 slot)It worked. I said no to nog that first Yuletide, and made merry for my sons instead. And counting off my blessings still works today, when I’m a shallow-breathing shell just going through the motions.6. Make an Extended Gratitude ListWhen the restless, irritable and discontent in me keeps spilling the glass half-full and this positive punch list isn’t getting me over the hump, I pour out ten more things to celebrate, like: my pre-war bathtub, which holds upwards of 60 gallons of bubble bath and the fact that I live within easy walking distance of two subway lines so I can always get into the city on weekends.7. Make Meetings“Meeting Makers Make It,” “Get Sober Feet,” “Carry the Body, the Mind Will Follow.” These three slogans in particular encouraged me as a newcomer, and I’m calling upon them now, in cardiac arrest, when my heart needs serious heartening. So I’m hitting my home group, and getting hugs from retirees with double-digit sobriety who pass fresh Kleenex and envelop in equanimous smiles. I’m also checking out other meetings across town, then going out for...8. Fellowship AfterwardsI’ve started tucking my Boggle into my handbag when I head out to my Friday night meeting. At the secretary’s report, I pull out the box, shake it, and invite anyone interested to a nearby diner for passable pie a la mode and a few rounds of a three-minute word game. Sometimes it’s Yahtzee. We roll the dice and down bottomless cups of bad coffee. Last week someone brought cards, and I lost badly at hearts (ha!). It’s good, wholesome fun, and by the time I hit my pillow, I’ve significantly pared down the number of waking hours I could have spent obsessing over-ahem-HIM.9. Self-CareSelf-care is somewhat self-defined. These days, after I’ve covered the basics—eat, sleep, bathe—I’m noodling what more I can do to support my mental, physical, and spiritual self. Prone to self-pity and self-indulgence just now, self-care is really urgent-care. So I ask: am I under-meditating and over-caffeinating? Am I speeding up at speed bumps? Am I four months behind in balancing my bank statement? Am I using money to buy what money can’t buy and damn the consequences? Am I treating every Monday like Cyber Monday and abusing the free delivery feature of Amazon Prime? Have I forgotten yoga and found red velvet cake in Costco’s freezer? Are my spot checks spotty lately because I just don’t want to cop to this alcoholic acting out, and instead keep blunting the full force of feeling??? Yes to all of the above. And this leads me back to Step 2: turn to top management for a takeover.Working Steps 2 and 3 is probably the most caring thing I’m doing for myself today: seeing the unmanageable, then seeing the way out. And also forgiving myself for these self-indulgent splurges. So what that I’ve added three pounds to my midline and three pairs of silver sandals to my shoe rack? The rent is paid, and my latchkey kids still let themselves in after school and seem content to eat my crockpot soup and call this home.10. Get on your Hobby HorseWhen was the last time you read “Chapter 6: Getting Active” in Living Sober, that handy paperback that’s not just for newcomers? This month I’ve been making good use of subsection 6B: “Activity not related to A.A.”The anonymous authors suggest “trying a new hobby” or “revisiting an old pastime, except you-know-what” (Yea, Amstel Light). Fat chance I’ll pick up cabinetmaking, leathercraft or macramé, but I am baking granola and simmering bone broths.I’m also revisiting my adolescence with amateur YouTube ballet routines by hammy-thighed figure skaters and dancing to Heavy D. music videos late into a Saturday night. I’m choosing happy music over sad, and tuning in to The Messiah, not Blue Christmas.I’m even considering “Starting on long neglected chores” like editing my nearly obsolete recipe binder, now that I’ve found Pinterest. And while I can’t claim to be going out of my way “Volunteering to do some useful service,” I am trying to be more useful on my job. And just as helping a newcomer find a meeting helps me, helping a kid graph algebraic equations makes me feel purposeful (when otherwise I feel like a mess).11. Become a card-carrying member of the “No Matter What Club”For God’s sake, whatever skillful or unskillful actions you end up taking during this time of triage, please don’t drink over him or her. They are not worth it. (And I’d put money down—money that I don’t have—on a bet that they’d agree with me.)Voila! My top eleven tips to help you over the hump of heartbreak! Take what you like and leave the rest.Have you had your heart broken in recovery? How did you heal? Let us know in the comments.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://bit.ly/2U3i5gZ

[pitz182]

11 Ways to Heal a Broken Heart in Recovery

Heartbreak. At 14 or 54, we’ve all been there, but today we push through the pain, one-day-at-a-time, cold brew sober. And here’s what’s helping me now, because, despite what still feels like an endless volley of water balloons hitting concrete beneath my breastbone, the fibrillation is in my mind, not my chest cavity, and that scrappy muscle thumps on, still propping me upright each morning to face my new reality.1. Find that God of Your Understanding and Glom OnWhen I reached Step 3 with my sponsor, I got an assignment: flesh out your concept of a higher power, in writing. Lisa M. wanted detail, a God I could see and talk to, and grab by the elbow. And because I’m neither original nor progressive, I came up with a male God in human form — a cross between Santa Claus and Mr. T. to be exact. With a twinkle in his eye and a glint off his gold tooth, my HP is jolly and generous, strong and sexy, and funny as hell.And at this moment, when I’m finding myself on the sucky side of one-sided love, it’s not bad to have a real hunk who loves me for an HP. After an especially vicious salvo, when the heartbreak balloons start to leak out the eye sockets, I can HALT, remember the in-breath, and picture HP (and yes, predictably, I’m looking heavenward). Funny, his response is always the same: with bronzed torso and silver beard, forearms flexed and crossed over a white undershirt, the big man in the sky stares down at me, then starts nodding reassuringly. Suddenly, he flashes that easy smile and I know I’m good.2. Slam the SlogansH.A.L.T., Easy Does It, Turn It Over, Just for Today, Live and Let Live, This Too Shall Pass, When One Door Shuts Another Opens, Fear Is the Absence of Faith, The Elevator Is Broken - You’ll Have to Use the Steps. I’ve become something of a short-order chef when it comes to using a few well-chosen words to support my sobriety. Day and night, I sling slogans, flip affirmations, and call out quotes from famous dead people. I’ve scotched them to the inside of my kitchen cabinets, along with the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 11th step prayers. They are the comfort food my soul craves now. “Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill. “If you want to be loved, love and do loving things.” - Ben Franklin. Words that nourish, as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Having well-chosen words highly visible in the kitchen (or as a screensaver) can be a real lifesaver!3. Phone TherapyAnd here’s a slogan I’m slamming hard today: “We drank alone, but we don’t stay sober alone.” The old timers carried quarters, and I make sure I leave home with my phone fully-charged. I listen to a morning meditation walking to the train, text three newcomers on the platform, compose a longer text to my sponsor in transit, then dial my best sober gal pal as I push through the turnstile on the final leg to work. I send silly GIFs to lift spirits, including mine, and add a trail of emoji butterflies, praying hands, and peace signs. By 8:00 a.m., the lonely in me already feels not so alone.4. Explore PodcastsRecovery Radio Network, Joe and Charlie, and the Alcoholics Anonymous Radio Show are three in my queue. On my lunch hour or driving upstate, I take 30-60 minutes to laugh, cry, and identify…5. Make a Gratitude ListMy first sober Christmas, going through a divorce with two kids still believing in Santa, the above-mentioned sober gal pal suggested I find ten things for which I was grateful, save them to my phone, and recite them like a mantra through the Twelve Days of Christmas. I did:1. My sobriety 2. My sons 3. AA program of recovery 4. AA fellowship 5. Food in my stomach 6. Roof over my head 7. Colombian coffee 8. My dog 9. My extended family 10. God (HP has since moved up to the #1 slot)It worked. I said no to nog that first Yuletide, and made merry for my sons instead. And counting off my blessings still works today, when I’m a shallow-breathing shell just going through the motions.6. Make an Extended Gratitude ListWhen the restless, irritable and discontent in me keeps spilling the glass half-full and this positive punch list isn’t getting me over the hump, I pour out ten more things to celebrate, like: my pre-war bathtub, which holds upwards of 60 gallons of bubble bath and the fact that I live within easy walking distance of two subway lines so I can always get into the city on weekends.7. Make Meetings“Meeting Makers Make It,” “Get Sober Feet,” “Carry the Body, the Mind Will Follow.” These three slogans in particular encouraged me as a newcomer, and I’m calling upon them now, in cardiac arrest, when my heart needs serious heartening. So I’m hitting my home group, and getting hugs from retirees with double-digit sobriety who pass fresh Kleenex and envelop in equanimous smiles. I’m also checking out other meetings across town, then going out for...8. Fellowship AfterwardsI’ve started tucking my Boggle into my handbag when I head out to my Friday night meeting. At the secretary’s report, I pull out the box, shake it, and invite anyone interested to a nearby diner for passable pie a la mode and a few rounds of a three-minute word game. Sometimes it’s Yahtzee. We roll the dice and down bottomless cups of bad coffee. Last week someone brought cards, and I lost badly at hearts (ha!). It’s good, wholesome fun, and by the time I hit my pillow, I’ve significantly pared down the number of waking hours I could have spent obsessing over-ahem-HIM.9. Self-CareSelf-care is somewhat self-defined. These days, after I’ve covered the basics—eat, sleep, bathe—I’m noodling what more I can do to support my mental, physical, and spiritual self. Prone to self-pity and self-indulgence just now, self-care is really urgent-care. So I ask: am I under-meditating and over-caffeinating? Am I speeding up at speed bumps? Am I four months behind in balancing my bank statement? Am I using money to buy what money can’t buy and damn the consequences? Am I treating every Monday like Cyber Monday and abusing the free delivery feature of Amazon Prime? Have I forgotten yoga and found red velvet cake in Costco’s freezer? Are my spot checks spotty lately because I just don’t want to cop to this alcoholic acting out, and instead keep blunting the full force of feeling??? Yes to all of the above. And this leads me back to Step 2: turn to top management for a takeover.Working Steps 2 and 3 is probably the most caring thing I’m doing for myself today: seeing the unmanageable, then seeing the way out. And also forgiving myself for these self-indulgent splurges. So what that I’ve added three pounds to my midline and three pairs of silver sandals to my shoe rack? The rent is paid, and my latchkey kids still let themselves in after school and seem content to eat my crockpot soup and call this home.10. Get on your Hobby HorseWhen was the last time you read “Chapter 6: Getting Active” in Living Sober, that handy paperback that’s not just for newcomers? This month I’ve been making good use of subsection 6B: “Activity not related to A.A.”The anonymous authors suggest “trying a new hobby” or “revisiting an old pastime, except you-know-what” (Yea, Amstel Light). Fat chance I’ll pick up cabinetmaking, leathercraft or macramé, but I am baking granola and simmering bone broths.I’m also revisiting my adolescence with amateur YouTube ballet routines by hammy-thighed figure skaters and dancing to Heavy D. music videos late into a Saturday night. I’m choosing happy music over sad, and tuning in to The Messiah, not Blue Christmas.I’m even considering “Starting on long neglected chores” like editing my nearly obsolete recipe binder, now that I’ve found Pinterest. And while I can’t claim to be going out of my way “Volunteering to do some useful service,” I am trying to be more useful on my job. And just as helping a newcomer find a meeting helps me, helping a kid graph algebraic equations makes me feel purposeful (when otherwise I feel like a mess).11. Become a card-carrying member of the “No Matter What Club”For God’s sake, whatever skillful or unskillful actions you end up taking during this time of triage, please don’t drink over him or her. They are not worth it. (And I’d put money down—money that I don’t have—on a bet that they’d agree with me.)Voila! My top eleven tips to help you over the hump of heartbreak! Take what you like and leave the rest.Have you had your heart broken in recovery? How did you heal? Let us know in the comments.

[emlydunstan]

11 Ways to Heal a Broken Heart in Recovery

Heartbreak. At 14 or 54, we’ve all been there, but today we push through the pain, one-day-at-a-time, cold brew sober. And here’s what’s helping me now, because, despite what still feels like an endless volley of water balloons hitting concrete beneath my breastbone, the fibrillation is in my mind, not my chest cavity, and that scrappy muscle thumps on, still propping me upright each morning to face my new reality.1. Find that God of Your Understanding and Glom OnWhen I reached Step 3 with my sponsor, I got an assignment: flesh out your concept of a higher power, in writing. Lisa M. wanted detail, a God I could see and talk to, and grab by the elbow. And because I’m neither original nor progressive, I came up with a male God in human form — a cross between Santa Claus and Mr. T. to be exact. With a twinkle in his eye and a glint off his gold tooth, my HP is jolly and generous, strong and sexy, and funny as hell.And at this moment, when I’m finding myself on the sucky side of one-sided love, it’s not bad to have a real hunk who loves me for an HP. After an especially vicious salvo, when the heartbreak balloons start to leak out the eye sockets, I can HALT, remember the in-breath, and picture HP (and yes, predictably, I’m looking heavenward). Funny, his response is always the same: with bronzed torso and silver beard, forearms flexed and crossed over a white undershirt, the big man in the sky stares down at me, then starts nodding reassuringly. Suddenly, he flashes that easy smile and I know I’m good.2. Slam the SlogansH.A.L.T., Easy Does It, Turn It Over, Just for Today, Live and Let Live, This Too Shall Pass, When One Door Shuts Another Opens, Fear Is the Absence of Faith, The Elevator Is Broken - You’ll Have to Use the Steps. I’ve become something of a short-order chef when it comes to using a few well-chosen words to support my sobriety. Day and night, I sling slogans, flip affirmations, and call out quotes from famous dead people. I’ve scotched them to the inside of my kitchen cabinets, along with the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 11th step prayers. They are the comfort food my soul craves now. “Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill. “If you want to be loved, love and do loving things.” - Ben Franklin. Words that nourish, as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Having well-chosen words highly visible in the kitchen (or as a screensaver) can be a real lifesaver!3. Phone TherapyAnd here’s a slogan I’m slamming hard today: “We drank alone, but we don’t stay sober alone.” The old timers carried quarters, and I make sure I leave home with my phone fully-charged. I listen to a morning meditation walking to the train, text three newcomers on the platform, compose a longer text to my sponsor in transit, then dial my best sober gal pal as I push through the turnstile on the final leg to work. I send silly GIFs to lift spirits, including mine, and add a trail of emoji butterflies, praying hands, and peace signs. By 8:00 a.m., the lonely in me already feels not so alone.4. Explore PodcastsRecovery Radio Network, Joe and Charlie, and the Alcoholics Anonymous Radio Show are three in my queue. On my lunch hour or driving upstate, I take 30-60 minutes to laugh, cry, and identify…5. Make a Gratitude ListMy first sober Christmas, going through a divorce with two kids still believing in Santa, the above-mentioned sober gal pal suggested I find ten things for which I was grateful, save them to my phone, and recite them like a mantra through the Twelve Days of Christmas. I did:1. My sobriety 2. My sons 3. AA program of recovery 4. AA fellowship 5. Food in my stomach 6. Roof over my head 7. Colombian coffee 8. My dog 9. My extended family 10. God (HP has since moved up to the #1 slot)It worked. I said no to nog that first Yuletide, and made merry for my sons instead. And counting off my blessings still works today, when I’m a shallow-breathing shell just going through the motions.6. Make an Extended Gratitude ListWhen the restless, irritable and discontent in me keeps spilling the glass half-full and this positive punch list isn’t getting me over the hump, I pour out ten more things to celebrate, like: my pre-war bathtub, which holds upwards of 60 gallons of bubble bath and the fact that I live within easy walking distance of two subway lines so I can always get into the city on weekends.7. Make Meetings“Meeting Makers Make It,” “Get Sober Feet,” “Carry the Body, the Mind Will Follow.” These three slogans in particular encouraged me as a newcomer, and I’m calling upon them now, in cardiac arrest, when my heart needs serious heartening. So I’m hitting my home group, and getting hugs from retirees with double-digit sobriety who pass fresh Kleenex and envelop in equanimous smiles. I’m also checking out other meetings across town, then going out for...8. Fellowship AfterwardsI’ve started tucking my Boggle into my handbag when I head out to my Friday night meeting. At the secretary’s report, I pull out the box, shake it, and invite anyone interested to a nearby diner for passable pie a la mode and a few rounds of a three-minute word game. Sometimes it’s Yahtzee. We roll the dice and down bottomless cups of bad coffee. Last week someone brought cards, and I lost badly at hearts (ha!). It’s good, wholesome fun, and by the time I hit my pillow, I’ve significantly pared down the number of waking hours I could have spent obsessing over-ahem-HIM.9. Self-CareSelf-care is somewhat self-defined. These days, after I’ve covered the basics—eat, sleep, bathe—I’m noodling what more I can do to support my mental, physical, and spiritual self. Prone to self-pity and self-indulgence just now, self-care is really urgent-care. So I ask: am I under-meditating and over-caffeinating? Am I speeding up at speed bumps? Am I four months behind in balancing my bank statement? Am I using money to buy what money can’t buy and damn the consequences? Am I treating every Monday like Cyber Monday and abusing the free delivery feature of Amazon Prime? Have I forgotten yoga and found red velvet cake in Costco’s freezer? Are my spot checks spotty lately because I just don’t want to cop to this alcoholic acting out, and instead keep blunting the full force of feeling??? Yes to all of the above. And this leads me back to Step 2: turn to top management for a takeover.Working Steps 2 and 3 is probably the most caring thing I’m doing for myself today: seeing the unmanageable, then seeing the way out. And also forgiving myself for these self-indulgent splurges. So what that I’ve added three pounds to my midline and three pairs of silver sandals to my shoe rack? The rent is paid, and my latchkey kids still let themselves in after school and seem content to eat my crockpot soup and call this home.10. Get on your Hobby HorseWhen was the last time you read “Chapter 6: Getting Active” in Living Sober, that handy paperback that’s not just for newcomers? This month I’ve been making good use of subsection 6B: “Activity not related to A.A.”The anonymous authors suggest “trying a new hobby” or “revisiting an old pastime, except you-know-what” (Yea, Amstel Light). Fat chance I’ll pick up cabinetmaking, leathercraft or macramé, but I am baking granola and simmering bone broths.I’m also revisiting my adolescence with amateur YouTube ballet routines by hammy-thighed figure skaters and dancing to Heavy D. music videos late into a Saturday night. I’m choosing happy music over sad, and tuning in to The Messiah, not Blue Christmas.I’m even considering “Starting on long neglected chores” like editing my nearly obsolete recipe binder, now that I’ve found Pinterest. And while I can’t claim to be going out of my way “Volunteering to do some useful service,” I am trying to be more useful on my job. And just as helping a newcomer find a meeting helps me, helping a kid graph algebraic equations makes me feel purposeful (when otherwise I feel like a mess).11. Become a card-carrying member of the “No Matter What Club”For God’s sake, whatever skillful or unskillful actions you end up taking during this time of triage, please don’t drink over him or her. They are not worth it. (And I’d put money down—money that I don’t have—on a bet that they’d agree with me.)Voila! My top eleven tips to help you over the hump of heartbreak! Take what you like and leave the rest.Have you had your heart broken in recovery? How did you heal? Let us know in the comments.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/11-ways-heal-broken-heart-recovery

[mrmichaelchadler]

Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: October 25, 2018

9 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

"Ant-Man and the Wasp"

Quick, what's the most recent Marvel movie? It feels like a lot of people would say "Avengers: Infinity War" or maybe even "Black Panther," forgetting that there was a sequel to "Ant-Man" released this Summer. Marvel has become so dominant that even one of their successful, well-liked tentpole movies can be considered relatively minor. Having said that, "Ant-Man and the Wasp" mostly works. It's under two hours (unlike a lot of MCU movies) and provides a fun diversion. In fact, it's got an element that I wish more Marvel would copy in that it's practically a one-off, tied into the rest of the MCU for sure but also working with its own mythology and characters to satisfy viewers THIS TIME instead of merely planting seeds for the future. It also has one of the best ensembles in the standalone MCU, all the way down to scene-stealers like Michael Pena and David Dastmalchian. 

Buy it here

Special Features Director's Intro by Peyton Reed  Making-of Featurettes: Back in the Ant Suit: Scott Lang A Suit of Her Own: The Wasp  Subatomic Super Heroes: Hank & Janet  Quantum Perspective: The VFX and Production Design of "Ant-Man and The Wasp"  Gag Reel and Outtakes  Deleted Scenes 

"Creepshow"

It's that wonderful time of year when Shout Factory's genre banner known as Scream Factory releases special editions of horror classics, complete with new transfers and special features. There are three such releases in this edition of the HECG, and, believe it or not, two of them are anthologies. One of the most famous such films of all time is this George A. Romero and Stephen King classic, which comes in a gorgeous box set with a booklet and a quote from Roger's review on the back. It's also LOADED with special features, including a new audio commentary, interviews, and a round table discussion, along with all of the imported archival features. "Creepshow" is an inconsistent but really fun movie. It's nice to see it get such a lavish treatment.

Buy it here 

Special Features BRAND NEW 4K REMASTER SOURCED FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE, with color correction supervised and approved by director of photography Michael Gornick NEW Audio Commentary with director of photography Michael Gornick NEW Audio Commentary with composer/first assistant director John Harrison and construction co-ordinator Ed Fountain NEW Terror and the Three Rivers – a round table discussion on the making of CREEPSHOW with John Amplas, Tom Atkins, Tom Savini and Marty Schiff NEW The Comic Book Look – an interview with costume designer Barbara Anderson NEW Ripped From The Pages – an interview with animator Rick Catizone NEW The Colors of Creepshow – a look at the restoration of CREEPSHOW with director of photography Michael Gornick NEW Into The Mix – an interview with sound re-recordist Chris Jenkins NEW Mondo Macabre – A look at Mondo's various CREEPSHOW posters with Mondo Co-Founder Rob Jones and Mondo Gallery Events Planner Josh Curry NEW Collecting Creepshow – a look at some of the original props and collectibles from the film with collector Dave Burian Audio Commentary with Director George A. Romero and Special Make-Up Effects Creator Tom Savini Audio Interviews with director of photography Michael Gornick, actor John Amplas, property master Bruce Alan Miller, and make-up effects assistant Darryl Ferrucci Tom Savini's Behind-the-Scenes Footage Horror's Hallowed Grounds – a look at the original film locations hosted by Sean Clark Deleted Scenes Theatrical Trailers TV Spot Radio Spots Still Galleries – Posters, Lobby Cards and Movie Stills Still Galleries – Behind the Scenes photos Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

"Eighth Grade"

Bo Burnham's directorial debut is one of the most quietly beloved films of 2018, often appearing on lists of films from this year that you really should see before you do any year-end consideration. It really is something special, capturing what it's like to be an 8th grader in the '10s better than any film to date. Not only is Burnham's writing and directing surprisingly sensitive, he found something incredibly special in Elsie Fisher, who gives what is quite simply one of the best performances of the year. So many young actresses in movies "about teenage life" feel like they're making a statement instead of embodying a character but Fisher is always real, and inevitably heartbreaking. This is a wonderful movie. 

Buy it here 

Special Features Audio Commentary with Director Bo Burnham and Actress Elsie Fisher "You're Not Alone: Life in Eighth Grade" Featurette Music Video Deleted Scenes

"Hotel Transylvania 3"

I'm including this one for my kids and because the market is kind of dry right now for family films. Could you do worse than the latest Adam Sandler riff on the Universal monsters? Sure, but these movies started on low ground in terms of quality and have only sunk into the muck. Trust me, I've seen this one a bunch as my boys are somehow obsessed enough with this franchise for repeat viewing. Kudos, I guess, to Sony for timing this release for Halloween marathons for the little ones who can't quite do actual horror movies yet and before the superior "Teen Titans" and "Incredibles 2" hit the home market. 

Buy it here 

Special Features Three All New Scary-Oke Sing Alongs: Sing along to three Hotel Transylvania 3 inspired songs with your favorite characters! "Dennis Had a Giant Dog" – Sung by Dennis & Winnie "Monsters Like to Party Down" – Sung by Johnny "Oh These Wolf Pups" – Sung by Wanda Werewolf Plan Your Own Spook-tacular Sleepover: This feature will give you all details on how to make your own sleepover spook-tacular! From snacks to crafts to games and more, follow these steps to create a Hotel T sleep-over with your friends and family, the perfect setting to binge watch all 3 Hotel Transylvania movies. Vampire Make Over: Mavis and Drac Tutorial: Learn how to turn yourself into your favorite Hotel Transylvania 3 characters. Behind the Screams – The Voices of Hotel Transylvania 3: Step behind the "screams" with the returning stars and hilarious new cast to see how these characters are brought to life in the recording booth. Johnny's Home Movies (Franchise Recap): Johnny brings viewers up to speed on what's happened in the Hotel Transylvania franchise so far. "I See Love" Monster Dance Party Dance Along: Get up and get moving to this haunting monster mash. Drac's Zing-tastic Read Along: It's storytime with your favorite characters have a silly tale about Drac's search for a Zing! Read along or sit back and enjoy! Two Mini Movies (rated G): Two mini-features that will have you howling. Puppy Goodnight Mr. Foot

"House on Haunted Hill"

William Malone's remake of the Vincent Price classic is a mixed bag, to be kind. The 1999 launching pad for Joel Silver's Dark Castle production banner, this gory flick has some great moments, including a brilliant set-up that allows Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen to wonderfully chew some scenery. For about an hour, this twisted tale actually kind of works. They just forgot to write a coherent ending. Just fall asleep or turn it off before that point and you'll be happier.

Buy it here 

Special Features BRAND NEW 2K REMASTER from the original film elements NEW interview with director William Malone NEW interview with composer Don Davis NEW Interview with visual effects supervisor Robert Skotak Never-Before-Seen storyboards, concept art and behind-the-scenes photos courtesy of visual effects producer Paul Taglianetti Audio Commentary with director William Malone A Tale of Two Houses – vintage featurette Behind the Visual FX – vintage featurette Deleted Scenes Theatrical Trailer TV Spots Movie Stills and Poster Gallery Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

"Shampoo" (Criterion)

The best Criterion release of the month is this classic that always crosses my mind when I think about films that caught performers at their most charismatic. You know what I mean. Some movies find stars at exactly the moment it needed to find them. There's an element of this in the current success of "A Star is Born," which wouldn't work the same without Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga being exactly where they are in their careers in 2018. Same goes for Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in 1975's "Shampoo" (along with Julie Christie and Lee Grant, for that matter.) One of Hal Ashby's best films comes with a great 4K transfer but a relatively, for Criterion, slight collection of special features. The new conversation between Mark Harris and Frank Rich is excellent, however.

Buy it here 

Special Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray New conversation between critics Mark Harris and Frank Rich Excerpt from a 1998 appearance by producer, cowriter, and actor Warren Beatty on The South Bank Show PLUS: An essay by Rich

"Skyscraper"

Did we get a bit too much of The Rock in too short a period of time? For a period of time there, it looked like Dwayne Johnson may be the biggest star in the world. (And he may still be). With the success of the "Furious" movies and the phenomenon that was "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," he entered 2018 on a high, but both of his films this year, "Rampage" and "Skyscraper," were domestic disappointments. (Both did much better overseas.) Perhaps worse than their box office fates, they just weren't very good. This one is particularly dispiriting, coming off like the bland "Die Hard" retreads we got so often in the '90s. Come on, Dwayne. If you're gonna be our #1 star than we need you to pass on junk like this.

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Special Features Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Rawson Marshall Thurber – Go behind the scenes with Dwayne Johnson and the rest of the cast of Skyscraper. Extended Scenes with Commentary by Director Rawson Marshall Thurber Dwayne Johnson: Embodying a Hero – Go behind the scenes to see what it took for Dwayne Johnson to bring the intense character of Will Sawyer to life. Inspiration – Meet real life amputee and motivational speaker Jeff Glasbrenner, the inspiration for Dwayne Johnson's role of Will Sawyer. See how Jeff's consultations helped inform Dwayne's character from day one. Opposing Forces – There's no holding back as the women of Skyscraper get in on the action. Now, see first-hand what it took for Neve Campbell and Hannah Quinlivan to be fight ready. Friends No More – When Dwayne Johnson and Pablo Schreiber met face to face, they immediately knew what they were up against. Witness first-hand the making of the intense apartment fight between two former on-screen friends, Will and Ben. Kids in Action – In Skyscraper everyone gets in on the action, even the Sawyer children. Go on set with Noah Cottrell and McKenna Roberts to discover the moves behind their stunts. Pineapple Pitch – Hear first-hand from Dwayne Johnson how writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber pitched him the idea of Skyscraper. It may be a little fruitier than you think. Feature Commentary by Director Rawson Marshall Thurber

"Sorry to Bother You"

The closer we get to the end of the year, the more I think Boots Riley's debut is one of its best films. It's certainly one of its most unforgettable. I've already written about the film twice (Sundance and theatrical) so I don't have much more to say, but let me throw in with my other Gotham Awards committee members who nominated Lakeith Stanfield for his fantastic work here, giving an incredibly physical and committed performance. So much of "Sorry to Bother You" feels like "Boots Movie" but it wouldn't work at all without someone so completely on the same page as the film's creator as Stanfield, who has quietly become one of the most interesting actors of his generation. I hope he continues to do challenging, fascinating work such as what he delivers here. 

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Special Features Beautiful Clutter with Director Boots Riley Audio Commentary with Director Boots Riley Gallery The Cast of Sorry to Bother You The Art of the White Voice

"Trick 'r Treat"

Horror is still the only genre that can truly produce word-of-mouth, home market hits, such as this anthology flick that never even played in movie theaters. Anywhere. And yet it became an instant hit when it was released on DVD in late 2009. So much so that Scream Factory has given it one of their most lavish Halloween season Collector's Edition treatments. It's a fantastic release for what's a really solid flick, a clear child of "Creepshow" with smart writing and direction. Hopefully it will spur enough interest to get the long-delayed sequel finally off the ground. 

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Special Features BRAND NEW 2K REMASTER OF THE FILM supervised and approved by director Michael Dougherty NEW Tales of Folklore & Fright: Creating Trick 'r Treat – including interviews with writer/director Michael Dougherty, conceptual artist Breehn Burns, and storyboard artist Simeon Wilkins. NEW Tales of Mischief & Mayhem: Filming Trick 'r Treat – in-depth interview with Michael Dougherty on the making of the film NEW Sounds of Shock & Superstition: Scoring Trick 'r Treat – including interviews with Michael Dougherty and composer Douglas Pipes NEW Tales of Dread and Despair: Releasing Trick 'r Treat – a look at the release and fandom with Michael Dougherty and writer Rob Galluzzo Season's Greetings – NEW 2K scan of the original 16mm elements – a short film by Michael Dougherty with optional commentary by Dougherty NEW Storyboard and Conceptual Artwork Gallery NEW Behind the Scenes Still Gallery NEW Monster Mash – a story from the TRICK 'R TREAT graphic novel NEW FEARnet.com Shorts Audio Commentary with director Michael Dougherty Trick 'R Treat: The Lore and Legends of Halloween featurette Deleted and Alternate Scenes with optional commentary by director Michael Dougherty School Bus FX Comparison Theatrical Trailer Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

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