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awlimagines · 1 year

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How do they react to you being their secret admirer on Valentine's Day?

CELIA/CECILIA

Cecilia was surprised to see a second gift the morning of Valentine’s Day. Vesta usually got her something small, so she never expected something else. Her first thought was it was from Marlin, but the anger on his face quickly ruled that option out. Vesta shrugged her shoulders when he questioned her on who left this. Though, her knowing smile made Cecilia feel like Vesta at least had an idea. She decided she wouldn’t ask Vesta; Cecilia wanted to figure it out herself and thank whoever gave it. Cecilia worried it was from her arranged marriage candidate. She fervently hoped she was wrong. He seemed nice, but he wasn’t who she thought of alone in her room at night. You were surprised when Cecilia came by the farm later that day. She smiled and explained she thought she’d take the opportunity with the holiday to give you a late housewarming gift. It felt like Cecilia was lying to you. She did mean it as a late housewarming gift, but she would like it to be much more than that. Cecilia folded her arms behind her back and lightly kicked her foot after you took the fresh, high-quality vegetables from her. She didn’t want this interaction to end and invited you to walk with her to the Goddess Pond. Once there, you hesitantly asked if Cecilia liked the gift this morning. Ceci smiled widely as she excitedly assured you she did.

CODY/GORDY

He usually dislikes Valentine’s Day. Gordy feels no inspiration from the commercial date but rather a frustration. He doesn’t feel like he has much experience in love, but it shouldn’t all focus on one day of grand gestures. That was until Gordy opened his door to find a lovely bouquet of fresh, local flowers and moonlight are arranged in a basket encircled in red polka dot ribbon. Gordy was already struggling with artist’s block, and the basket consumed his thoughts regardless of often he paced or punched metal into new shapes. His older sister was the only one who used to give him these gifts, but he hadn’t received one since he left home for the valley. Gordy was more pensive than usual. You had to practically yell at him to get his attention and wish him a happy Valentine’s Day. He blinked at you, registering you were there, before asking you a question. What was your opinion on Valentine’s Day? You felt a jolt of fear; did he realize you left him the gift? You cautiously answered it could be a romantic gesture for someone you care about and sometimes a way to confess your feelings to someone. Gordy nodded as he thought it over. The following morning you were surprised to find him at your door with flowers. Gordy explained he thought a lot about what you said and wanted to thank you for giving him new inspiration. You single-handedly changed his feelings at least a little about the date. Gordy would respect the privacy of whoever left him the gift until they felt confident to speak with him.

DARYL

You didn’t have to worry about rushing through chores since he sleeps late. You left a basket filled with his favorite things and a cooked meal. He wasn’t supposed to know it was you. So, you’re shocked when Daryl shows up on your doorstep late that evening. He doesn’t understand why you left such things for him but asks if you have any other materials from the dig site. Daryl needs just a few more to finish running an experiment. He tuts when you ask how he knew you left the items. Daryl set up a security system once people in the city stole his seed maker invention. When he discovered the basket, he reviewed the footage before using the materials to run some tests. You blushed in embarrassment. How long had it been there? Was he aware you knew his schedule and lingered at his house for him to wake up to see what he was working on for the day? Daryl’s eyebrow raises as he waits for your answer. You numbly nod and fetch the coins and gems you had stored from the dig site. He makes an appreciative whoo-hoo before turning his back to walk away. Daryl paused a few steps away and scratched the back of his head as though a new idea occurred experiment hit. He mentions it is late, but he’d like it if you came to watch. Daryl is curious if he’d have better results with you at his side.

FLORA

You planned for days how to best leave a gift for Flora. It felt tricky since she lived with Carter at the dig site. Eventually, you decided first thing in the morning before she left to work would be best. If you did it during the afternoon, it would be too easy to figure out it was you when you visited the site to help. Silently, you crept towards the tent in the early morning darkness to leave your gift. You had barely set the basket filled with vegetables and milk down and stood when you found yourself looking up at the sky, pain blooming in your abdomen. Flora’s inquisitive gaze drifted into your vision. She quickly apologized and helped you onto your feet. Flora just saw a shape outside the tent flap and reacted instinctively. Why were you creeping around like that? Sheepishly you explained what you were doing and pointed to the basket that tipped over. The bottled milk was knocked to its side and dripping on the ground, making tears of embarrassment and frustration prick your eyes. You thought you had everything planned perfectly. Flora wiped the budding tears from your eyes, quickly realizing what happened. She offered to take a half day and would love to spend the afternoon with you. Flora softly smiled as you nodded in agreement and thanked you for being so thoughtful.

GUSTAFA

You keep your eyes trained on Gustafa at his yurt as you pretend to adjust your horse’s saddle before leaving the farm. The flowers and poem for him are hidden away safely in your saddlebags. You let loose a breath to ease your tension when he starts heading for the path to the Goddess Spring. You fake going to gather flowers and herbs near the windwheels before circling back to leave the gift at his door. The box near your door was full when you returned to the farm. It was too early for Takakura to be back from the city. Curious, you peeked in to see a singular flower inside. You felt panic, wondering who would have left you a flower on Valentine’s Day. Were you going to have to be honest and break someone’s heart today? You only had eyes for Gustafa, even if you were too much of a coward to tell him. You went about your day in a daze caring for animals and crops.

Gustafa steeled his nerves when he saw you ride toward Vesta’s farm. It wasn’t much, but he planned to leave you something small. If he felt more confident, he’d share the song he wrote for you instead. But maybe he was getting ahead of himself. After all, you were on good terms with everyone in the valley. Gustafa gently placed the flower from his hat into the box near your door before quickly leaving your farm to fetch a new flower. He tried to focus on strumming his lute at the spring before giving up and trudging home. His eyes cut toward your farm to see you had returned to work. He froze when he got home and saw the bunch of flowers at his door. Gustafa quickly fumbled for the note and read it. There was clearly a lot of time and effort put into crafting the poem scribbled on the paper. After a couple of hours pacing his yurt, Gustafa decided to visit you. He paused, his mind blank when you flung the door open. Gustafa recovered quickly and gently asked if you might have left something at his door today. Your eyes grew wide as you hesitantly nodded that you did. He smiled in relief. “Groovy. I, uh, have a song for you if you have some time?”

LUMINA

The mystery did not last long. Romana was too excited and let Lumina know who the gifts were from. When you arrive later to speak with Lumina, Sebastian apologizes for not being able to stop Romana from spoiling the surprise. A red face Lumina immediately asks to see you in private. Once you are alone and away from her meddling grandmother, Lumina complains about Aunt Romana telling her so fast. Not that she isn’t happy! She was ecstatic her first Valentine’s gifts came from you. Well, the first one excluding Romana and Sebastian, of course. She beams when you mention having one last surprise left. Lumina is beyond thrilled and slightly embarrassed by the candlelight dinner you prepared.

MARLIN/MATTHEW

He awoke to the usual yearly gifts from Vesta and Cecilia but didn’t recognize the other one or the handwriting on the note alongside it. His sister would only smile in response to sharp questions about who it was from. Marlin tried to ask Cecilia, but she excitedly shook her head, said she promised not to tell and fled. He remained lost in thought throughout the day. HE thought of you every time his mind wandered to the gift. Marlin left early from the farm to head towards the meeting place on the riverside mentioned in the note. A flush of joy filled him when he spotted you spreading a blanket on the ground. Marlin shoved his shaking hands into his pockets as he approached. You beaming at him and asking if he was surprised made him blush. He admitted to being surprised and promised to surprise you with something next year.

MUFFY/MOLLY

You planned to surprise Molly. You went so far as to ask Griffin if she could have the day off for many activities. Instead, Molly surprised you on your doorstep first thing in the morning. You explain you had planned on surprising her today, but she beat you to it. Molly is over the moon you would do such a thing. Valentine’s Day is her favorite holiday. She always wanted to create fond memories with someone on this day. Unfortunately, Molly’s luck hasn’t been the greatest in this. She excitedly asks what the two of you will do first; she can’t wait to spend Valentine’s with you. You fight down a blush as Molly coyly bats her green eyes at you, saying she’s at your mercy for the day.

NAMI

There is a clay relic from the dig site outside her door. Nami frowns at the flower tied with twine to its upraised hand. Was this a joke? Angry, Nami went to wake up Rock and give him a good piece of her mind about such pranks on Valentine’s Day. He would hurt someone’s feelings doing things like this. The disoriented blonde had no idea what she was talking about, leaving Nami to wonder who left it. Trick blue flowers weren’t even in season. Nami wandered the town with her hands shoved in her pockets, stewing over the mystery. Initially, she suspected either Carter, Flora, or you. Out of those three, it would have to be you. She wasn’t close enough to the other two to warrant a gift on Valentine’s Day. You sold the statues, among other things, when you set up a stall bringing her back to anyone as a suspect. It wasn’t until she saw Chris with a trick blue flower and asked her that she knew it was you. Nami finds her way to your farm pretty quickly and confronts you. You confess to giving her the gift and apologize if it was an issue. Nami says it wasn’t. She actually had a lot of fun figuring out who left it.

ROCK

The surprise gift left for Rock at the front desk has him thrilled. His parents ask if he knows who left it. Rock brushes them off. Whoever left it was obviously too overcome by his greatness to meet him in person, and the best way to say thanks would be to enjoy it. He missed the concerned look his parents exchanged as he continued his day. Rock left for the manor to see if Lumina had anything for him since they were such great friends. It wasn’t until a few days later that he overhears you talking to Ruby in the kitchen. She’s apologizing to you for Rock not even trying to find who left the gift. Your short laugh is followed by you saying it was an anonymous gift and you didn’t expect him to know. Rock was surprised the gift came from you. You lectured him for napping in front of your crops anytime he was at your farm. He finds himself lost in thought with a blush that you would leave him a Valentine’s Day gift. You run into him at the doorway when you try to exit the kitchen. You apologize for running into him as you blush, wondering if he heard your conversation. Rock doesn’t say anything to you about it, but his smile is goofier than usual.

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writteninscarlet · 10 months

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Does Wanda celebrate Christmas?

// Religion is a complicated one for Wanda, and therefore so are religious holidays.

Her birth father, Erik, is Jewish (at least with my Wanda he's still the twins actual father) and he still practices and is involved in religion in his own way (as can be seen in various comics, but probably more the earlier X-Men ones where he takes Kitty Pryde to a group of holocaust survivors and helps her celebrate Chanukah).

Her adoptive parents, those who raised her until she was 10/11 and powers emerged were Romani - they travelled around Europe. Mainly Eastern Europe but it just depended. In terms of their religion, there's little to go on but I believe and for my headcanons they were Roman Catholics. They weren't devout and didn't include all practices - it can be difficult when always on the move or accepted in many places - but they believed in a Christian God. Growing up, Wanda did occasionally celebrate Christmas but it wasn't so... commercial. Some years, large parts were skipped because of money or they were on the move, or just general reasons. It was the overall teachings of love, honest, and being good that their parents tried to instil in them.

Whilst on the run, Wanda would occasionally think of what her parents had taught her. Sometimes when in a town with a church she would go there for solace or peace. But she did start questioning things during this time. After all, she was branded a witch. She was almost hunted down and killed several times during these few years before joining the Brotherhood. (And since) She was thought to be against God, a freak of nature - as a mutant and a witch. So she didn't practice truly. Nor did she celebrate Christmas during this time.

After meeting her father she has since, when invited celebrated Jewish holidays with him. She knows what he has taught her and what she has looked up in order to best respect and acknowledge his beliefs. However, she still struggles with religion and what to believe in. If asked, she would spend time with her father celebrating how he wanted to acknowledge his religious holiday. The same with her sons. She respects how they practice and believe in their religion, and acknowledges that her upbringing was different.

So, long-winded, but no. She isn't likely to celebrate Christmas. But she's religion and God is a tough one for her because of her experiences being branded as a witch and the dark side of the world she has seen. She respects whatever people want to believe in, and sort of wishes she had more belief herself. If invited to a Christmas party, she would attend (depending on who was there), and out of politeness, love, or respect, would get people a gift. But she's not throwing any holiday parties herself, or dressing up or decorating for the season.

And, In terms of religion, Wanda wont be practicing any beliefs on this blog. I wouldn’t want to misrepresent anyone or anything. Without any deep understanding or belief in these religions, I won’t put words in anyone’s mouth and there are others better placed to help others understand if they choose.

#lmao nothing is ever short and sweet #but nope #shes not out here looking for christmas parties or presents or attending a religious service #shes still trying to find her religious centre and work out what she truly believes in.#its complicated for her

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spindrifters · 2 years

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ten lines, ten people

thanks for the tag, @squintclover <3

rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. if you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.

** I went through and did this entire thing before realizing it's meant to be the first ten lines, not ten random lines.

marginalia / wolfstar, dystopia au

“A calendar,” he repeats, ignoring her raised brow. “So we don’t fuck it up and accidentally schedule an existential crisis at the same time. We can alternate.”

yours if you want it / wolfstar

And Remus doesn’t want to avoid it, particularly, it’s just that he ends up feeling like a right Scrooge every time someone asks after his Christmas plans and he’s forced to say something along the lines of, “Not my holiday, actually.”

the story goes / wolfstar

Sophronia Marsh, according to her nametag, doesn’t look him in the eye while he’s forced to register himself on his seventeenth birthday, not even once.

pomegranates / wolfstar, genderfuck au

Every cropped haircut and boy’s school robe.

a history of violence / wolfstar, jily lives au

The scars there are thinner and neater than his own, silver tally marks carved into snow-white skin.

commercial allure / wolfstar

Remus has spent six and a bit years by this point being forced out of his comfort zone by Sirius and James and their absolute inability to respect physical boundaries, and he is used to it.

forward motion / wolfstar, raising harry au

So maybe it feels more personal than it should, but Sirius can’t shake that terror of mucking this all up and letting down not just Harry but James and Lily and Monty and Euphemia, too.

death by honey / wolfstar

“Grease is perennial and the season for oily food is always, only your lot were the only ones clever enough to dedicate a whole holiday to it. Not a chance I'd let us miss out. Also, your mum said to tell you they’re coming round in the morning, by the way. Also, your aunt’s well fit.”

the helper / wolfstar

For a moment, they just stare at each other, Remus’s amber eyes huge, and there’s a half-second where Sirius is absolutely convinced he’s about to get yelled at.

until our ribs get tough / lily + remus gen, dystopia au

Her ankle bloody hurts, and she doesn’t need Remus to agree in order to really know what’s happened.

tagging @soloorganaas @impishtubist @crushofdoves @greenvlvetcouch @msalexwp @lynxindisguise @anemicc-royalty @narcissa-black-supermacy @sweetpeasandlilies @femme--de--lettres

#fic meme #my fic #wolfstar #remus lupin #sirius black

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clarktooncrossing · 10 months

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Giraffe's Eye View: Christmas Specials Special (2023) | Barbie in Nutcracker

Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost is nipping at your nose. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. All the dogs in the neighborhood somehow learned to bark Jingle Bells in sync. Yet retail workers are still more annoyed with Mariah Carey. Snow is getting shoveled, tossed, and formed into sentient beings leading parades without permits. It makes for an excellent distraction as the Krampus abducts children for bad behavior. Fruitcake is exchanged only to find its permanent home in the garbage. Terrorists have hijacked the Holiday office party right before your boss can give you a Jelly of the Month Club membership as your bonus. And of course, the Turducken has returned to wreak its fiery vengeance upon an unsuspecting world! If all this doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, perhaps these following Holiday specials will!

Greetings people of today and robots of tomorrow! It is I, Santa Clark, your geeky giraffe friend with a deep love of Christmas! My obsession for the yuletide is rivaled only by Maleficent’s hatred for it, which is saying a lot considering she once teamed up with Mad Madam Mim to kidnap the literal Spirit of Christmas. Yes, that really happened. I know this due to my annual pilgrimage to the Island of Misfit Specials, home to obscure or nerdy festive media ranging from movies, TV episodes, and comics. It’s no easy journey. Constantly I find myself confronted by sinister snowmen, genocidal gingerbread men, and worst of all, crappy commercials. Getting stabbed in the foot by a candy-cane wielding cookie is one thing, but I swear I’ve seen that ad for Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium more times than I’ve seen Miracle on 34th Street! Sometimes at night I catch myself reciting that jingle. Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium: Where Christmas meets Convenience! Huh, maybe Maleficent had a point.

Nah, my deep-rooted appreciation for this time of year can weather even the most moronic marketing! It helps that most of the merry media I’ve seen have put me in the perfect Holiday mood! Examples include the time a Ninja Turtle found himself trapped in a truck full of stollen toys, a drunk department store Santa stumbling onto a wish-granting magic bag, Big Bird nearly becoming a popsicle, Gwenpool waking up in a world where Galactus took the place of jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas, a terrifying tree stump trying to slaughter some saps over a stupid ship war, and the year when Death gave the Little Match Girl the greatest gift of all. Needless to say, I thought I had seen it all. That is, until I took my friends on a trip to the Island, tasking them to find me new, strange, seasonal specials to review! Some of them were fair, finding me festive favorites as comforting as coco in front of the fireplace. Others were fiendish, wanting to feed off my misery like Gremlins after midnight. Regardless of how naughty or nice my companions were, I’ve compiled all of their suggestions into a makeshift advent calendar! So stay tuned everyday until Christmas to see how badly my buddies can shred what little sanity I have left.

On the first day of Christmas, my buddies gave to me...

Hoo boy, what a way to start. Now you’d think my friend Molly (molly420) would’ve made her choice due to the magnificent Margot Robbie vehicle that came out earlier this year. Honestly, Harley Quinn’s humorous turn as the iconic blonde bimbo had nothing to do with this. I’ve been trying to get this special written for a while now and Molly missed her chance to partake the first time around. Knowing I’d offer myself up to being tormented again, she set an alarm on her phone to remind herself to suggest Barbie in Nutcracker when the opportunity presented itself the following year. That kind of disturbing dedication I can oddly respect. Still doesn’t stop me from feeling annoyed. Jolly as I may be, Nutcracker turns me into a Scrooge! My love of Christmas only goes so far when I’m bored out of my mind in an auditorium, watching confused toddlers prance around on stage, the titular toy soldier clashing against a dude in a bargain bin rat costume. How can a show be so tedious yet so trippy? No wonder I made a comic comparing my going to see it to the five stages of grief. My love of Barbie isn’t much higher, her only being interesting whenever she’s in a Pixar picture. Say what you will, but Barbie and Ken’s relationship in Toy Story 3 gave us Ariel and Batman flirting. Any argument you have is invalid. Still, perhaps I’m being too harsh. I’ve praised an adaptation featuring Mickey and Minnie before, so there is precedent for decent retellings of this tale. Will Barbie manage to pull off something similar?

Certainly not in the art department she won’t! Admittedly this is a direct-to-video movie from 2001, a time when computer animation was still finding its footing. Not to mention, this movie was one of the first to use motion capture, employing the world famous New York City Ballet to provide the dancing seen on screen. In a time when Gollum wasn’t even a fully realized character yet, that’s actually impressive! Really, I have to tip my hat there. Everything else looks like a sugar plum fever dream. This is one of those movies you never want to pause ever! The lighting is lackluster, the textures are terrible, and any movement outside of the dancing is stiffer than a board. This animation has aged like eggnog! Still, it’s not the worst cartoon content I’m critiquing this Christmas. At least it succeeds in making Barbie look as plastic as ever.

Speaking of our pink protagonist, our story starts with Barbie (Kelly Sheridan) in the middle of instructing her ballet class. A class that consists of one brat failing to master a basic move. Business is booming! Seeing her sole source of income struggling, our blonde ballet instructor halts class in order to tell a self-insert fanfiction where she takes on the role of Clara. She is visited by her adventurous Aunt Drosselmayer (Kathleen Barr) on Christmas Eve, bringing with her a horribly rendered Nutcracker. Her niece is smitten by the doll cuz some peeps have kooky kinks. She even goes so far as to bandage up its arm when her brother breaks it. Great, now he can’t come with Clara to Cowboy Camp! Despite the busted limb, the wooden warrior is able to ward off an army of malicious mice that invade the house later that night. Leading these vile vermin is their king, voiced by the GOAT, Tim Curry. Oh Tim, you’re the gift that keeps on giving! He is the savory pinch of salt that can turn any drab slab of beef into a five-star steak. He is the shiny red ribbon tied up on that piece of coal you found in your stocking. He is the guy who has it out bad for Christmas if this and Belle’s Enchanted Christmas are any indication. As per usual he adds sinister charisma to an otherwise forgettable fiend.

A shame he’s not in the movie for long. Upon waking up, Barbie takes a page out of Clark Griswold’s guide to exterminating pests by covering the critter in a coat before bashing its brains out with a hammer. Or at least that’s what should’ve happened. Rather she stands still long enough for the Mouse King to use his magical scepter to shrink her down like Ant-Man. Only after does she repel the rodent via meekly kicking her slipper at him. Brilliant strategy Barbie, G.I. Joe’s got nothin’ on you! Especially since now you’re the same size. Left wondering how to return to normal, the suddenly sentient owl perched atop her grandfather clock swoops in to exposit. Oh sure, she could’ve prevented this from happening by simply eating the mice, but that’d be too logical. Jee, thanks ya' feathery fool. Instead she tasks the two with finding the Sugar Plum Princess, a magical maiden from the Kingdom of Parthenia who went missing years ago. Only she can help Barbie regain her tall status as well as dethrone the mousey monarch.

Thus off they’re sent to this magical realm, encountering freakish fairies, rampaging rock giants, multicolored mares, and the always bickering Captain Candy (Ian James Corlett) and Major Mint (Christopher Gaze). Whenever these two aren’t repressing their obvious sexual tension they’re blaming the missing Prince Eric for their troubles. He's the reason for their many woes! A sentiment shared by the few survivors still living here. Dang, you folks have a nasty habit of misplacing your monarchs. Maybe you ott’a start tagging them.

Whatever happened to Prince Eric? According to Mint his friend was next in line to rule before finding himself smitten by a red-headed fish girl who saved him from a sinking ship. Shirking off more of his responsibilities led to the Mouse King eventually seizing power, the tiny tyrant transforming the prince into the very same Nutcracker (Kirby Morrow) escorting Barbie in the present. A plot twist so obvious even our heroine saw it coming a mile away. Props to this picture for subverting expectations but that just makes Barbie’s inability to figure out the bigger reveal all the more moronic. Cuz yeah, no freak’n duh she's the Sugar Plum Princess! No doubt all of you figured that out as soon as the name was dropped. By the end Barbie finally figures it out herself, using her powers to grow back to full size, squish the Mouse King under her hot-pink heel, then dance an annoyingly long amount of time with her now human boi toy. Hey, might as well get your money’s worth out of those New York Ballerinas.

My snark should’ve made it clear by now how this adaptation isn’t for me. That’s not to say there aren’t things I liked. For starters, I appreciated the writers’ attempt to turn what’s normally a string of random sequences into a coherent narrative. Granted, they never explain how Aunty Drosslemeyer came into possession of the Nutcracker, why the Sugar Plum Princess went missing in the first place, or how Barbie suddenly learns how to use her magic, but still the effort is there. Overall the script wasn’t as brain dead as I feared it’d be. Then again, perhaps it didn’t seem as stupid due to the talented voice cast reading it. Aside from Curry, the ensemble is stuffed with My Little Pony alumni, Starlight Glimmer delivering a decent performance for our main star. Clearly she struck a chord with audiences considering how many times she’d reprise this role afterwards. Out of all the cast though, Kirby Morrow as the Prince was the weakest link, his voice never matching the character design. Not to mention, they had the audacity to cast Curry and never give him ONE stink’n song number? Screw this movie not being a musical, you don't cast a Sweet Transvestite without letting them sing! It’s a crime punishable by death! Atop of that, the pacing is peculiar in places, the plot twists are obnoxiously obvious, and the animation is just adequate. By no means is this a masterpiece.

It is, however, a great excuse to spend time with my cousin. Being a fan of Barbie for as long as she’s been alive meant she was the perfect person to call to borrow a copy from. We got together and had a laugh at the movie’s expense, my cousin unable to ignore the apparent flaws either. Fun times were had, and what more could I possibly ask for? At least now I don’t have to review any more versions of Nutcracker… right?

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dankusner · 5 months

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Happy Mother’s Day? In Texas, more like heartbreaking.

If you were pregnant this year and had the misfortune of having severe health complications, and had to wait for care until sepsis took over your body and destroyed your ability to have future pregnancies, or if you’re an OBGYN and had to choose between what your profession considers to be evidence-based medicine or getting sued and going to jail, I won’t wish you 'Happy Mother’s Day.'

If you stay awake with the knowledge that statistically your LGBTQ child is at higher risk of attempting suicide, and transition-related health care, which is known to improve mental health, is banned, I won’t pretend this day exists to 'honor' you.

If your child attended Robb Elementary, or if you dared to go shopping for a Mother’s Day gift on a sunny afternoon in Allen last year, I’ll spare you the platitudes. What this day really is in Texas: heartbreaking.

Carly Bassett, Round Rock

I vividly recall the first time my kids made me breakfast for Mother’s Day.

I lay in bed patiently listening to them giggle and rustle around the kitchen … wait, was that the blender?

They brought their creative concoction out to the yard, where we had an idyllic, quiet morning in the May sunshine.

As a single mother, I cherished this moment of respite and respect.

But as a sociologist I know that my longing for the ideal Mother’s Day was cultivated by the ubiquity of Hallmark’s sentimental greeting cards, by traditional notions of the family and motherhood, and by a historical amnesia that has buried the origins of both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Mother’s Day has become the story of a mother who selflessly labors physically and emotionally in the home but deserves one day to be fêted for all “the little things she does.”

We have such romantic notions of being finally appreciated on Mother’s Day, that some mothers can feel disappointed.

Not surprisingly, mothers experience lower satisfaction with Mother’s Day than fathers do with Father’s Day.

Since Mother’s Day tends to focus on appreciating a mother’s domestic and emotional labor, it neglects a huge part of our life’s work, goals and accomplishments;

it’s not surprising that some women feel dissatisfied.

Not only do we have to pack all that appreciation into one day, we often do the cooking and housework anyway.

The original intent of Mother’s Day to be a collective day of action – rather than a day of buying gifts, cards or flowers – seems long forgotten.

History of Mother’s Day

Originally a call for peace in response to the carnage of war, the 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation was an impassioned plea by activist Julia Ward Howe, a feminist and advocate for the abolition of slavery.

She wrote:

“Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel … with each other … as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.”

Could we once again imagine Mother’s Day as a day to work for peace and justice?

What if Mother’s Day was less about a brief reprieve from cooking and more about celebrating the diversity of all families?

Could it become a day to support, celebrate and share collectively in the labor of making healthy, peaceful communities and families?

Anna Jarvis was another ardent advocate for Mother’s Day and a passionate opponent of its commercialization, particularly in the form of greeting cards.

In 1914 she succeeded in getting Mother’s Day recognized as a national holiday in the United States.

She did not succeed in stopping its commercialization.

Hallmark’s lasting influence Americans spend more than $23 billion on Mother’s Day, an average of about $200 per family and $2.5 billion on greeting cards alone.

It is the third most popular greeting card holiday, according to Hallmark.

In a 2018 study, U.S. sociologists found that greeting cards tell a gendered story of parenting and families.

Cards for mothers celebrate nurturing qualities while cards for fathers uphold instrumental qualities like teaching.

These greeting cards thank mothers for being loving, for drying tears and for “the little things they do.”

Personal and emotional care receive little mention in Father’s Day cards.

Hallmark’s gendered story also does not include single mothers, nor incarcerated mothers.

Nor does the idyllic Mother’s Day storybook include queer mothers, mothers separated from their children through residential schools, missing mothers, mothers whose child will never be able to make them breakfast in bed.

In Canada, lone-parent families make up more than 20 percent of all families with children, and 80 percent of these are headed by women.

More than one third of lone parents were never married.

Approximately 80 percent of women in U.S. and Canadian jails are mothers.

In Canada, more than 350,000 kids have a parent who is incarcerated.

None of these families are celebrated as part of the idealized Mother’s Day – most advocates of “the family” represent the single-parent family as pathological and irresponsible.

Yet the origin of Father’s Day was to honor a father who raised six children alone.

Reclaim Mother’s Day

Let’s reclaim the original intention of Mother’s Day: to gather and act together to challenge war, teach compassion, and work toward peace and justice.

As peace activist Ursula Franklin famously asserted, “Peace is not the absence of war … it is the presence of justice.”

Instead of buying something, talk, connect, act with others.

Teach your children about the diversity of families.

Teach them too about the families denied the chance to celebrate Mother’s Day.

Contribute to a Mother’s Day campaign like Mama’s Bail Out, and support the work to reform bail practices.

The Mama’s Bail Out Day project works to bail out mothers in time for Mother’s Day, an effort that is true to the original intent of this day.

Local organizations across the U.S. have taken up this challenge.

As in Canada, they also are fighting for reform of the criminal justice system.

In both the U.S. and Canada, a majority of those incarcerated are not convicted but are awaiting bail hearings or trials, with profoundly disproportionate effects on Black and Indigenous communities.

Mother’s Day could also be a time to support groups like FEAT (fostering, empowering, advocating, together), which helps the 50,000 children of incarcerated mothers in Ontario.

The activism that inspired Mother’s Day is not dusty historical trivia.

My own daughter is part of its ongoing thread; her new school is inspired by the work of Ursula Franklin, who as a member of the Voice of Women not only participated in Mother’s Day vigils for peace, but also tested the baby teeth of children (including her own) for radioactive strontium.

Her research galvanized mothers across the country to convince the U.S. government to stop atmospheric nuclear

testing. So if on Mother’s Day your mother says, “For one day, I would love the whole family to get along and not argue,” then in fact, as retired teacher Sharon Montgomery suggests she would be in tune with Julia Ward Howe’s proclamation:

“When families live in peace, they take the first step toward peace on our planet.”

BOOKS Texas, motherhood and LSD

Debut novel goes dark and hilarious a bit north of Dallas

Lubbock native Kimberly King Parsons says that her debut novel, We Were the Universe, “is about Texas, motherhood and psychedelics.”

It is also, she says, about sisterhood, grief, nostalgia and how one’s past choices inform the present.

Her protagonist and narrator, Kit, is “filthy-minded and irreverent,” so while the book contains both hilariously dark humor and terrible sadness, there also are many, many pages concerning drugs — all kinds, but LSD and mescaline are Kit’s favorites, and not microdoses, either.

In fact, the story of her teenage experimentation with a powerful decoction of San Pedro cactus goes on so long that the reader may also begin feeling slightly trippy.

But Kit is nostalgic about those days, and she doesn’t regret any of it.

“Psychedelics prepare you for the craziest thing imaginable on this earth: a new human tunneling through an older human’s body.”

There’s also abundant sex depicted, both gay and straight, fantasy and real.

Kit, who is happily married to a very sweet guy, is bisexual.

Her fantasies roam freely, as do her memories.

(The novel is dedicated to Parsons’ mother, to whom the writer winsomely apologized on an Instagram video: “Sorry about all the porn, Mom.”)

Kit is a stay-at-home mom who, at barely 25, can’t quite figure how she ended up living this weirdly straight life in Pivot, a fictional community in the northern suburbs of Dallas.

She is obsessive about her wild, precocious little daughter, Gilda, because she and her younger sister Julie were severely under-parented by their own disengaged mother.

In addition, Kit is haunted by dreams and memories of Julie, who died at 19 in a car crash after tragically sinking into addiction and wasting her brilliant musical talent, a la Amy Winehouse.

So Kit spends her days taking Gilda to the park, to gymnastics, to the supermarket.

“I’m plugged into nothing, I have no deadlines, no personal ambitions, no professional goals of any kind. I’m dedicated to aimlessness and my adorable, needy family. Pinning Gilda down, brushing her tiny teeth, slicking her hair into disobedient pigtails.”

She develops instant, sex-fantasy-driven crushes on people, male and female; sometimes she becomes curious enough about a stranger to follow them on the street, even tail them home.

She watches a lot of online porn.

She does “endless, invisible, critical labor. Dishes. Laundry. So much mopping.”

Kit constantly thinks back to the three-girl band that she and her best friend, Yesenia, put together with Julie in their West Texas hometown of Wink.

Wink — also the hometown of Roy Orbison — is a “spiteful little town” whose smallness “can’t be overstated.”

Kit left Wink as soon as she humanly could.

Yet she keeps returning to see her mother, Tammy, and her best friend, bandmate and surrogate sister.

“Sometimes I hate where I’m from,” Kit says, “but the shape of Texas on a map — I can’t explain it — it chokes me up.”

Their band was called You Are the Universe, and the people who came to their shows really only came to see Julie.

“Having access to genius — growing up with it sleeping in the twin bed next to you — it crystallizes your shortcomings,” Kit says.

“There’s always been a tremendous gulf between my taste, which is excellent, and my ability, which is nonexistent.”

The extraordinary connection between sisters Kit and Julie, it seems, may be replicated between Kit and her daughter, Gilda.

The book’s title is a callback to the sisters’ band, when the three girls were indeed their own universe.

But Gilda, who seems to have inherited the singing voice of the aunt she never knew, has now become the center of her mother’s world.

One can imagine Kit whispering the name of her band to her sleeping child: You are the universe.

That’s what our loved ones are, after all.

We Were the Universe Kimberly King Parsons (Knopf, $28)

Details 6 p.m. May 20 with Sarah Perry at Interabang Books, 5600 W. Lovers Lane, Suite 142, Dallas.

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mattved · 5 years

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Being Fat

I’ve been fat most of my life. When I turned six, mom left me at home with dad and grandma to go for english-learning adventure in Texas and El Paso, New Mexico, which was just before the marvelous and memorable start of grade one.

All the kids brought their new school bags to show off and fill them up with whatever was placed on our desks. Crayons and workbooks, gel pens and exercise books, ton of commercial pamphlets and a timetable… She complimented all the kids on these colorful fancy bags and I was like “I’ve got a plastic bag today. And I ain’t going all the way back for my school bag, cuz it’s far and I don’t give a shit about how posh y'all are. But you can bet I’d win this competition with a margin.” All the parents laughed but I knew my value.

However, the key thing about this new school was it’s kitchen. Cause the chef was a star. I never knew about his budget or anything, but I could tell that his food came from fresh ingredients and was made with passion. And they always gave me extra when I asked. Sometimes even the meat. And I loved that and enjoyed it, which was the issue. Nobody cared that I was overeating and becoming circular in shape.

By grade two, I was overweight and after changing schools then, the other kids began with the remarks that make a kid feel insecure. I was the fatto. And in spite of my returned mom trying to help me fight it, it remained that way allthe way through primary, secondary, and high school.

Entering university and engaging in culinary practices followed by busy schedule caused by volunteering on events organized by world-class sport associations, keen to do whatever it took to give everyone the sponsor-provided refreshments in addition to feeding those who paid them excruciating fees for broadcasting rights, it didn’t get better. And I’m not even talking about my first year in Plymouth, working in a restaurant so that I could afford to pay rent, only to come home and cook some more.for myself. I grew to over 100 kilograms and my BMI was quickly approaching the morbid obesity threshold set at 30.

That’s when I started taking things into my own hands, reducing quantities of food intake over the following holidays and adopting the stomach-full-of-veggies diet complemented by no-yeast rule. From what I’ve read and experienced, this is the number one best method of weight reduction and maintenance, in addition to being wallet friendly.

Just by some pitta, small pack of ham, entire iceberg lettuce and a sixpack of tomatos. Maybe add coarse mustard to spice it up. And make good dinners. Like 2-eggs-whole-cauliflower fry-up with half baking potato on the side. Or fish and brocoli stew with some whole grain pasta? Lentils with tomatos and onions topped with boiled egg! Baked beans with a chop-up of leftover vegetables and toasted pitta and turkey rice burrito are also great option.

Add my 2 kilometers of swimming per week and you get mere 70 kilograms of Mattved. Easy. And long-term. I lasted until last autumn, two whole years!

Then, the whole cancer thing came about, followed by lung infection colostomy and all that jazz, rendering me back at above-100 weight. Is that entirely caused by the condition? I don’t know. But the politically correct approach is to respect it, feel sorry about me, and blame my medical state. And that’s bullshit, because the core of it is my inability to take care of myself. I failed and I’m disappointed with myself.

Hopefully, I’ll change this again after the colostomy reversal. Using the same method. Anybody wanna join me? I promise, it feels great to anchor your BMI within the norm. Even if you prefer tails of the normal distribution in any other aspect of your being.

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wilwheaton · 3 years

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The Ghosts of Christmas Past

The Holidays are tough in the best of circumstances, whatever you choose to celebrate. We do secular Christmas, so I’m going to talk about Christmas for the rest of this. Feel free to substitute your own festival if you like.

There is so much internal and external pressure to do everything just right, to make everything special (more special, even, than the last time you worked so hard to make it special, which was more special than the time before that). The expectations we put on ourselves, always greater than the ones we imagine others are putting on us, that we can never meet. The whole BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS of the season. It’s a lot.

It’s been a hard year for all of us. I mean, it’s been rough in Castle Wheaton, what with my seizure and Anne’s back surgery. But it’s not just the Anne and me us. The all of us … us. Everyone is going through something this year, and whatever that happens to be, it’s magnified by *gestures broadly at everyfucking thing*. I have so much love and respect and appreciation for everyone who is doing everything they can to manifest some of that Magic of the Season those obnoxious car commercials suggest ought to be delivered in the form of matching SUVs. But you know, in a genuinely meaningful way that isn’t tied to spending 140,000 dollars. Seriously, just making that damn Elf on the Shelf move around for 24 fucking nights? In a row? After everything else you have to do just to keep your house from falling apart and your family fed and everything else the rest of your family just expects will magically happen? Respect. Someday, your children will be 49 and writing about That One Christmas During the Third Pandemic Year that you worked your ass off to make special for them. I see you, and I love you.

This year, more than any year in recent memory, the Ghosts of Christmas Past are everywhere I look. They showed up one at a time, and then all at once, starting maybe a week ago. Most of the memories they brought with them are painful. Some of them are joyful. They all weave together into the tapestry of my life, and as much as I’d like to pull the painful threads out, you know what happens when you pluck at threads in your tapestry.

I don’t know why I need to write these things down. I just know that I’ve been reliving them nonstop for several days, and writing them down at least gets them out of my head.

Most of this is in chronological order, but the first Ghost of Christmas Past to show up was from 1983, so that’s where I’m going to start.

Christmas Day, 1983.

I’m wearing my red footie pajamas. I’m almost too big for them. The big toe on my left foot is starting to poke out. I love these pajamas, but it’s going to be easy to say goodbye to them when I open my Return of the Jedi pajama set, yellow with a speeder bike on the front, and a green collar, like a Polo shirt collar. On children’s licensed pajamas. My brother will have an identical collar on his Raiders of the Lost Ark pajama set. I guess this is the year we graduate from footie pajamas to fancy pajamas.

My brother and sister and I are in the hallway, behind the closed door, waiting to be gently shuffled, eyes closed, into the living room, where we will wait again, while dad gets set up with the camera.

Christmas music begins to play in the living room. My summering excitement breaks into a rolling boil. Mom tells us to close our eyes. She opens the door and leads me, then my brother, then my sister, into place. My brother squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back. We are vibrating. It is Christmas morning and whatever Santa has brought us is right there, just a few feet away. It is Schrodinger’s Present, existing and not existing until we observe it.

“Okay, are you ready?” Dad asks. I can hear that he’s across the living room from us, on the other side of the fireplace.

We all scream that we are! Oh, the excitement and the anticipation! An entire year of wish books, subtle and not subtle hints, visits to Santa at the mall, letters to Santa, follow-up letters to Santa, quiet prayers to Santa ... all of it, accelerated and compressed and refined for weeks -- an eternity in kid time -- crystallized to form this moment.

Mom and Dad count down from ten. When they get to five, Dad forgets what number they were on. They’ll have to start over.

“FIVE!” we scream in unison, eyes still tightly shut. It’s all part of the bargain. Part of the unspoken Rules of Christmas. The suspension of disbelief that allowed for Santa Claus to exist and fill our living room with the gifts we still had not seen.

Mom and dad laugh. It’s a good natured laugh. A happy laugh. It’s not the cruel, mocking laugh I’m used to from him.

“Are you sure?” Mom asks.

“YES!”

It’s all part of the dance. The beautiful dance of Christmas Morning, and we happily, joyfully, play our roles.

My little brother’s hand is now sweaty with excitement. Or maybe it’s my hand. Maybe it’s both of us.

Dad takes a loud, deep breath. I imagine he and mom make eye contact, nod their heads, and pick up the count together.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

I open my eyes, and before I can register anything, I make the shocked, happy, excited face I’ve been practicing for the picture. I know it’s what mom and dad will want, and I want to make them happy, so I perform. It only lasts a second, but it’s enough for the picture. As the blue afterimage of the flash fades away, I see a bike. A dirt bike! Silver and blue, with pads on the frame and everything! It’s the biggest thing in the room, but it’s not for me. My brother’s stocking hangs from the handlebars. Past it, to my right, a Cabbage Patch Kid, and what I can only remember as “girl stuff”. I was eleven, so. Yanno.

I looked all the way back to the left, holding my breath because I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted it, and it just had to be there, it just had to be.

And it was. Leaning against the tree, with my stocking in front of it, the thing I’d been obsessing about for what felt like my entire life: US 1 Fire Alert Electric Trucking. A slot car thing from Tyco. You drove trucks around the track, filled them up with construction materials like pipes and gravel, and then dropped them off. You didn’t exactly build anything with them, so when the bloom fell off that rose, out came the star of the show; the fire truck, with real flashing red lights and a bell that rang the whole time.

I look pretty excited in the picture, but that picture does not come close to capturing the mainline hit of joy and excitement I felt when I saw that big box in my living room. I was so overwhelmed, tears sprung out of my eyes and I fell to my knees.

‘Thank you, Santa!” I holler, knowing that my voice doesn’t have to make it to the North Pole for him to hear me.

My brother and sister celebrate their gifts: his first “big boy” bike, and the coveted Cabbage Patch Kid for her. I don’t notice them any more than they notice me. We have all gotten exactly what we wanted for Christmas. I don’t know it at the time, and I won’t admit it to myself for over forty years, but it will be the only Christmas I remember feeling like my dad loved me.

It is Christmas Eve 1981. The whole family is in dad’s Dodge Ram Van, heading toward the 134 on the 405. We’re by the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys. The smell of brewing beer fills the passenger compartment.

We are driving from Aunt Val’s house in Northridge to my father’s aunt and uncle’s house in Toluca Lake. They are nice to me, but they aren’t kind like Aunt Val is. I won’t know how to vocalize this difference until I am an adult, and I don’t hold it against them. But the difference between the houses couldn’t be more stark. Aunt Val’s house is middle class. It’s warm. It’s welcoming. I feel safe and at home there. By contrast, my great aunt and uncle’s house is upper class. We aren’t allowed to touch anything. We can’t sit down. There are whole rooms we can’t go into. Mom is super stressed before we go there. She fusses with our hair endlessly. She admonishes us to be on our best behavior. We don’t go there to be around loving family, like we do when we go to Aunt Val’s. When we go to their house, we have to pass a test. I doubt very much that’s their intention, but it’s how mom makes me feel.

I’m not thrilled about leaving the warmth and love of my Aunt Val’s house for a mid-term. But tomorrow is Christmas, and I just have to be on my best behavior, keep my mouth shut, and be essentially invisible for maybe an hour at the most. I can do this. I do it every year. Why would this year be any different.

We are listening to KRTH 101 on the radio. They are playing 24 hours of Christmas music, without commercials. I can’t recall who sponsored it, which is strange because I feel like they told us between each song. I want to say it was Cal Worthington, but it probably wasn’t.

My brother is sitting to my right. Our sister is to his right. We typically end up in this configuration, which matches our birth order, whenever we go anywhere.

It’s relatively early in the evening, probably around 6 or so. But it’s winter and it’s already dark, so it feels later than it is, which is a cruel trick to play on kids on the one night a year they can’t wait for bedtime to hurry up and get there. The DJ reminds us that they’re playing 24 hours of commercial-free Christmas music thanks to the generosity of … I still want to say Cal Worthington. I mean, I can just say it was Cal Worthington, right? Who’s going to check my work? Let’s just go with that. Cal Worthington. So he thanks Cal Worthington, then he says something about keeping an eye out for Rudolph’s bright red nose, before he drops the needle on Run Rudolph Run.

I lean my head against the window and look up into the dark sky. I like how cool the glass feels against my cheek. I like that I can kind of hear the tires on the road. My mind drifts. I’m nine, and I’m starting to have my doubts about the whole Santa thing. I really want to believe, but parts of the story don’t add up. And my older cousin insists that not only does Santa not bring you presents, he doesn’t even exist. It’s all your parents. My older cousin is kind of a dick, is the thing, and he’s making an extraordinary claim that flies in the face of an entire lifetime of firsthand experience. Surely, if this were true, I would have heard it from a more credible source than my idiot cousin. Still, at the very least, I have some questions, and I am pondering them.

There’s too much light pollution in Los Angeles to see many stars, but helicopters, commercial and private planes criss-cross the sky above us. I’m thinking about the whole Santa Question when I see this lone red spot of light in the sky. My rational brain knows that it’s just a light on an airplane, but it’s the only light I can see, I just heard the guy on the radio tell us to look for Rudolph, and the enormous part of me that wants so desperately to believe that this magical thing is real blurts out, “Dad! I just saw Rudolph’s nose!”

“Really?” He says. There’s something familiar in his tone that tells me I’m stupid.

My heart sinks. “Well, I think so,” I say.

“Maybe it’s your imagination getting caught up in the Christmas spirit,” my mother offers, helpfully.

“Maybe,” I reply. Of course it isn’t Rudolph. First of all, it’s way too early. Everyone knows that Santa doesn’t fly around while you’re awake. This was such a stupid thing to say. Dad’s right. I’m stupid.

“I can use my imagination, too,” my dad says. He points to the stream of oncoming headlights on the other side of the freeway, flowing down the north side of the Sepulveda Pass. There are hundreds, maybe a thousand, cars coming toward us. They create an unbroken streak of bright lights. “That’s a giant snake.”

I look at my brother. He doesn’t get it, either. Then I catch my dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror. There is no kindness in them.

“What?” I ask.

“If you can use your imagination, so can I,” he says. “That’s a giant snake.”

It’s so mean, the way he says it. It’s dismissive. It’s condescending. He says it like he can not believe how stupid I am. I don’t know what contempt is, but remembering this moment now (and though I try not to, I’ve remembered it every Christmas for forty years), that’s what it was.

I look at my brother again. He’s like five, and even he feels it. The whole family feels it. We are all silent as Run Rudolph Run finishes. “Did any of you kids see Rudolph?” The DJ asks. I close my eyes and hold my breath. Dad’s going to say something really mean. I know it.

But nobody says anything. In fact, nobody says anything for the fifteen or so minutes it takes us to get to my great aunt and uncle’s neighborhood. As an adult remembering this, there is something really sad about a family sitting in uncomfortable silence in the van together, while the Christmas music we’d typically sing along with played on the radio. As a kid who was experiencing it, it sucked, but I was also relieved that this appeared to be a one-shot from my dad. He wasn’t going to make it a whole thing until I cried, like he usually did.

A Christmas miracle.

We exit the freeway in Toluca Lake and after two quick turns, we are in the middle of extravagant wealth. The houses are HUGE. Their yard displays are EPIC. While we drive slowly through the neighborhood, my mother breaks the uncomfortable silence to excitedly point out the wooden cutouts of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, wearing Santa hats, in someone’s yard. My brother and sister pick up her excitement and run with it. Soon, they are also pointing at yard displays. I remember my brother saying “That one’s my favorite,” several times.

I know now, as an adult myself, that she wasn’t equipped to deal with the shitty thing my father did to me. I suspect that he was just as shitty to her. I mean, he’s just a shitty person. I know now, as an adult, that his parents and most of his family treated her the way he treated me. She wasn’t good enough for them, and she spent our entire childhoods trying to prove them wrong. I know now that as we got closer to his family, they both must have felt so much stress and anxiety, and I have a lot of empathy and compassion for the people they were then. It doesn’t excuse how shitty he was to me, or that she just sat there and let it happen, but I’m willing to stipulate that maybe they weren’t their best selves in that moment.

But all of that reflection and this pain is in my future. In my present, I can’t deny that my great aunt and uncle’s neighborhood is amazing. I don’t feel great in their house, but I love their neighborhood. It’s like where the Main Street Electrical parade goes to live when Disneyland closes. Every house, which looks like it could easily hold two or three of my houses, is covered with constellations of colored lights. Some yards have been transformed into animated scenes of Santa’s workshop. One house has a working roller coaster in the front yard, stuffed animals riding around it in an endless loop. There are nativities everywhere. JOY and NOEL and PEACE ON EARTH are spelled out in lights on rooftops. Every single house is a Griswold house. It is amazing.

We park the van. Mom reminds us again to be on our best behavior. All three of us climb out and wait next to the van while mom fusses with our hair, our collars, my sister’s dress. Mom reminds us not to touch anything, to stay out of the many forbidden rooms, to be polite and to only speak when spoken to. It’s a lot, but we’ve done it several times a year, at every major holiday, for my whole life. I know the drill.

My great aunt answers the door. She greets us with loud enthusiasm. It probably isn’t, but it feels fake. I’m terrified of my dad’s family, and I never feel comfortable or relaxed or safe around them. She’s always nice to me, or at least to the version of me my mother has ensured I present whenever we go to their house, but I never let my guard down. I haven’t really put it all together, yet, but I sort of vaguely know that this is the family that produced my father, and my father is the meanest bully I know, so it stands to reason that if they produced him, maybe they aren’t the kindest people in the world. So, to be safe, I am extremely on guard. Also I’m nine and what the fuck. Why does a nine year-old feel any of these things.

They have an enormous Christmas tree, surrounded by what must be five hundred presents. I know there won’t be anything for us under their tree. There never is. It’s always for my dad’s cousins who I barely know. It’s always a little disappointing. These people can CLEARLY afford to give Atari or Colecovision, but I don’t take it personally. I don’t feel close to them the way I do to my Aunt Val, and that part of my family. I will never feel accepted and loved by my father’s family (with the notable exception of my Godmother) the way I do when I’m with her.

We’re probably there for half an hour, but I’m a kid on Christmas Eve, and it feels much longer. In a way that only makes sense to my tiny mind, time spent here passes more slowly than time in my own house. The very act of being here ensures Christmas will take that much longer to arrive. I do my best to be patient, but I still fidget. My great uncle notices, and takes me and my siblings into his office where we get to see the bearskin he has on his wall. It is a family legend that he shot this bear himself, while it was trying to break into his cabin in Kern county. I believed it then, and I believe it now. He was just that kind of dude, all about the outdoors and hunting and all that stuff. He tells us the story, like he always does, and then he lets us pet it, like he always does. It’s objectively cool, talking to this guy who stared down a bear and won, but I am so afraid I’m going to say or do something wrong, I am laser focused on maintaining my best behavior. And I’m also keeping an eye on my brother and sister, because I’m going to get in double trouble if they do something wrong.

We rejoin the family in the wood-paneled den where the adults are visiting. My great uncle sits in one of those big leather chairs. My siblings and I stand quietly and awkwardly next to our parents for what feels like an eternity.

Eventually, we are allowed to leave. I mean, I’m sure our parents had a lovely visit or whatever, but for us kids, other than the petting of the bearskin, this whole thing is an obligation that can’t end fast enough.

We get into the van. Our mother praises us for being so good. If my dad said anything, I don’t remember it. We drive home, and I lean my head against the window again. This time, when I see a red light in the sky, I keep it to myself. There’s nothing magical about it. It’s just an airplane.

It is late December 1988. Probably the week before Christmas. Dad has a small business. I think he has like eight employees. My parents decide to have a company Christmas party, and all the employees come over to our house. So does my mom’s brother, who we rarely see. Mom has made it clear my whole life that her brother, who I think is great, is a total fuck up. I will eventually learn that he’s bipolar, and when he is off his meds, he’s wildly unpredictable. She also insinuates that he does a lot of drugs, which is probably something I didn’t need to know. He’s always kind to me, but it’s clear from my earliest memories that they have a strained relationship.

My bedroom is downstairs in our split level house. While the adults have their party upstairs, I sit in my bedroom with the door closed, listen to music, and play Dark Tower on my Mac II. I love this computer. I disappear into it for entire days playing Defender of the Crown, DeJa Vu, Uninvited, MacVegas. I write stories on it that I will never publish or even show to anyone. It’s a safe place for me to be. My CD changer has five Depeche Mode CDs in it. It is currently playing 1984’s compilation album, People Are People, which is in my collection only because Some Great Reward isn’t available on CD. For the rest of my life, I will associate “Get The Balance Right” with the following moment.

There is a knock on my door and before I can say anything it swings open, revealing my mom. She has a glass of wine in one hand. She’s definitely buzzed, maybe a little drunk.

“Come up and visit with your dad’s employees,” she says.

“I don’t want to,” I say. “I don’t know any of them.”

“How are you going to know them if you don’t meet them?” She says.

“Mom! I don’t want to. It’s not my party!”

A cloud passes over her face and everything changes in an instant. “You will come upstairs and you will be polite to your father’s guests. End of discussion.”

I do quick math in my head, and conclude that this fight is just not worth having.

“Fine.” I say. She stops me at the door and fusses with my hair, smooths the shoulders of my T-shirt. “Thank you,” she says, without gratitude.

I walk upstairs, into a room of adults I do not know, except for my uncle who is wrecked and sloppy. He is sitting on the couch with one of my dad’s employees who is equally wrecked and sloppy. They are inappropriately close to each other. They are aggressively flirting. It’s super obvious. It’s super gross. In the coming days, mom will complain about all the champagne they drank. I don’t see my siblings, and I presume that they are in my brother’s room, playing NES. I wonder why they aren’t required to appear at dad’s holiday party. I am about to find out.

Mom introduces me to all of the employees, and I realize I am being showed off. By her. To impress him, and them. I’m not Rick’s son. I’m Debbie’s Thing, the famous actor who she relentlessly reminds me was made famous through her great sacrifice and her hard work. It’s horrible. I hold my breath and wait for my dad to make a joke at my expense.

But he’s on his best behavior, maintaining the illusion of loving father. His employees don’t care that I’m Debbie’s Thing. Not a single one of them watches Star Trek. If any of them saw Stand By Me, nobody says anything about it. I make awkward small talk before I am allowed to return to my bedroom. The feeling won’t last, but for the rest of the evening, I feel like I have scored a huge victory in the long war to get my mother to see me as a person and not a thing. It will turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

It is the middle of December, 1989. We have completed production on Next Generation for the year, and it’s the day of our cast and crew Christmas party. I am barely seventeen, and I am desperate for the cast and crew to see me as a peer, as an adult. In pursuit of this goal, I tell my parents that I’m going to the cast and crew party alone. I don’t tell them that I have this outrageous fantasy that there will be some girl at the party who will want to hang out with me. Maybe we’ll go make out somewhere. This will not happen. In fact, this will never happen.

Dad doesn’t care about me, my job, or this particular party, but my mother loses her shit when I tell her I don’t want her to go with me. She goes on and on about how I’m excluding her, how I’m embarrassed of her, how I don’t appreciate her. She reminds me, like she has since I was seven, that she gave up her career so I could have mine. She uses every tool in her manipulative arsenal, but I don’t budge. I’m growing immune to these techniques she uses to control me. I’ve worked on TNG for two years, and she never comes to the set. She doesn’t know any of my coworkers. She has no reason to be there, as far as I am concerned. This is not a party for her. This is a party for me. I won’t be able to vocalize this for another twenty years, but I don’t want her there because she is constantly taking credit for my work. She’s constantly making my acting career – that I don’t want, that she forced on me – all about her. It feels weird. It feels bad. I don’t want to experience any of that when I’m at the cast and crew party. I don’t want to be responsible for her feelings at a time I should just be having fun. I want, as I’ve been telling her since she put me to work at age seven, to just be a kid.

The whole day, she pouts. I mean, she makes a huge production of how upset she is. It’s all passive aggressive, and the thing is, she uses this move on me so much, it’s lost almost all of its effectiveness. It’s like my dad yelling at me for no reason. It’s happened so consistently, for so long, it’s part of the background radiation of my existence.

And yet, I still feel guilty. So after I get dressed for the party, and about fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to leave, I tell her that I guess it would be okay for her to go with me. I’m counting on fifteen minutes not being enough time for her to get ready. It’s a calculated risk to assuage my guilt for something she never should have put onto my shoulders in the first place, but I can see her running it over in her head. She’s going to find a way to get ready in fifteen minutes. I panic.

She shares a look with my dad, who is as irritated that I exist as he always is. Before either of them can say anything, I grab my keys.

“I guess there isn’t enough time,” I say. Then I add, “sorry,” though I am not sorry at all. I practically run down the driveway to my car. I listen to Oingo Boingo all the way to Paramount. I walk across the liminal space of the Paramount lot at night on a weekend to the soundstage where we are having our party.

Okay so there are the accepted conditions that make something “cool”, then there is the entire mass of everything in the known universe, and on the other side of that, as far away from cool as you can get, we have the 1989 TNG cast and crew Christmas party. We are in an empty soundstage with some banquet tables in it. If there are decorations, I don’t remember them. The band they have on a small stage is terrible. Four pieces of light jazz. Just light jazz garbage from a bad wedding scene in a bad movie of the week. There is no energy in the soundstage, which feels way too big for the party that’s supposed to be happening in it. But it’s early. I’m sure it’ll warm up.

One of my friends, a stand-in who is in his late twenties, asks me if I want something from the bar. I ask him for some orange juice. He comes back with it and I take a pretty big gulp, that I instantly spit back into the glass.

“Dude, there’s vodka in this!”

He chuckles. “I got you a screwdriver. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“No! I just wanted orange juice!” I have been drunk several times with my friends on the weekends. Dumb teenage drinking that we really shouldn’t do, but I’ll get through it without any permanent damage. I do stupid things, but I honestly don’t think I did anything stupid while drunk that I wouldn’t have done while sober. I just felt less anxious about it. But I don’t want to drink alcohol at this party. I know that I can, but I’m still around people who are basically my family, and I feel like I shouldn’t. I want them to respect me, and I’m reasonably sure that drinking alcohol and being stupid is not the best choice. So I go to the bar and get a Pepsi. For the record, I don’t have a side in the cola wars. They both taste the same to me, and they are both inferior to Dr. Pepper.

It comes with a lime, which I guess makes it fancy. While I’m sipping it, Frakes and his wife, Genie, come over to me. We chat for a few minutes. “This band is terrible, isn’t it?” He says.

“The worst, ever,” I agree.

Over the next forty minutes or so, the rest of the cast arrives. Most of them have their partners with them, including Marina. I don’t think she was married to Michael, yet, but he was with her. I just adored him. He was so kind and so cool, so easy to be around. He was a real California surfer, he played the hell out of the guitar, and I knew that if he was the dude Marina wanted to be with, he must be the most amazing dude in the universe.

We all end up together at a table, and very quickly, conversation turns to just how awful this band is. Marina tells Michael that he needs to get up there and play something that rocks.

The entire cast assents. We implore Michael to save us from this light jazz musical nightmare.

So Michael finishes his beer, and goes to the stage. I watch him talk to someone from the band. I see them reach an agreement. Michael walks onto the stage, stands behind the microphone in the center. The entire cast and crew knows him. He’s Marina’s boyfriend! We love him. We know he plays guitar. I think he may even play in a band, but I’m not sure. He leans toward the microphone and says something about how it’s time to rock. Someone from the band gives him their guitar. The drummer counts them in, and they play Johnny B. Goode, but Michael changes the lyric to “Gene-y be good” in deference to our Great Bird of the Galaxy.

The dance floor fills up. The whole room is rocking. Everyone is having a great time. Michael just kills it. I think he just played the one song, but it’s all we needed. The way I remember it, he saved Christmas. Or at least he saved that party.

Soon after he finishes, someone from production, probably Rick Berman or maybe even Gene himself, takes the stage, wishes us all a happy holiday season, and then rolls the blooper reel of our mistakes and outtakes from the year.

I think it is hilarious and brilliant. They’ve cut together some bits from two different episodes that make it look like Picard and Troi are having real freaky sex, and there are all the usual outtakes of us flubbing lines (there’s a supercut of me swearing angrily at myself when I mess up. It’s a lot, it’s embarrassing to me to see it all in context, and someone will pull me aside before the night is over, to encourage me to give myself a break when I blow a line). Patrick is PISSED that this thing has been cut together. He doesn’t think it’s funny at all to be portrayed that way, and as a result, it will be the last blooper reel we get for a couple seasons. I adore that man, but holy fuck did he need to lighten up in those early seasons.

A couple hours go by. I visit with my coworkers. I hang out with my cast. The party starts to thin out, and I’m thinking about heading home. But some of my castmates are going to walk over to the Cheers party, so I ask if I can go with them. I won’t tell you who, but one of them makes it explicitly clear to me that I am absolutely not allowed to go with them. “That party is going to be full of drugs and not a place for a teenager at all,” they say. I will eventually learn that those Cheers Christmas parties were legendary for their cocaine-fueled debauchery. The part of me who likes to read Hunter S. Thompson and listen to Joe Frank thinks it would have been really cool to witness that. The entire rest of me is like “buddy, you really do not need to be around Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammar when they are neck deep in blow at the tail end of the eighties.” I think that part of me is probably right.

I do not talk to any girls. In fact, there were no girls there for teenage me to talk to. And let’s be honest, if there had been, I wouldn’t have had the courage to introduce myself. But I have a great time, anyway. I stay as late as I can, because I just don’t want to go home. But eventually it’s just me, the worst band in the world, and some extremely drunk grips. So I take myself home, where my mother is waiting up and demands a full recounting of the party. I clock the empty wine glass and know how to get out of this. I tell her the music was terrible, but the blooper reel was funny. I tell her she didn’t miss anything. I tell her it wasn’t that great a party. Basically, I tell her what I know she will need to believe to let it go. I don’t tell her about Michael’s incredible performance. She takes so much from me, I keep that to myself. She goes on and on about how she’s glad I had so much fun by myself. Then she goes upstairs, and I go to bed. I try as hard as I can not to, but I still feel a little guilty. I fall asleep listening to disc 2 of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

It’s 1997. The week of Christmas. About a year after we started dating, my girlfriend and her kids have moved in with me. We are so excited to share our first Christmas together in what is now our house.

I have wrapped production for the year on Flubber, and driven nine hours down the coast in a torrential Pacific storm to get from San Francisco where we are filming to Los Angeles where I live. I don’t have a cell phone, so I’ve only talked to Anne a couple times when I’ve used a payphone at a gas station. By the time I pull into my driveway, it’s almost midnight and it’s been hours since we talked. She opens the front door, and I can see this warm glow behind her in our house. She has this kind, loving smile that matches a glint in her eye.

“I have a surprise!” She says. She steps aside and I walk into our very small house. When it was built, it was essentially a cabin, so it’s one large room, a very small kitchen, and a hallway that leads to a couple tiny bedrooms.

The warm glow I saw behind her is from fifty feet of garland she’s wrapped with white twinkle lights and hung around the perimeter of the main room. It’s beautiful.

“I love this,” I say.

“I did it for us, because we live together,” she tells me. She kisses me and I kiss her back. Then, I walk down the hallway to the bedroom where Ryan and Nolan are sleeping. I kiss them on their foreheads.

Christmas day 1999. Anne and I have been married for just under two months. It’s our first Christmas as a married couple. We get a lot of Mr and Mrs things, and we love them all. Ryan, age ten, is a hardcore Santa doubter. We’ve done our best to balance the joy a kid feels at the idea of the Santa myth with our commitment to being honest with our kids. “Santa brings gifts, we bring gifts, we help each other out and work together. It’s all kind of a big blur,” I remember saying, like the guy in A Christmas Story who says, “No, that’s them balsams.”

“So if I asked Santa to draw me a self-portrait, do you think he’d do that?” Ryan asks me. I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I can see wheels turning.

“You don’t know if you don’t ask,” I tell him.

When he writes his letter to Santa. It includes a request for a self-portrait. He’s pretty sure he has Anne and me dead to rights. There’s no way we can make this happen. He knows neither one of us can draw. He’s gonna blow this whole Santa thing wide open.

What he doesn’t think about, bless his heart, is that our friend Kevin is an artist and he will not let us pay him when he draws the most amazing self-portrait of Santa Claus you’ve ever seen.

When Ryan opens it, his eyes pop out of his head and he looks at both of us, incredulous. “How did you do this?” He asks, astonished, all pretenses dropped.

“Us? What are you talking about? Santa did that,” Anne tells him.

We got him. Dead to rights. The old switcheroo. What’s his next move?

He scrambles across the floor and throws his arms around us. “I love you guys.” He will take that picture with him when he moves into his own house, and as far as I know, he puts it out every year.

Christmas Eve 2002. For a couple years, we have had this tacit, unspoken agreement with the kids where we all talk about Santa Claus as if he is a person who exists in this world and not a myth given form by parents who are up way too late putting together a bike that comes with instructions you’re pretty sure are not even for a bike, much less this one. We all have a lot of fun with it.

Over the previous few years, at great emotional cost to all of us, and great financial cost to me and Anne, a custody agreement has been reached with the boys’ biodad. There’s an alternating Christmas thing that means they are with him tonight and come home to us at noon tomorrow. Next year, it will flip. It’s not great, but we don’t complain about it in front of the kids. It’s probably not great for them, either.

Anne and I don’t have to wait for the kids to go to sleep before we make Christmas happen, so we make dinner, open a bottle of wine, and take our time during the evening getting everything together. It’s just the two of us, and our dogs, Ferris and Riley. We listen to Christmas music, open another bottle of wine, and play that old tabletop game, Sorry! I love having our kids around, but I’m not going to lie. Having these moments together when it’s just the two of us means a lot to me. We didn’t have that part of the relationship when it’s just the two of us. We’ve been a family since day one. But we’ve made a commitment to each other to put our marriage, and our relationship at the center of everything, because that’s the thing that will be here no matter how we’re doing financially, if the kids are with us or not, or when we are three years into a global pandemic for example. It’s not great that we aren’t tucking our kids who are too big to be tucked into bed into bed, but having some wine and playing a game in front of the fireplace isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Christmas Day 2004. The Basketball Hoop Year. It’s early afternoon, and I’m on the driveway assembling this fucking thing all day WITH HELP and I can’t believe Anne honestly thought I could do this last night by myself in the dark.

It’s 2005. We are at my parents’ house for Christmas dinner. I’m in the kitchen with my sister, helping cut stuff up or whatever, and she asks me what I think about this thing that’s been in the news lately. A guy is about to be executed, and there’s a death penalty debate happening in the media and in our state capitol. I tell her that I think he should spend his life in prison, but I don’t support the death penalty. It’s racist, it’s immoral, and it isn’t an effective deterrent.

Our father, who has not been part of this conversation at all, storms into the room, shoves me away from what I’m doing, and starts jabbing me in the sternum while he screams in my face “AN EYE FOR AN EYE! AN EYE FOR AN EYE! YOU LIBERALS ARE ALL THE SAME! AN EYE FOR AN EYE!”

I am shocked and scared, and I’m embarrassed for him and for me. He did this in front of my kids. He did this in front of my wife. He did this in front of the entire family, now that I think of it, and then he stormed away before I could say anything.

My sister and I look at each other like “What the fuck was that?” But before either of us can say anything, our mom does the distraction deflection thing. I want to say it’s something about a pickle. It’s really kind of pathetic. My dad does not say another word to me for the rest of the evening, not even goodbye when we leave. Dinner is uncomfortable and sad. My mother and brother act like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I spend the entire meal wishing I’d just gathered my family together and walked out after he yelled at me.

The next day, I write about it. I frame it as part of the nascent War on Christmas narrative. I write honestly about what happened. When it is published, and gains some traction online, my father freaks out. But he doesn’t speak to me directly. He complains to my mother who does the manipulation thing on me. “Your Aunt Val always said there’s nothing more important than family,” she says. It works. She invokes the memory of the most beloved person in my childhood, and fueled by a lifetime of conditioning, I write a big retraction. It’s humiliating. It undermines my entire truth. I lie and lie and lie, to satisfy my parents. It’s not enough. She makes me apologize to him. I do. He shrugs it off.

My father does not, and never will, apologize for how he treated me in front of my family, my wife, and my children, at Christmas.

Christmas Day, 2015. Ryan and his wife make tamales to feed the entire family. They are phenomenal. They spent most of two days preparing them, and knowing that they put all that love into them makes them the best tamales I have ever had, or ever will have.

Christmas 2020. Fucking Covid. We don’t see our kids at all, for the first time in their lives. I am grateful for all those memories we made together, instead of giving them stuff they wouldn’t even have now. I spend a lot of time looking through my photo roll, missing them. Anne and I can’t even have our chosen family around, because there’s no vaccine and it isn’t safe. She and I make the best out of it, just the two of us, together. Next year, we’ll be back to normal. Thank god.

Christmas Eve 2021. WELP. Turns out that stupid, selfish people are determined to make this pandemic last … just a little longer, probably until an election. Sure, let’s just pretend it’s all over, because we’re tired of the inconvenience. We can just wish ourselves out of this, because FREEDOM or whatever. I am so tired.

It’s been a really hard year for all of us. And not just the Anne and me us, who endured a pretty awful summer with my seizure and her back surgery, either. The all of us … us, I mean. Imagine I’m making that big hugging motion with my arms to indicate that we are all in this together. When I say us, I mean you and me and Anne and your partner and your kids and all the people you love who love you back. All of us. If there were a little more us in the world right now, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a hard year.

For the longest time, Christmas has not been about stuff for me. It isn’t about supernatural religious myths. It isn’t about all the crap advertisers work hard to make it about. It’s about the other things, the joyful things that flow through these memories around the painful bits, the moments with my children, the late nights Anne and I stayed up to make Christmas happen for them. It’s about having our chosen family over for dinner. It’s about the people who bring the joy and magic of the holiday season into my life every day of the year.

It’s mostly about my kids, though. They are adult men with wives who have their own lives, and that is awesome. I’m not going to burden them with the same kind of responsibility that I carried when I was a kid. But I miss them so much, I feel like I’m on the verge of tears from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, even when I’m happy. At the same time, I’m so grateful to be spending my 25th Christmas with Anne, because we live together.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past haven’t visited me in a long, long time, but they are everywhere I look this year. Starting about a week ago, they showed up slowly, one at a time, then all at once until the room was just filled up with memories, happy and sad, insisting I do something with them.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with all this. I love the happy memories. I love that Anne and I still have the box the garland lives in, and I love that we wrote “Xmas 1997. Garland and lights for our house because we live together” on it. I love to look at that every year, whether we put the garland out or not. I love that we’ll be looking at it for the rest of our lives together.

The sad memories are extra sad, especially in comparison to the good ones. I’m sure there are good memories I don’t have, that I can’t recall, that a trip through a photo album would dislodge. The year we got all the WWF toys, including the Sling Em Fling Em Wrestling Ring, for example, and stockings filled with MUSCLE figures. I don’t have that photo album, or access to it, though, so I’m left with the memories that made the greatest impressions on me, good and bad.

And that reality, in itself, is sad. And because of the whole BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS of it all, that reality is especially painful this year.

It’s not a contest. Everyone is going through something. This is what I’m going through. Maybe writing these things down will allow me to heal from the painful stuff, so I can happily and joyfully remember the good stuff.

I hope that your holidays are wonderful. I hope you are making wonderful memories with people you love. Whatever winter festival you choose to celebrate, I hope you get to celebrate it with people you love who love you back. I hope that, this time next year, all of us are able to safely gather with people we love who love us back.

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benk625-blog · 3 years

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The Madness of Human Mating Season

[Excerpt from Xanthar’s Guide to Human Cultural Cycles]

Humans observe a peculiar series of observances during their mating season. Some say it starts with the Danse Macbre. This particular author concludes that event is to be too far removed from the actual uptick in human mating to include it at a proper member of the Mating Holidays. Rather the Holiday that begins this period of the annual cycle is The Gorge.

During Gorge humans prepare for the mating season with a feast of significant caloric intake. They venerate the conquerors of the past and humiliate the people who were subjugated with narratives of generosity and mutual respect. The Gorge represents the rapacious appetite humans have for food and the acquisition of territory to produce that food.

Immediately following the Gorge comes the Commercial District Riots. Humans descend on locations of commerce to battle each other over consumer goods. Curiously the violence is directed at fellow consumers and not the merchants as one might suspect. Non-humans learned very quickly to steer clear of markets the day after Gorge.

After the Riots comes the Mating Display Season. Humans adorn their space ships and domiciles with bright colors and twinkling lights to attract mates. Mating calls are broadcast through any means of audio transmission. These songs are only broadcast during this time of year. Common motifs and symbols include: Miraculous Infants, Family Gatherings and precipitation of solid hydrogen-oxide.

The height of Mating Season events is the Day of Mandatory Consumption. This display of surveillance and symbolic munitions delivery strikes fear into the heart of non-humans everywhere. On the day of Mandatory Consumption every living thing wakes up to The Package. Children open these with joyful abandon.

The adults are disquieted. How did the humans know? How did The Package get delivered? The contents are different for every recipient, but one thing is the same. The Package contains one item that was desperately desired by the owner. This broach of personal privacy is terrifyingly accurate. If they know what to give, they know what to take away…

Every government has tried and failed to prevent this massive psychological attack. No amount of shielding can prevent the transport of quintillions of personalized, hand wrapped items from appearing in every residence in the galaxy. If anyone asks a human how this is achieved, they make a smug mocking face and say “magic.”

Woe unto the tyrants who receive the so-called “death rocks”. Upon receiving a lump of solid hydro-carbon, a war-lord’s days are marked. Their people have received independent confirmation that their oppression is seen by the Human Empire and it will be tolerated no further. No regime, not matter how feared has survived the issuance of a death rock. This has led to many end-of-year reforms and releasing of political prisoners as the Human mating season approaches.

The last significant event of this cycle, and of the annual cycle as well, is The Purge. During the Purge humans ingest an astounding number of emetic solvents. The outcome is often successful mating or regurgitation; sometimes both. In the days and weeks following the Purge transmissions of Mating Calls cease. The mate attracting colors and light displays are packed up and stored until next year.

One last note of historical significance are the spontaneous treaties. On Mandatory Consumption Day human soldiers will approach enemy combatants and offer limited cease-fires. When the commanders of all the involved military forces communicate to confirm the legitimacy of this cease fire, human commanders insist that the governments remain at war. These “illegal” cease-fires are almost always expired by the Purge.

[End excerpt]

#humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #humans are space orcs #humans are aliens #humans are deathworlders

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benicebefunny · 3 years

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For all the media coverage of Ted Lasso and toxic masculinity, it's not really a show that does social commentary. Ted Lasso, for better and for worse, follows the grand tradition of sitcoms by focusing on individuals and interpersonal relationships. Whatever changes occur in a community happen through individual transformation, not concerted systems change.

So imagine my fucking surprise when the Ted Lasso Christmas episode stumbled into some hot, nasty social commentary.

(cw: family and intimate partner abuse)

The episode starts with most of the main characters gathered in Richmond's locker room, exchanging gifts. (Because nothing says Merry Christmas like eau de ball sweat.) In Ted's office, the staff go around, sharing their Christmas plans.

Nathan's like, "I'll be with family, attempting to buy my father's love. It's not going to work. Nothing will ever work. No matter how much money I spend, my father will continue to shame and belittle me, and none of you will ever acknowledge the ongoing crisis that is my life. Cheers! "

Beard's like, "I'll be going to a remote area with my ex-girlfriend who you all think is terrible for me. I say we're going as friends, but we're definitely going to get back together. Because it's Christmas and she will never let me go. Wish me luck!"

Jamie pops his head in and is like, "I don't understand a Christmas tradition. Is it because I'm a comedically dull-witted character? Or is it because my dad's cycle of neglect and abuse robbed me of the financial and emotional resources to enjoy Christmas as a child? Who's to say?"

And that's the last we see of those three characters this episode. Everybody else is onscreen, running around London, making new Christmas memories and found families.

But Nathan, Beard, and Jamie are offscreen. Their Christmases are too bitter for the episode's bittersweet middle and saccharinely sweet ending. Their problems are too pervasive and intractable to be solved by the episode's end (Phoebe's bully) or wrapping-papered over (technology's inability to create emotional intimacy between Ted and his son). Their trauma cannot be remedied by spending money on mouthwash, gifts for poor children, or an impromptu concert. Their lives run counter to the sentimental and commercial agendas of a Christmas episode created to feed the demands of a corporate monopoly.

For the other characters to have a Merry Christmas, Nathan, Beard, and Jamie have to go away. Until they get out of their respective abusive relationships, there is no room for them at Higgins' surfboard table. They will continue to ruin the Christmas spirit until, like Rebecca, they have stories of overcoming abuse that reassure the rest of the party that God has blessed us, everyone.

As someone who has been in an abusive situation every Christmas (not to mention every other holiday) of my goddamn life, I can say that this is true.

When your family or your home life sucks, society doesn't want you at Christmas. (Or Thanksgiving. Or Father's Day. Or Mother's Day. Or even your own birthday.) People don't want to talk to you about it. You will not want to talk about it. You effectively disappear to reemerge once the holiday has ended.

Somehow Ted Lasso--of all shows--delivered this spicy mayo jar of social commentary: in a culture defined by Christian capitalism, collective joy depends on some people going away.

#ted lasso #nathan shelley #jamie tartt #coach beard #meta

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achliegh · 3 years

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Golden

Yeehaw Leo… it's all because this song came on one day (I don’t even really listen to country anymore so it really is fate). Leo is based off that song, each chapter is going to be based off a yeehaw song too.

Characters belong to @lumosinlove

Beta: @the-most-slyterin-hufflepuff & @punkkkboi

TW/CW: Smut, terrible yeehaw sayings and jokes, injuries, mentions of past death/suicide, minor character death, underage drinking, mentions of past arrests, cringe

Chapter Songs (listening in order is recommended):

Chapter 15:

Thomas was sleeping, he was having a peaceful slumber until he felt the back of a hand across his face. Waking up startled he sits up. He goes to ask what's wrong but his face is grabbed by Noelle who drags him into an extra spicy kiss. He takes a sharp breath in through his nose and cups the back of her head. Kissing back but still confused. He looks for Clay who sleeps on the other side of Noelle, he seems to be missing.

Then he notices the lump under the covers…. Then it all clicks.

Thomas closes his eyes and smirks into the kiss with Noelle as she whines into his mouth and unintentionally yanks on the hair at the side and back of his head. Thomas blindly starts feeling around for the edge of the covers, when he finds then he tosses them back.

“So cold!” Noelle mumbles on his lips, Thomas pulls away a bit to look down at Clay who looks like he is being suffocated between Noelle's thighs. It was a beautiful sight. “Thomas, please kiss me-” Her breath hitched and her legs twitched for a moment before her ankles locked behind Clay’s head. “I’m so close!”

Thomas doesn't want this to end yet and he knows Noelle has gotten to the point where she can’t get off unless she is being stimulated in more than one place. Trying to make this moment last longer, Thomas would lean in to kiss her but swerve away to kiss her cheek or her neck. Just to tease her. His hand that wasn’t supporting his body was cupping her jaw so she had to look at him.

He was acting like he wasn’t hard as a fucking rock.

Eventually, Noelle's hips were canting up like she didn’t have control anymore. Clay’s arms were wrapped under her legs and he was gripping her hips to hold on for dear life. She grabs Thomas’ face and shoves her tongue in his mouth aggressively. Thomas folds and kisses her back. She climaxes, her mouth falling open, her hands gripping her boys almost too tight, and her legs snap shut but Clay doesn’t mind.

Once she finishes her body goes completely limp and her eyes close because they are rolling in different directions because her body is so relaxed. Thomas is petting her hair, not paying attention at all. Just soaking in just how beautiful she is in her afterglow.

A shocked moan jumps out of his throat as he feels a tight wet heat around his almost painfully hard cock. His hand jumps to Clay’s hair and he looks down to see him looking back up at him with his iconic puppy dog eyes. Thomas tips his head back as he catches his breath from when he was surprised.

Noelle comes back too and sees her boys, she turns on her side so her head is resting on Thoams’ shoulder, she reaches down to pat through Clay’s wild curls, messed up from sleeping. Clay opens his eyes from when they slipped closed after Thomas looked away. He sees the way Noelle is looking at him and he starts grinding against the bed.

He wanted to show his lovers how much he loves and appreciates them, he’s never experienced love and trust like this. He has a thing for being praised by Noelle and he knows this head petting is a way she does that without words.

Thomas on the other hand.

“Clay- fuck you’re suck a slut aren’t you. Got Noelle off and couldn’t help yourself.” Clay immediately flushes bright red and pinches his eyebrows together as the mixture of the silent praise from Noelle and the degrading talk that Thomas throws at him. Clay is being pushed closer to his own edge. He has never came untouched before but he wouldn’t be surprised if they could do that to him. So he doubles down on Thomas as he grinds against the bed harder.

He knows Thomas is close by the way his voice has turned into a whisper. Clay pulls off just in time to get a face full of Thomas. He blinks a couple of times before he is tossed on his back.

“I always knew you were a cum slut but I never thought you’d purposely make me cum on your face.” Thomas gives Clay a tight pull after spitting in his hand and Clay moans louder than he meant to. He flushes again from embarrassment.

“Always so pretty for us, Doll.” Noelle has moved to be kneeling next to Clay’s side, lightly touching his smooth stomach up to his chest and looking at him. “So gorgeous.”

“I’m gonna-” Thomas gives Clay exactly three pulls before he is spilling over his hand and his own stomach. Noelle leaned over and is peppering his neck and shoulders in little kisses before getting up to grab their designated sex towel. It had Daffy duck on it and Clay brought it with him as a joke.

They all get cleaned up and sprawl out on the fresh sheets together.

“I’m going to order food because I’m so hungry I feel my stomach digesting itself.” Thomas is typing on his phone their normal orders from a deli just down the street from them. Clay smiles and laughs a bit from how dramatic Thomas always gets. Eventually the food is out for delivery and the tallest of the bunch gets up and pulls on some sweats.

Clay rolls over to his side and shoves his face into Noelle's boobs because they are his favorite things. Noelle absentmindedly starts scratching his scalp because she feels like it. Thomas comes back and see’s Clay’s face looking way too similar to his O face just from her scratching his scalp.

“Nope, if you do that I’m going to get all hot and horny again. We need to eat, Noelle leaves in five hours.” He sits on the bed and tosses them their sandwiches.

“What are you two going to do while I’m gone?” Noelle unwraps her sandwich and takes a bite while she checks her phone for her flight information. Her, Logan, Finn and Leo are all going to Canada to spend the holiday with her parents. Logan plans to tell their parents about Leo and she knows it won’t go well.

Her parent adore Finn and most likely only accepted Logan for being bisexual because of Finn. He was the perfect all-american boy who was successful… and white. Her parents have come to terms with her dating Thomas but they still bad mouth him in front of her with wild accusations.

She also knows that she is the favorite child from how her parents treat her versus her sisters and Logan. So she gets away with a lot more. But she knows if they knew about Clay they would freak the fuck out.

She doesn’t think this is going to go as well as Logan hopes but she will support him no matter what. So will Sydney and Aubrey. They have had to support each other for their entire lives. Their family dynamic was one of those, you act all friendly and nice when you are with your parents but once you are away from them you can actually be yourself. Oh, and talk shit on the parents because they always think they are right.

“If you want we can go visit my parents, they have been dying to meet you. Yes my mom talked to you when the team was down at Leo’s but they didn’t get to know you.” Clay is already done with his food because the bitch eats fast. “I have a pilot friend who could take us.”

“Really?” Thomas was halfway through his sandwich with his mouth full of food.

“Yeah, he was friends with Wyatt in the air force and flies us to Brazil every year. He’s a good family friend. Super funny too, I think he’d be a good comedian.” Clay smiles and takes the trash from their food, tossing it in the trash before going to get dressed for the day in his normal at home shorts, skipping a shirt and putting on socks because the wood floors are cold. “Want me to call him?”

“Yeah why not, I’d love to meet your parents.” Thomas has a soft smile as he takes another bite. He has met Noelle’s parents but knows they don’t like him no matter what he does so he plans to charm the pants off Clay’s parents.

Clay leaves to the living room to go call, Noelle gets up to get dressed for the day but before she can get off the bed Thomas pulls her into his lap. Just holding her and smooching his face into her neck.

“Worried?”

“What would I need to be worried about?” Thomas kissed her cheek and gave her a squeeze. “Well, I take that back, I guess Leo is going with you guys and I don’t see Maurice taking that very well.” Noelle nods and sighs.

“I’m worried too, I don’t think it’s a good idea but Logan tries so hard to impress Maman and Papa that it doesn’t surprise me that he is bringing Leo. I mean, Leo is rich, respectful, kind and American so he is everything they have ever wanted…. But with him having a criminal record and tattoo’s and the same sense of challenge that Clay has, I don’t expect them to take him in like they did Finn. Also, his teeth are still fucked from when Aubrey dumped him out of the car and he doesn’t really care about it, so it makes him seem like he doesn’t care about appearances. Which they do.” She flops her head on his shoulder and groans annoyed. “I guess I’ll give you updates about how it's going.”

“I’d appreciate that, sweet thang.” He gives her one last smooch before she gets up to get dressed. Clay walks back in as she is leaving, Noelle smacks his ass as she passes causing him to jump and look back as she disappears into the closet.

“He said he could take us tomorrow, he needs to call the airport and set up a take off and landing schedule.” He flops on the bed and narrows his eyes at the ceiling. “There are so many crumbs on the bed.”

Leo had never been on a commercial plane; it was kinda stuffy. It was also cramped, but he was between his boys so he didn’t really mind. Logan had his headphones on and Finn was sleeping with his head resting back on the seat. Leo was very squished, maybe a bit too tall for the seats. He only needed to be squished for about an hour and a half so he would survive.

As they landed Logan took off his headphones and started texting his parents, Noelle was a seat or two behind them so they were all being picked up by their mother, Leo thinks her name is Mary… honestly Logan barely talks about his parents unless he wants to show them an achievement of his so Leo really didn’t know anything about them besides they don’t like a lot of tattoos on a person so Noelle and Logan are both just wearing long sleeves the whole time to hide their newest additions while Leo is wearing his selling black turtles neck.

Saying he was nervous was a bit of an understatement.

They grabbed their bags from the claim and made their way outside, a large white SUV pulled up and Noelle started heading towards it, Logan following next to Finn and Leo trailing behind.

It was cold.

A short woman with a paisley pattern blue scarf covering her hair got out of the large car and ran up to Noelle and engulfed her into a tight hug, speaking quick French to her as Noelle took a second to hug back. Logan was bouncing on his toes a little behind her waiting for his hug. Leo watched as Logan deflated when his mother, Leo was guessing that's who it is, skips over him to hug Finn just as tight as Noelle. Leo stood to the side awkwardly waiting to see how she reacts to him.

He knows she has looked his way because he saw his reflection in her dark sunglasses. He acts like he is dusting stuff off of him as he looks down at his nice jeans, belt and boots that he wore today trying to make a good first impression. But judging from how Mary is dressed in an expensive dress, coat and shoes, he thinks he chose the wrong outfit.

She eventually pulls away from Finn after kissing his cheeks, leaving Finn an adorable shade of red, she helps him get his bags in the car. Leaving everyone else to put their own in by themselves. Glancing at Logan he notices he has his ‘I’m upset but will try to look neutral’ face on. Leo wants to reach out and comfort him but he knows now isn’t a good time.

The car ride was short, into the heart of the city to a nice sized house surrounded by even bigger houses that are almost the size of the ranch. It was a pale blue color with a red door that was glossy and wooden. Leo expected it to be heavy but he wasn’t expecting it to be shut on him before he even entered the house. He opens the door to find a man in a Police uniform hugging Noelle and laughing with Finn while Logan holds Finn’s hand.

He suddenly felt very uneasy being in the house, so he decided to stay standing by the door. Pretending he was invisible, standing with his luggage in front of him. Logan looks at him and raises an eyebrow until he sees Leo flick his eyes from Logan to the man. Logan nods and mouths an apology. Sending a shaky smile back Leo’s attention is turned to the two older siblings walking over to him.

“Hey guys.” He smiles tightly and accepts hugs from both of them.

“How are your teeth?” Aubrey asks light heartedly, as she sips on her glass of plum colored wine.

“Still broken.” He smiles with his teeth this time, already feeling more relaxed now that the sisters were joking with him.

“Don’t they hurt?” Sydney leans forward a little to examine them. “I work at a dentist. I could get them fixed for you.” Leo remembers Logan mentioning how Sydney was a dental assistant and Aubrey was a lawyer. A very successful family: Lawyer, Dental Assistant, Marine biologist, and a Pro-Hockey Player. He shakes his head no when he looks past them to see Logan finally getting some form of affection from his parents, his father is patting him on the shoulder as Noelle follows her mother into the kitchen and Finn goes to take Logan and his bags to Logan’s room. Maybe he should take his bags too.

“Papa, this is Leo.” Logan gestures to Leo and he takes that as his queue to go over to them. He walks over, trying to calm his nerves. Standing next to Logan he holds out his hand to shake his fathers. “I thought it would be nice to bring him along.” Logan doesn’t plan to tell his parents they are dating until after the first dinner together. His father looks Leo up and down with his intense green eyes taking in every flaw of his. Eventually he takes his hand and shakes it, a bit harder than Leo was expecting.

“You a manual labor worker? Your hands are quite rough.” Leo tries to pretend he didn’t see Logan’s dad wipe his hand on his trousers.

“I sell horses down in Louisiana, my family owns a ranch.”

“Your accent is quite thick, ever thought of speech therapy so people can understand you better?” Leo furrows his brows and shakes his head slightly in surprise. No one has ever been that blunt to him before. “It might be better for your… business.” Logan clears his throat.

“He is living with Finn right now in Gryffindor.” Logan notices how his dad's expression becomes one of suspicion and untrust. Swallowing his worry he continues on. “He is a Professional Bull Rider during the summer.” His father slowly nods as he takes in the information given.

“Explains the dirty boots on my floor. Dinner is in an hour.” He turns away from them and starts walking as Leo is looking down at his freshly polished boots, they were his formal boots that rarely ever get worn. “Oh, and I hope you have another place to stay, we don’t have room in the house for you.” Leo looks up to see Logan’s dad staring at him seriously before he starts walking again. Logan is just as confused as Leo and the sister behind them. Before Logan can go after his dad Leo grabs his arm.

“Hey it’s okay, I saw a hotel just down the street I can stay at. I don’t want you to fight with your parents over me.” Logan is looking like he is going to argue back but then he sighs in defeat and nods. Leo looks back at his bags for a second before following Logan down the stairs, following a long hall into Logan’s room. It was quite small, the walls were a boring cream color that doesn’t scream Logan. Wild and vibrant Logan. The bedspread was dark burgundy and the bed was twin mattresses on a queen frame put together. Leo could see them under the short duvet. There was a lot of hand-me-down furniture in the room. Or Leo was guessing it was from how old and beat up it is, all mismatching colors and textures. The carpet was a dull brown and there was a broken closet door.

As he was taking in the room around him, which barely had enough room for them to move around, he noticed the door hinges looked as though they had been taken off and put back on a few times. He didn’t ask about it. He knew family was a sensitive subject for Logan.

“I’m sorry, he doesn’t really know how to be subtle about things.” Logan hugs Leo after closing the door that doesn’t quite shut properly. “I’ve never seen him so mean to a stranger before.”

“Is he mean to people he knows? Like you?” Logan shakes his head and Leo relaxes a bit. “This isn’t really what I expected your room to look like, it’s very” He looks around as he rubs Logan’s back and Finn is still trying to find a spot to put their bags. “Bland.”

“I was never allowed to decorate how I wanted because my parents told me it would be harder to sell when they retire and move to France where the rest of the family is. It used to be my dad’s office space before I was born. They didn’t really plan for me, but they love me and that's all I need.” Logan pulls away and flops on his bed.

“Aha!” Finn has found a place to fit their bags and looks at Leo. “Where are your bags? I found a place for all three to fit.” He smiles so proud of himself. “I tell you, playing Tetris has really helped me in my life.” Plopping his hands on his hips and leaning a little to the side he notices how quiet Leo and Logan both are. Logan is picking at his bedspread and Leo has his arms crossed leaning against the wall. “Did I miss something?”

“I’m getting a hotel room, I don’t think Logan’s dad likes me much.” Leo smiles at him, watching as Finn’s face goes from his smile to a confused frown.

“But I thought they said he could stay over the phone.”

“Papa shook his hand and told him he can’t stay, I think it's because I told him that Leo is living with you.” Logan is looking rather guilty when he looks up at them.

“Lo, babe. It wasn’t anything you said, I just have that effect on people, especially older people.” Leo takes the two sets front he door to the bed to lean down and kiss his forehead. “And I don’t mind, really it's okay.”

“I can stay with you.” Finn sits next to Logan as he speaks, jostling the bed, causing it to squeak.

“I don’t think that's a good idea. You better stay here, plus I think Lo needs you.” he smooches Finn’s forehead as well and pulls out his phone to call the hotel down the street for a reservation.

Dinner smelled amazing, walking up the stairs Leo followed the other two. The kitchen was rustic but sleek, lots of bright whites and khaki. A table is set to the right of the large granite island where all the food is set out. Leo is told to sit while Finn and Logan get a plate of food for him. Logan's parents are sitting on either side of him, his dad has changed out of his uniform to some lounge pants and a t- shirt. His mother was still in full makeup and the fancy dress and shoes from earlier. Leo knew their dynamic immediately. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair as the parents speak to each other in French not knowing that he can understand them.

“C'est un criminel, j'ai regardé son casier.” Leo acts like he isn’t listening but he can’t help but grip his pant leg under the table.

“Il essaie également de corrompre Finn. Vivre avec lui ne me semble pas bien.” It appears the parents have been gossiping about him. Sydney and Aubrey Place plates of food in front of the parents and go to sit across them side by side. Leaving two spaces open next to them.

“Les filles, éloignez-vous de lui. c'est un méchant.” Logan’s dad said, whose name Leo learned from Finn, is Maurice. He waits for Logan and Finn to sit before he relaxes, Logan setting a plate of food in front of him.

What was left he was guessing. There definitely isn’t southern hospitality up here.

“Logan, pourquoi amenez-vous ce... Mec ici. Dans notre maison.” Finn looks around confused and shares a look with Leo, who hasn’t touched his food and is looking rather upset.

“Il parle français, maman…” Logan is looking at his parents with a completely baffled look, how could they be this bold and this rude. Noelle was still missing from the table, her place already having food at it, yet she wasn't there. “Where is Noelle?”

“I’m here! Sorry I was talking to some friends.” Noelle is red in the face as she sits down at her spot, looking rather glowy… Logan cringes at the thought of what she was doing. “Dinner looks lovely Maman.”

Her mothers face completely lights up and she starts rambling on about how she made dinner. While everyone was eating, it was mostly silent. Maurice suddenly turns to Leo.

“Tell us about your family? I would like to know you better before I figure out if I want you around Finn and Logan.”

“Well… my mom works on the ranch selling the horses with me, she was a beauty queen when she was younger.” Leo notices Mary roll her eyes out of the corner of his own. It was irritating. “ My dad was an AirForce pilot but passed away a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Aubrey sends him a sad smile and Sydney nods in agreement.

“If you don’t mind me asking. How did your father pass?” Maurice wipes his face with his napkin and looks at him sincerely for the first time that night. Logan gives Leo a look that tells him to tread lightly. Leo thinks for a moment before answering, taking a bite of food so it doesn’t seem like he is stalling.

“He died from a gunshot wound, Sir.” The table goes silent for a moment but Leo just keeps eating so as to not make the awkwardness even worse. “We planted a tree for him, a Weeping Willow by the pond he loved.”

“That's very sweet.” Mary says as she lightly pats his forearm in what is supposed to be a comforting way. Leo knows she doesn’t mean anything bad so he stuffs the irritation he feels down.

“Any siblings?” Sydney tries to move the conversation along from the morbid topic of death. Her plate was finished and her napkin was covering it as she took a drink of water.

“I have a best friend Clayton, he's basically my brother.” Leo notices how Noelle stops and sees the slight alarm in her eyes, he knows better than to throw her under the bus like that so of course he won’t mention their relationship.

“Can we see a picture of him?” Sydney smiles genuinely and it makes Leo relax a bit. Talking about Clay was easy, they had so many stories. He could definitely twist them to be more appropriate. Leo nods and pulls out his phone, trying to find a good picture. He lands on one of them in their rodeo grab from last year right after Leo had his face smashed into the poll of Canadian Mist. “Oh he’s a cutie!” She smiles at the picture and Leo gives her his phone to take a better look, she leans over to show Aubrey.

“You have a good looking family.” She passed the phone to Noelle whose eyes softened at the picture but her face stayed neutral, nodding in agreement she passed the phone to Maurice. He sat there for a moment just looking at the picture, Leo wasn’t sure what he was staring at until his mouth opened.

“So it appears your mother was rather unfaithful. Obviously, you are white and I’m guessing your parents are white… yet one of her sons is black.” Leo, Finn and the siblings all sit there in shock, Mary doesn’t even flinch and just finishes her meal. That was the last straw for dinner, Leo stands up quickly snatching his phone from Maurice who was scrolling through his photos, his chair squeaks but he doesn’t care as he walks off towards the basement bathroom that he remembers passing on the way up from Logan's room. Stomping down the stairs and quietly closing the door.

“Papa! He said he was his BEST FRIEND! Someone LIKE his brother! Not his actual brother, ugh you are so mean sometimes!” Logan gets up and follows Leo, Finn is about to join him but he is asked to help with the dishes and is too afraid to say no. Logan bounds down the stairs and looks in his room first, not finding his cowboy there he heads towards the bathroom. He sees the light is on under the door and he knocks. “Leo? Sunshine? It’s Logan, can I come in?”

“One second.” He hears a slight crack in Leo’s voice and his heart just breaks, he hears a bit of shuffling and then the door is slightly opened. Leo had reached from where he was sitting on the closed toilet seat to open the door. “I didn’t mean to storm out like that, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? What he was was fucking cruel and you know it.” Logan kneels down on the cold linoleum between Leo’s legs so he can look him in the eyes. Placing his hands on his thighs he dips his head a bit to look at Leo’s downturned face. “I’m sorry he said that and I understand if you want to go home.”

“This is important to you, Sweet Pea. I won’t leave.” Leo looks up at him, his eyes are brighter than normal and Logan is guessing it's because he was either crying or tearing up before he knocked on the door.

“Leo you do so much already-”

“I’m staying Lo, I’m staying because I promised and I don’t break promises.” Leo smiles a little at him and Logans sighs. Leo is so stubborn sometimes, but Logan loves that about him. Defeated he sits back on his heels and rests his head on Leo’s thigh.

“Can I at least make you feel better?” He has an idea of what to do, running his hand up and down the long inner thigh that belongs to the beautiful man in front of him. Leo’s breath hitches for a second. Looking away from where his hand is tracing the seam of Leo’s jeans to see a blush across the blonde boy's nose. “Please?” His hand moves to palm Leo’s slowly growing tent in his jeans and smiles when he sees a nod. Getting comfortable Logan sits on his butt with his legs on either side of the base of the toilet, Leo’s feet set behind his hips.

Logan leans forward and undoes Leo’s belt and jeans pulling them down just enough that they rest on his upper thighs. He can’t help but smile at Leo’s underwear being Canadian themed. Pulling the waistband down he is just about hit in the nose but Leo’s full erection. Looking up to Leo who has his hand over his mouth to keep him from laughing he smiles.

Licking just beneath the head he watched Leo's expression change. Knowing at this angle he won’t be able to take all of Leo in his mouth he grips the base and takes the red tip into his mouth, sucking just enough to make Leo’s eyes scrunch shut as he keeps himself from making a sound. Running his tongue up the large vein on Leo’s cock he feels a hand in his hair and knows he is doing well. He finally takes as much of Leo into his mouth as he can and sucks hard in a way that would be painful to most but he knows that pain just makes it better for Leo.

After a good couple of minutes of this Leo felt like he was teetering on the edge when there was a knock on the door, not knowing if Logan hears it, he tugs his hair lightly in a way he wouldn’t durring sex to catch Logan’s attention. Logan pulls off and is about to ask what is wrong when the door handle turns, luckily for them Logan has a habit of locking the bathroom door.

“Logan? Are you in there?” It was his dad. Logan looks at Leo and gives him a quiet gesture with his finger to his lips as he uses his other hand to continue working Leo who threw his head back and covers his mouth tightly so he doesn’t make a sound. “Logan.”

“Yeah?” His voice is a bit dodgy, like he has been crying, but really it was from having a dick in his throat... but his dad didn’t need to know that.

“Are you crying? I raised you better than that, you need to be a man and come talk to me.” Maurice stomps off back up the stairs. Logan just goes back to what he was doing. Sucking Leo back do to his knuckles where his fist is holding the rest of Leo. It takes about two more minutes before Leo is cumming down his throat. After swallowing it all Logan stands up and settles himself in Leo’s lap kissing him passionately. Leo cups his cock through his pants and lets Logan grind down on his hand until he finishes into his pants. Leo is peppering Logan’s neck in kisses as he is coming down from his high.

Walking back upstairs to a rather quiet house was eerie, Leo and Logan actually find Finn and Noelle outside on the back porch by the heater just detoxing from dinner. Logan walks out first, sitting between them and sighing loudly. He is now wearing Finn’s sweatpants which are much too long on him but are slightly tight on his thighs. Leo follows after he pats down his pockets making sure he has his cigarettes and lighter because a smoke sounds amazing at the very moment.

Walking outside with his cigarette in between his lips he lights it and takes a long drag, moving to sit next to Noelle since there are only two benches outside and they both fit two people.

“You alright?” Noelle looks up from her phone. He was texting her boys and letting them know how everything went with dinner. She looks up to see Leo just staring off into the distance and decides its best not to press. “So, do you think telling Maman and Papa is a good idea after all that?” She turns her gaze to Logan who is resting his head on Finn’s shoulder with the red head's arm around his own.

“I still want to tell them, they need to know that I am happy with the loves of my life.” Leo blinks out of his disassociating stare to look at them. Logan doesn’t seem phased by calling him a ‘love of his life’ but they haven’t said the big three words to each other yet.

“Mind if we join?” Sydney and Aubrey walk over to them on the porch and perch themselves on the arms of the benches.

“Perfect timing, I actually want to tell you something.” Logan shares a glance at Leo, who nods knowing what he is going to tell them, Leo likes all the Tremblay siblings so he doesn’t mind them knowing. He knows they will support them. “You know how Finn and I are dating?”

“Yeeaaah?” They both say it at the same time and in the same way that it's almost freaky.

“We are also dating Leo.” It was silent for a few seconds before the sisters broke into giant grins.

“I told you!” Sydney shouts at Aubrey who is looking shocked but happy. “I knew the second you were getting the yeux de mort from our baby brother after you broke Leo’s teeth!” Sydney laughs a bit as Aubrey turns red.

“I didn’t mean too! Also, I’m happy for you three. You should know I’m bad at reading relationships by now.” They chat from a few seconds before the slamming of the door to the porch brings them out of their delightful bubble. Maurice is standing outside of the door looking like he is about to kill. His eyes are dangerously sharp and his breathing is fast. Walking over to the group pointing to the window behind them… that's open. Logan goes pale and Finn looks down at his hands trying to act like he isn’t there. Noelle, Sydney and Aubrey all just look at each other and decide it's best to leave. Walking towards the door giving each other worried glances.

“What! Did I just hear! You are dating this- this- this lowlife criminal?! Just because he has money does not mean he loves you Logan! He is a leech! He is dirty and will trick you into doing things for his own pleasure!” Storming over to Leo he grabs the collar of his turtle neck and yanks him forward on the bench.

Nose to nose.

“Sir I-”

“I don’t care what you have to say! You stay away from my son and his boyfriend, you whore! You are not good enough for them and will never be good enough for them… You. Are. Scum.”

“Papa! Stop it! He has never done anything to hurt us, and I know he never would! He is not ‘buying’ our love! Stop treating him so poorly, we want him just like we want each other!” Logan stands up and tries to get his dad's hand to let go of Leo’s shirt but just ends up getting pushed away.

“Logan. Stay out of this, I am protecting you because you apparently don’t know how to.” Maurice glances down at Leo’s neck where his tattoo is now exposed from Murice holding the neck of his shirt. “I bet you are covered in tattoos! I should have you arrested for trespassing on my property.” Leo’s eyes go wide and he doesn’t know what to do, he knows if he opens his mouth this will all get worse. So he stays silent. “He doesn’t even have the guts to protect himself.” He roughly lets go of Leo’s collar and turns to face Logan. “He will never be allowed in my house again after this trip, after tomorrow he will be gone and never come back.”

“Then I will never come back.” Logan and Maurice look strikingly similar, nostrils flared, hair curling wildly, cheeks flushed from anger. There was no doubt they were father and son.

“You will come back, because you are family. He is not and never will be.” He doesn’t let Logan respond before he starts stalking back towards the door, footsteps heavy making Leo’s ears ring with every step he takes.

“Leo? Can you hear me?” He blinks a couple times, finding Finn sitting next to him and holding his hand tightly. Logan is gone, probably following his dad to keep arguing. Leo didn’t want Logan to argue with his family over him. “Hey, look at me.” Leo is brought back from his thoughts once again, looking into those copper colored eyes he loves so much.

“I’m okay.” His answer was short and his hands were slightly shaking but he grips Finn's hand tighter. “I don’t want to come in between Logan’s family like this…”

“Baby, it’s going to be okay. Him and his dad's relationship has always been rocky.”

“But… They love you.” Leo is about to continue but receives a rather annoyed look from Finn.

“They only like me because… honestly I really don’t know because I have made Logan do lots of stupid stuff in college they wouldn’t approve of.” Finn gives him a soft smile and kisses his forehead. “Leo, we aren’t going anywhere. I promise.”

“I think I’m going to head to the hotel for the night, I need some alone time after that. If that's okay.” Leo stands up and tugs Finn’s hand to make him stand as well.

“Of course it’s okay, but if you need something you better call or else I’ll bury you alive.”

“Bit morbid.”

“With hugs and kisses.” Finn winks at him causing Leo to laugh a bit as they walk towards the door, Leo is checking his phone for Ubers nearby to take him to the hotel and books one. Not sparing the Tremblay parents another glance, he kisses Logan goodbye after telling him he is going to the hotel. Waving goodbye to the sisters hiding in the hallway eavesdropping on the argument in the kitchen, he takes his bags and walks out the front door.

The next morning Logan is waiting eagerly for Leo to show up for breakfast. When he does, boy oh boy does he make an entrance. Walking in the door with his arms full of shopping bags from the local stores. He is smiling wide and seems to be in a much better mood. He has gifts for all the siblings and of course his boys.

“What's this?” Maurice asks as soon as he sees the mountain of bags under their Christmas tree, they were here for the holidays after all. There were separate piles for everyone and Leo was in the middle of setting up Finn’s pile when the devil himself walked in the room.

“You said I buy love, so I bought things… with love.” Leo smirks at him and Logan tries to hide his amused smile behind his hand, walking over to Leo and gluing himself to his side. Leo looks down at him and wraps his arm around Logan, giving him a squeeze before they share a kiss much to Maurice's dismay.

“Can I have one?” Finn walks over to them with the rare shy smile on his face, Leo leans forward to give him a kiss as well. The rest of the day went rocky but better than yesterday, with Maurice staying out of the way and Logan being stuck to Leo all day with Finn occasionally joining when he isn’t dragged off to do something by the rest of the Tremblay’s. Leo went back to the hotel that night feeling much lighter. Calling his mother to wish her and the Bruss', where apparently Clayton and Thomas were, happy holidays.

They fly home tomorrow and Leo was excited. Home means he will be watching the Dumias kids with Logan, while Pascal and Celeste go off on a date trip for the weekend and Finn has to fly to Florida for a wedding.

#leo knut #logan tremblay #finn o'hara #james potter #thomas walker #Clayton Bruss #o'knutzy #o’knutzy #lumosinlove #sweater weather #coast to coast

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birdhaslostit · 4 years

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🎁🎄❄️What the Lupin Gang would do for Christmas!❄️🎄🎁

Helloooooooo Lupin fans! You may or may not remember me as that one chick who made that Halloween headcanon post a few months back, as well as the Jigen’s bangs post. I’m back with a Christmas post!!!

Please note: Personally, I really only celebrate Christmas in a non-Jesus-y way. (Which is how I’m also writing this post, because let’s be honest, do you really think Lupin is going to confession and shit? Absolutely not.) It’s purely out of habit because I was raised Catholic, but I practice witchcraft now. My family doesn’t know that though. Because of this, I considered also making posts for other winter holidays, so I could include Lupin fans that don’t celebrate Christmas. But I didn’t want to accidentally mess it up, or write something inaccurate about a holiday that I don’t celebrate. It felt disingenuous to make a Hanukkah post because I’m not Jewish and it doesn’t seem like my place, and I didn’t want to do a Yule one either, because no two people celebrate it the same way. So, I strongly encourage others to add their respective winter festivities to this post if they want to! We’re all about inclusivity here.

Without further ado:

🎁LUPIN:

I don’t feel like it needs saying, but this man goes bonkers for Christmas.

He flip-flops his choice of red or green jacket by the year. But it always comes with an equally garish Christmas-themed tie, just to make explicitly clear that this is The Christmas Jacket for the year, as opposed to the standard red/green jacket.

The hideout(s) are always decorated to the GILLS inside. It’s an odd mix of older classy decorations he’s inherited from his family, and absolutely horrendously tacky ones he’s bought himself.

Picture real branch garlands, wrapped tastefully around gilded candelabras that have been passed down through several generations. And then one of those singing, dancing stuffed animals from Walmart that plays “Jingle Bell Rock” when you squeeze its paw, right next to it.

Christmas-themed heists? You know it, baby. But he won’t steal anything on Christmas Eve or Christmas. It just isn’t in the spirit of the season, in his opinion. But he’ll leave a little something-something with his calling cards during the rest of December. A candy cane, a sprig of mistletoe, a bough of holly, etc.

Lupin despises eggnog. He loves any other Christmas drink, just not eggnog. He’s too grossed out by the idea of drinking eggs with alcohol- some things just shouldn’t be mixed.

Will not allow anyone to mention the truth about Santa Claus in his presence. Yeah, he knows, but that’s not the point. It just feels like bad luck to say it out loud. The harder Jigen tries to debate with him that Santa isn’t real, the harder he digs in his heels that “of course he is you absolute Scrooge, how dare you! If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.”

Favorite Christmas Songs: Anything peppy!

Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney

Step Into Christmas by Elton John

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee

We Need a Little Christmas by Percy Faith and his Orchestra

A Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives

All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey

Santa Claus’ Party by Les Baxter

Favorite Christmas Drinks: Literally anything except eggnog.

Favorite Christmas Foods: Anything obscenely sugary. Especially gingerbread men and other decorated pastries.

Favorite Christmas Activities: Loves to ice skate and make gingerbread houses! But his houses usually look fairly pathetic, no matter how hard he tries.

Favorite Christmas Movie(s):

The Grinch (Jim Carrey version)

Home Alone

Scrooged

Christmas Gifts: The king of gag gifts, but he also gives surprisingly thoughtful presents too. He’s the kind of guy that would get a person something they mentioned once offhandedly that they really liked, and he’d go back and get it for them.

🎅JIGEN:

Lupin always wants to decorate the hideout(s) the second Halloween ends, but it never happens. With Jigen being the only American in the gang, he always puts a stop to it in order to preserve the quickly-disappearing border between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What can I say, dude loves his Thanksgiving excuse to eat like shit and do nothing for a day. Even if it is a fucked-up holiday, historically speaking.

But once the Thanksgiving meal is over, he gives Lupin the okay to go crazy. He’s pretty stoked about Christmas too, but too full of turkey to contribute, so he just watches Lupin hang up Christmas lights everywhere while he lays on the couch and digests.

Jigen likes Christmas a lot, but like, in a normal person kind of way. Nowhere near Lupin’s insane level. He’s surprisingly open about his enthusiasm too. The average person would think he doesn’t really care about Christmas much (or anything else really), but to the gang, Christmastime is the most openly excited they’ve ever seen him.

One year’s Christmas-themed heist involved Jigen dressing up as a mall Santa as a part of the plan. The gang powdered his beard, gave him a pillow for his stomach, and sent him on his way. Everything went surprisingly smoothly, and he actually did pretty well with the kids. At first they were a little intimidated, and Jigen was kind of nervous- but he gave them all candy canes and they changed their minds pretty quickly.

Jigen enjoyed it a lot, actually... to the point that he may have potentially started volunteering to be the local mall Santa. Every year during December, he leaves for a day or two on “business.” Nobody in the gang can prove it though, and trust me, they’ve tried.

Favorite Christmas Songs: The classics and the chill ones, with a few rock ones thrown in for a little kick.

Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby

Sleigh Bells by Gene Autry

(There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays by Perry Como

Jingle Bells by Frank Sinatra

Caroling, Caroling by Nat King Cole

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow by Dean Martin

Silver Bells by Dean Martin

Happy Holiday by Bing Crosby

Run Rudolph Run by Chuck Berry

Merry Christmas Baby by Bruce Springsteen (Sang this once after too much eggnog and will never live it down)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by the Barenaked Ladies (He’s not into all the Jesus-y stuff, but it’s pretty catchy.)

Favorite Christmas Drinks: Jigen is ALL. ABOUT. THAT. NOG. He’ll make his cup a little stronger than everyone else’s.

Favorite Christmas Foods: He really likes candy canes, especially the mini ones. He’ll keep a few in his pocket with his cigs, and switch between them depending on his mood. Out of habit, it’ll usually dangle out of his mouth like a cigarette would.

Favorite Christmas Activities: Watching Christmas movies and laughing at Lupin’s shitty gingerbread houses.

Favorite Christmas Movies:

Anything that’s on at the moment, really. He likes to lounge by the TV, and he’s not picky.

He has a soft spot for A Charlie Brown Christmas though.

A Christmas Story, solely because of the BB gun.

Scrooged, because Bill Murray’s hilarious.

Christmas Gifts: Something practical and useful that the person never realized they needed until they opened the box.

☃️GOEMON:

Goemon wasn’t originally a huge fan of Christmas. Shocking, I know.

He now enjoys some aspects of it, and tolerates others. He likes the idea of giving heartfelt gifts and spending time with loved ones as a tradition, but dislikes the cheesy commercial aspect of Christmas.

He already enjoys the snow and walking through the forest, so the gang usually commissions him to pick a tree for them and cut it down with Zantetsuken. (If they’re somewhere where that’s an option.)

Unbeknownst to the rest of the gang, he will always replant the tree he cut down, and he will wrap something cozy around the bottom of the sapling to keep it safe. Yes, this was directly inspired by A Charlie Brown Christmas. No, he will not admit to this.

Favorite Christmas Songs: The instrumentals, and a few he’d rather die than admit to liking.

The Nutcracker March from The Nutcracker

Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker

Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental) by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

Greensleeves by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

Last Christmas by Wham! (He likes the storyline and the romantic aspect of it.)

Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid (He likes that it was for a good cause, even if it has its flaws.)

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Again, flawed, but he enjoys the intended message of peace. Also, represents Japan on the side with Yoko Ono.)

White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes

Favorite Christmas Drinks: Surprisingly fond of hot cocoa. Heavy on the whipped cream and marshmallows.

Favorite Christmas Foods: Doesn’t really like eating gingerbread men, but enjoys decorating them. They’re always pristine, like something you’d get in a bakery.

Favorite Christmas Activities: See above. Also enjoys going out in the snow, and making ice sculptures with Zantetsuken.

Favorite Christmas Movies: Refuses to admit he likes any of these.

Any of the classic Rankin Bass claymation specials.

Any other animated ones for kids. Has a soft spot for A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Polar Express.

A few of those cheesy Hallmark ones.

Christmas Gifts: Something small and sentimental he saw while walking by a store that reminded him of the person he’s giving it to. Nothing extravagant, but thoughtful nonetheless.

⛸FUJIKO:

Fujiko decorates the tree. Period. Lupin cannot be trusted to do this on his own. Goemon picks the tree, Lupin and Jigen put it in the stand, and from there, it’s all Fujiko. The ornaments, lights, and tree skirt are all perfectly color/theme coordinated, and arranged like a pristine store display.

She also has a few ornaments that she bought for each specific member of the gang. Lupin’s is a monkey (he was not pleased, but he’s whipped for her, so he let her keep it). Jigen’s is a carved wooden pistol. Goemon’s is porcelain, with hand-painted sakura blossoms on it. She bought one for Zenigata too as a joke one year- a tiny bowl of ramen noodles.

Her ornament? The star on top of the tree, because she’s the star of the show, baby. It’s actually a snowflake, made of the finest crystal she could steal.

Favorite Christmas Songs: Pop music and Motown’s finest.

Underneath The Tree by Kelly Clarkson

All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey

Santa Tell Me by Ariana Grande

This Christmas by Donny Hathaway

What Christmas Means To Me by Stevie Wonder

Sleigh Ride by The Ronettes

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love

A Marshmallow World by Darlene Love

I Like A Sleighride (Jingle Bells) by Peggy Lee

Favorite Christmas Drinks: Hot chocolate and mulled wine.

Favorite Christmas Foods: Loves baking and eating gingerbread men. She lets Goemon decorate them with her. Hers have lots of candy and sprinkles on them, while his are just icing.

Favorite Christmas Activities: Along with baking, ice skating! She’s the best at it out of the whole group. None of the guys are particularly good at it, but she makes them go with her at least once regardless.

Favorite Christmas Movies:

Hallmark ones, solely to make fun of them.

Babes In Toyland, but only the 1986 one, because it has Keanu Reeves in it, and “I don’t care if I’m your girlfriend, Lupin. In this house, we support Keanu Reeves.”

Christmas Gifts: Something expensive/extravagant that will make the person think of her every time they use it.

🎄ZENIGATA:

Zenigata is the second biggest Christmas enthusiast, just behind Lupin.

He doesn’t get to settle down and decorate anything really, since he’s always running after the gang, but he does lots of other little things to celebrate instead. Like getting hot chocolate instead of coffee, tuning the squad car radio to the Christmas station, getting an air freshener that smells like gingerbread, and wearing a festive scarf and gloves with his trench coat to keep out the cold.

In years past, Zenigata still had to work on Christmas Eve/Christmas, even if Lupin wasn’t out stealing anything. Lupin found out and thought that was a little harsh of ICPO, so he came up with a plan.

Each year he sends a calling card to the station with the conditions that only Zenigata can come to investigate. Zenigata does some research, shows up to the location on Christmas Eve, and every year, nothing’s there except for a neatly wrapped present from Lupin.

Zenigata keeps the present as “evidence,” goes back to the station, and they give him Christmas off to go investigate on his own, in case Lupin tries anything else. Lupin never does, but the station doesn’t know that. Bada bing, bada boom, Lupin just got Zenigata a vacation.

Zenigata never catches on, bless his heart.

Favorite Christmas Songs: Ones he can sing/hum along to in the squad car.

The Man With All The Toys by The Beach Boys

Celebrate Me Home by Kenny Loggins

Feliz Navidad by José Feliciano (Does Zenigata understand Spanish? Absolutely not. Does he get the point and think it’s festive? Darn right.)

A Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer by Dean Martin

Winter Wonderland by the Eurythmics

Silver Bells by Dean Martin

Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season by Andy Williams

Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town by Gene Autry

December by Earth, Wind, and Fire (Let him have this okay, it’s a good song and he gets made fun of for liking it by the rest of ICPO)

Skating by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

Favorite Christmas Drinks: Hot cocoa and eggnog, but not strong eggnog like Jigen’s.

Favorite Christmas Foods: Anything, really. It’s something besides cup noodles, so he’s grateful. Lupin’s gift always includes lots of various Christmas goodies because of this.

Favorite Christmas Activities: Zenigata enjoys the snow in theory, but doesn’t handle the cold well. So he likes to watch the snow from his window while he listens to Christmas music in his squad car and sips his hot cocoa.

Favorite Christmas Movies: He doesn’t really have a lot of time to sit down a watch a movie, with how hard he works. But he remembers a few from when he was younger, and he really likes those. His favorite is Frosty the Snowman.

Christmas Gifts: Something inexpensive because ICPO vastly underpays this poor man, and he’s always embarrassed because of that, but it’s always something super sweet and heartfelt.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! And for those who don’t celebrate it, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! <3

#lupin #lupin iii #lupin the 3rd #lupin the third #rupan sansei #daisuke jigen #jigen daisuke #fujiko mine #fujiko #mine Fujiko #koichi zenigata #zenigata #goemon #goemon ishikawa xiii #ishikawa goemon xiii #Christmas #Xmas #obligatory Christmas post right after thanksgiving

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cwopf · 4 years

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MY THEORY OF GILLOVNY

What if these two actually are together in real life. What if it IS a possibility. As lunatic as it seems, I can’t help but think about it. I have a life of my own, believe me, yet I keep coming back to this thought every once in a while, because I admit I’ve never seen anything like it before and I am not someone who gives even a flying fuck about celebrities. But these two make me wonder and I don’t know what is it about them, but I somehow want to believe in them.

What if their undeniable chemistry truly is real and their love is so much more than just a friendship.

What if Peter Morgan truly is nothing but a colleague and some kind of publicity she caught herself in, because even with all the “proof” of them being a couple, something just doesn’t sit right.

Her behavior, the gestures around him, it just doesn’t seem like a well loved, happy beyond dream kinda woman, I don’t physically see it. I truly don’t get the “love of my life” vibe. Do you?

Stiff, reserved and all in all a bit cold even, they truly make me wonder if it might be just a PR stunt. And, look, if I saw her crazy happy with a guy I’d be happy for her, totally. But, this? Nah, I don’t buy this shit.

Which, when I look back at all the gillovny moments, as crazy as it was, makes me believe that it was more than just an acted out exaggeration. And not even just a deep, year long friendship.

What if it truly passed all of that and became a romance at some point, and a big one. It certainly did look like it at a time. And while it currently looks like it had already ended, it made me think - what if that’s the point?

It takes a fool not to notice their ways towards each other, and even with all the denials, which sure make it hard to believe, when you see it for yourself it naturally comes as a possibility. It seems like a waste not to pursue something like that.

If we go back to the hints. The random sightings. Some might be made up, I am sure, but then some seem just crazy accurate.

What’s with the random dates in their lives, how can it all be so synchronized. Is it just random luck or is it an ode or a message to one another of some sort?

Why were they spotted in the same places so many times, randomly and out of their professional time together. Why the visits on sets, the airport sightings, the deleted tweets that seemed to reveal a little bit too much, the supposed holiday trips to the same destinations.

Why do people in the biz say stuff like “You mean Gillian and David? They’re not married, but they have been together for a while now.” Why does a random person (who apparently works for tv) on fb wish them a happy bday, then posts about how they have been together for a while now and how it was a nice surprise. And why would someone just say that out of the blue? Yep, it probably meant nothing. But, again. What if there was some truth to that? And that was only a fucking year ago.

How do two people accidentally get crippled at the same time? Also the stories from that same event, of how they love each other and their gestures towards one other, them arriving together and entering separately? What the hell are people noticing? Wasn’t she already kinda supposedly taken by then?

Why does she always wear the link bracelet, she wore it in their “good times” and it truly seems like a gift from D, which, of course, we will never know matter of fact, but it just feels like it. She has it on constantly, it seems so telling. She also wears it on red carpets with PM all the time and on almost every photoshoot. What IF it is from DD, wouldn’t that say something?

Also the necklace with a link he once wore on the stage of one of his concerts, could that very link be a part of her chain? If yes, then that is some deeply romantic shit.

Also the recent interviews, one in particular comes to mind. First, her mentioning her supposed boyfriend subtly and only saying the name out loud when asked about it, then proceeding to talk about her “partner” and telling a story of how they were talking about the aging process, but how they respect it because they are both going through it. Why does it feel like the mentioned totally fits someone else, like she’d discuss such a thing with someone who has been a part of her life for a long time and she had inevitably experienced this process with during the years. Does this click for anyone else too, or am I crazy and making up shit?

This was the moment when I stopped to think if just maybe there was a crazy possibility of David still being in her life.

Why does she speak about it being so good not living with her man and how she doesn’t see him that often, but when she does it’s special and it works for them.

While she must have been seeing her “current man” on set all the time. Do you notice how a lot of stuff that are supposedly about PM just don’t add up? Also, again, does the story make you think about someone else as well?

Also, have to throw this in here. The Christmas Jonathan Ross show. The sudden David (dick) reference. The Rob Lowe (apparently a good friend of David’s) saying “not far off from what I’ve been told” then both of them giggling together, almost as if an inside joke. The kind that gives off the vibe of making you wonder if the size thing’s something she’d accidentally blab out and brag about jokingly at some dinner party they once shared.

Why does she usually not give a fuck about half the stuff said, yet she would feel so shaken by people’s disbelief to publicly put it out on twitter about PM being the “love of her life” just to defend that idea? Why does it not seem like her at all? Why do I feel making a joke or being sarcastic about it would fit her more?

Is her SM being totally under control?

Maybe the penis and yoni of the day (along with Nelson) are one of the rare outlets right now, even that being some pre-approved idea for having it seem like she’s being her regular self, cause that’s something that we know fits her character.

But when you think about it, it is still a mini subtle commercial for SexEd. Which I love, yet...Netflix. Again.

Also, the constant mentioning of Netflix along with PM in her stories, desperately trying to fit him somewhere. Like the “what do you eat during quarantine” and bam: “when me and Pete hosted a dinner we froze a chocolate cake...” Riiight. Is it just me, or does it seem like trying way too hard?

Which makes me think of all the contrary. If we go back to the past Gillovny fuckery...“he’s in the shower” and “I’m with schmoopie” shirts and “chewie’s girlfriend” and the twitter saga. What if it was intentionally done that way to make people think “what if”, but obviously take it as a joke, because of course that’s what it is. But was it? Maybe they just knew no one would truly buy it so they could play around for a little bit and actually be a couple for a minute, make out on Kimmel and fuck around on twitter. Propaganda? Maybe.

Some truth in that? God damn it, almost feels like it. Sure felt way more natural, sexy and loving than any of the stuff going on today.

What if we hate MP for no reason, what if she’s just truly a fucking assistant, a help and nothing but it. What if G hugged her after the play in London out of gratitude, because she’s just a prop they need to act this shit out. What if it’s all a big shitshow, but a shitshow nonetheless.

What if I will say the silliest shit of all time and boldly assume...that behind all of this which we do not understand, D&G are still together and fine. What if it was meant to feel like the end to us. But they are there, in secret, because it’s somehow better for them, because they prefer it that way.

What if the shoe pic of “working from home in my Dune London shoes” a day prior to his 60th birthday is just another way to turn people away from that idea and subtly make them not even question anything, while in reality she is with him, somewhere, celebrating his 60th birthday. And things are much brighter for them than what they seem.

I might be so wrong, so off. But something is going on in the background and there are way too many things I do not buy.

Also, it was honestly more probable to me that they were once together, but fell apart somewhere along the way, I believed that and it totally seemed like a probable scenario.

Until the very subtle, yet interesting stuff that have been going on made me question it again, maybe it’s silly, but when I connect the dots, like the constant bracelet wearing, the talking about a partner and not mentioning the name, but referencing stuff that feel completely Gillovny, aging with someone, long distance shit, random people still stating “they have been together for a while now, nice surprise”. Maybe it’s a load of bullshit, but it also just makes it seem like he still might be there, somewhere, after all.

How the hell did I end up here? I ask myself this constantly. I still have no idea.

Yes, it is so fucking crazy. But this is where I leave this at.

#gillovny #david duchovny #gillian anderson #gillian and david #the x files

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itzagothamcitysiren · 4 years

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Welcome to the Family

Happy Mother’s day to all the mothers and motherly figures out there! This story is kind of inspired by my relationship with my older sister, who was honestly more of a mother to me than our actual mom. She’s awesome and I wish I could see her today but quarantine sucks lol.

Also, too me Logan Lerman is Tim. He’s just so awkward and cute and nerdy, and I think he’d be a great Tim.

Mother’s Day pt.1

“What the hell are you doing, Drake?” Damian’s snippy voice cut through the empty living room like a knife.

The once comfortably silent room, now held an awkward and thick tension as Tim Drake popped his head up from his work, annoyed at being interrupted. He looked back down at the paper and other supplies cluttered around the coffee table for a moment, not even embarrassed at being caught. It was a normal thing that he started doing shortly after moving into Wayne Manor all those years ago; Damian was still the one who was the odd one out.

“Making Mother’s Day cards; what else does it look like?” Tim rolled his eyes, motioning his hand with a slight wave to the finished card at the edge of the table. That one was meant for his mother, he made sure to finish it first, wanting to drop it off at the post office tomorrow after school so it’d get to her in time.

“Tt.” Damian shook his head, crossing his arms against his chest. He took a seat at the other end of the couch to look over the older boy’s work.

Damian Wayne wasn’t the type for such sentiment. He scoffed at the idea of Mother’s Day. Could you just imagine him, an al Ghul, giving his mother a card? Though, he didn’t put it past someone as pathetic as Drake to be one to celebrate the commercial holiday. Even Grayson and his father celebrated, and their mothers were dead. They’d both journey to the cemetery and placed roses on their mother’s grave. But that made much more sense to Damian, than making a card, they were paying their respects, while Drake was just giving his mother a worthless piece of paper.

“A simple piece of paper will really satisfy your mother? Tt.” Damian leaned back into the couch, arms still crossed but now lifting his leg to rest on his other thigh.

“Yes. It. Will.” Tim gritted, not in the mood for Damian’s taunting and insults; he was actually in a genially good mood for once.

He moved to open his mouth again, clenching the marker in his hand tightly; who did this kid think he was? He was glad the kid was over his phase of trying to actively kill him but he still found pleasure in making Tim’s life miserable. He tried closing his mouth, not wanting to get into it again but the third Robin still felt the need to defend himself against the spoiled blood son. He pushed the disappointed look Bruce would surely show him away after the old man would end of having to break up another fight between the two boys.

“I’m not just giving her card; I’m also sending her a gift card to her favorite restaurant and another one for a trip to this day spa. It makes her happy and since I’m not around I want to make sure she knows I miss her. You know like normal mother and son stuff, not that you would know anything about that.”

Tim cursed to himself as soon as the bitter and smug words left his mouth. Shit. He went too far; the dead silence that followed told him that much. He didn’t dare look up to see Damian’s face. He could practically feel the scowl, the deadly glare, beaming into the side of his head; it was like he was being blasted by Superman’s laser beams. Maybe that was being a little dramatic but Tim knew he shouldn’t have said that. He was better than stooping that low and saying something that brash. Even with the pair being fair from close, barely even being on speaking terms, Tim still knew how sensitive Damian was about his relationship with Talia.

He was half expecting to feel a punch come down from him, or a shove, anything that would physically harm him in response but much to Tim’s surprise he was just met with Damian’s signature sound, ‘Tt’, and then him shifting in his place. Tim scratched the back of his neck, unsure why Damian reacted so calmly, not that his body and pride weren’t complaining. He mentally shrugged and went back to making his second card.

The younger boy watched as Tim got back to work. He wanted to lash out at Drake’s dig at him and his mother’s relationship but Damian didn’t want to give Drake the satisfaction of knowing that he was insulted. He thought back to his father’s speech after their last fight about how they both needed to learn how to be the bigger person. Damian rolled his eyes at the memory and instead quirked an eyebrow up as he watched Tim begin to get back into making what appeared to be a second Mother’s Day card.

“Correct me if I’m wrong but last time I checked you only had one mother, Drake.” Damian said, nodding towards the second card.

“You would be correct.” Tim nodded, not looking up this time as he spoke. He reached for the blue Sharpie instead, filling in the bubble letters he wrote with it.

“Then why are you making another card? Did you realize how stupid that other one is and are starting over?” Damian pressed, leaning back once again to get comfortable.

Tim huffed, already over this conversation. It was times like this that he wished Dick and Halley still lived at home. Damian would be Dick’s shadow if he was here and not bugging him like this. With Halley, she’d swoop in the moment she felt a fight forming and would’ve gotten the demon spawn to shut up by now. But now that they were the only two left living at home Damian was all Tim’s problem. Maybe it was time to go back to the Titans?

“No, my mother’s card is done. This is for someone else.” Tim said, using his minimum art skills to draw a decent flower next to the y in Day. He huffed again when Damian responded immediately asking who specifically it was for. Tim let the marker drop from his grasp, losing his nerve. Rubbing his head, he pushed the hair fallen in front of his face out of his face, letting out a deep breath. Why did he care what he was doing? Damian has shown more interest in his current activity than he’s shown in anything in Tim’s life since they met. “It’s for Halley.”

“Tt.” Damian rolled his eyes, smirking. “Halley isn’t your mother, Drake.”

“No, but since I’ve moved here, she’s always been there when I need her and she’s done so much for me so this is my way of thanking her and showing that I love her.” Tim let himself get cocky again, snipping right back at Damian. He put emphasis in his speech, knowing that not only was it true but it would rub Damian the wrong way. “I do this for her every year and every year she gets all mushy and loves it.”

Damian narrowed his eyes at the older boy. Was Drake questioning his relationship with his older sister? They may only be half siblings but that was more blood than she shared with anyone in the bat family. When the pair first found out they shared the same mother, Damian had been less then enthused about no longer being an only child and furious at his mother for failing to mention her having a child with Deathstroke. Halley had been just as shocked and angry, but at her father for never telling her. She wasn’t surprised but still angry. Though unlike him, she quickly rushed to try and get closer to the boy. Even though Damian wanted no part of it, Damian was clearly her favorite brother; right?

Drake said this was a yearly thing but why has he never noticed before? He did know that they would occasionally spend what they grossly called Mandatory Sibling Bonding Day together, where’d they’d go out just the two of them, much to the annoyance of Damian. He didn’t understand why she wasted her time with Drake; what could they possible do for fun together? Granted, she did do the same with Grayson whenever they were around at the same time. The pair of them also being close, Grayson having been the one to help get her out of her old life with her father, Slade Wilson.

Damian thought about how his sister had a close personal relationships with all the Robin’s and Batgirl’s, even the failure that Damian deemed as Stephanie Brown; Halley was close to them all, all but him. Though that wasn’t completely true, they did have somewhat of a bond. They both had what she phased as shitty-ass parents, her father being Deathstroke himself while his was the Dark Knight, and they shared the same mother, Talia al Ghul. They’d never known about the other until Damian was brought to live with his father by their mother and Halley had long been taken in by Dick and Bruce.

He still remembered their first meeting, they hadn’t yet known about sharing the same mother but yet she was still eager to accept him. He of course didn’t share her gusto, especially after Slade revealed that Talia was her mother after he attacked the League of Assassin’s and killed his grandfather. Damian wasn’t keen on having an actual sibling, especially one with the blood of Deathstroke. But they also shared the same al Ghul blood and was quite the efficient fighter. But they were both incredibly set in their ways and persistent, as she was dead set on getting the younger boy to open up while he was dead set to prove that he was the most worthy al Ghul.

It infuriated him enough that she said she didn’t care about being an al Ghul, having no memories of being with the League of Assassin’s, as Slade and Talia agreed that she would go off to live with her father for her training. Damian said she was unworthy of the blood they shared and she didn’t deserve it. Though even now, he wouldn’t admit it but sometimes he swore he could still feel the pain from the beating she gave him when he tried to kill her in her sleep his first few months staying in the manor whenever he looked her way.

That was something he admired about his sister, again not like he would ever admit it, but her persistence was something he looked up to and even came to appreciate. Even after trying to kill her, being cruel, and treating her like how she treats Drake, at first even worse, she never gave up on him; a feat that no one else could say they’ve come close too; perhaps Grayson, but there were times where even the star-child of Bruce Wayne’s collection of wayward children would walk away from Damian’s outbursts because he simply had enough of the all give an no take. But not Halley; she’d stay every single time and with that she’d even give him a smile at the end of it.

She understood what it was like. Being raised by Slade Wilson was basically the same as being raised by Ra’s al Ghul. They never had a conversation about it, Damian always calling her a fool, she didn’t know what his childhood was like and then brushing her off. But who was Damian kidding? She made her first kill by age eight, so did Damian. She had expectations placed on her that no child should’ve been held up to, as did Damian. They shared bruises, scars and nightmares.

Grayson had tried with him, after his father failed but Halley was the one who truly helped him adjust to this new life he found himself in without even knowing it. What Grayson and his father didn’t understand was that you just couldn’t stop being who you were raised to be in a second, it took time, and Halley had been through the same transition. Granted she was looking to escape the life she had with her father whereas Damian was forced to be with his by his mother, but there were just some habits that where hard to break.

“You good there?” Drake’s voice cut Damian out of his thought process.

Damian snapped out of it, narrowing his eyes down at the card, noting Tim had stopped working on it and was looking at Damian as if he was a frozen computer screen. Scoffing, standing up to his feet, he uncrossed his arms, pointing a finger at the card for his sister. Trying to hid the fact that Drake caught him in such a deep thought, he cleared his throat before sneering,

“Her favorite color is purple, not red.”

Tim watched, mouth left agape as Damian made his way out of the room without another word. He took another look down at the card and grunted, reaching for a new piece of paper, getting ready to start all over again. What a kid, he thought as he got back to work.

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thepermanentrainpress · 3 years

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THE PERMANENT RAIN PRESS INTERVIEW WITH AZRIEL DALMAN

He may only be 7 years old, but don’t let numbers fool you. Azriel (Azi) Dalman already has nearly thirty credits to his name! The accomplished young artist from Vancouver has had a big 2020, but there’s no slowing down for Azi, who has a number of exciting upcoming projects to share with the world.

Your older brother, Aias, is also an actor. While you are only 7 years old, tell us about your interest in following his footsteps, and what made you want to start auditioning for film/TV?

I loved seeing the completed films my brother was in but I didn’t really understand how he got into them. One day, I was 3 maybe, we went to a commercial audition for my brother and the Casting Director came into the waiting room and asked the kids to practice singing “Old MacDonald.” I knew the song and sang it also. They took the kids in to audition as a group and I asked why this was happening. My mom said it was because they were going to see who should be in the commercial where they sing it. I realized what an audition was then, it meant they were trying out to see who got to be on the video. I asked if I could go do it too and my mom said no because it was not my audition, so I asked if I could get auditions too. After that I got an agent. I never got to audition by singing “Old MacDonald” though so I guess that ship has sailed.

What are your favourite movies or characters?

I love Wall-E and Soul for cartoons. For TV Characters I like Jim and Dwight from The Office a lot. I used to want to be Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and I think I definitely look like him! And of course I love the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe)!

What is your favourite snack from catering? Is there a food item that you’re most excited to see on the daily menu on-set?

My favourite is a drink, it’s the iced tea. I also like M&Ms but I’m only supposed to have the yellow or orange ones or my mouth will change colours which annoys the people who do makeup... I don’t want to stress them out. I like beef jerky and ramen bowls too but they usually hide those on the truck so you have to ask for them special. For lunch I like trying the new things but my favourite most recent new food was crunchy pork! The 3rd ADs are so nice and deliver the food to my trailer but I like to go for a walk after we eat in the trailer and say hi to the catering people and look at the dessert. On this last project, they learned I liked watermelon on the first day and kept keeping special watermelon for me.

You recently wrapped Coyote Creek Christmas, your first Hallmark Christmas Movie! Congratulations! You worked opposite Ryan Paevey (as your father) and Janel Parrish, tell us about your experience working with Ryan and Janel.

Ryan and Janel are the best humans. They are both down to earth, kind, patient, friendly, funny, loving, talented, and FUN. It was so much fun to work with them because they treated me like a real friend and with a lot of respect. They included me in all of their talks and fun, and never made me feel like I was annoying them because I am a kid. I was very excited to see them every day and now I ask to see their Instagram posts because I love looking at their pictures! I am not surprised they work a lot, they are so good at acting and being around them is so easy. Ryan knows everything about bugs and Pokémon. Both of them are obsessed with dogs and when they saw someone walk by with a dog, they would hug and kiss the dogs... random dogs! It was really funny. They taught me a lot of acting tips also, both on purpose and by accident.

We saw on Instagram that Ryan took you to see Free Guy at the movie theater! Was it easy for you to bond as father-son?

It was easy and instant and it feels like I’ve always known Ryan as a real uncle or something. Sometimes when I am someone’s kid in a movie, I have to do real acting to pretend I am their kid, not because they aren’t nice but because I don’t know them well and I don’t really get to know them too well on the project. With Ryan I didn’t really have to do any acting to pretend I knew him, because I got to know him fast.

What can you share about your character, Noah Bailey?

I don’t think I can say too many spoilers, but I will say that Noah gets to be sarcastic and funny, and I love that. I don’t get to be funny on a MOW (movie of the week) usually, I just get to be cute or scared or sad. Noah was supposed to be a 10-year-old so I got to do some smart lines! And we have some funny scenes too. Ryan said one of the scenes we have together is his favourite scene he has ever done because it’s so funny and cute, and I thought that was really cool.

You can now cross this career goal off your list! Why was a Hallmark Christmas Movie on your bucket list; what do you (and your family) enjoy about them each holiday season?

Christmas movies are the kind of movies you watch every year like a tradition and I love things that are a tradition. My family lives in Vancouver, Canada but MOST of my family lives in America so we don’t get to see them at Christmas. I wanted to be in a Christmas movie so my family far away could see me on the TV at Christmas when they are missing me and so I can watch the movie with my kids when I’m a grown up and say “haha that is me!” For Christmas my family puts up a tree and we eat really good food. We also watch Christmas movies like Rankin/Bass movies, Home Alone, and Die Hard which is definitely a Christmas movie. I basically love everything about Christmas, especially the decorating. My birthday is 2 days after Christmas so I think I’m a Christmas Boy for sure.

Is it funny to see Christmas decorations and fake snow in the summer?

It was a little bit funny but it was also confusing! My brain kept forgetting what season it was. My mom warned me over and over again with every Christmas movie audition that it would be hot, but the joke was on her because we actually had some days that were cold! There were only one or two reallllly hot outside days. We got very lucky. I think the times it was hot on set it was mostly because of the gear and no air conditioning being on. Air conditioning is too loud for movies, I think. It wrecks the sound or something.

You are set to star in the short film Dragon Fruit. What can you share about this project?

Dragon Fruit is going to be so good. The Director, Jeremy Brown, is really nice and smart and made the whole experience really special for all the actors. His props and special effects are amazing... he makes them almost all himself... and the film is going to be... guess what... a sci-fi! It’s post-apocalyptic. A funny thing about it is that I am very dirty in the film so I would go to set clean and they would basically put fake dirt all over me and make my hair messy, then when I left they would clean me up! On one of the shoot dates I had to do a live interview in the middle of the day for another project, so they had to make me dirty, clean me up, and then make me dirty again, and then clean me up again!

Yvonne Chapman will play your mother. She is remarkable in the CW’s Kung Fu as Zhilan. Did it surprise you to see her as the villain in the show?

I was shocked she was a villain because in real life she is definitely NOT a villain type, she is so nice. She is obviously very good at acting! But I am not surprised she is so tough in that show because she does some really tough things in Dragon Fruit too! Yvonne is really nice to work with also, she sits and talks to me and makes jokes with me. I am wrapped on Dragon Fruit now which is sort of sad, because we did it for like 6 months or something, but at least it means the film will be out soon.

You have a part in the action sci-fi Moonfall out next year, and you even made it into the teaser trailer! How exciting! While you likely cannot say much about Sonny Child, what can you share about your initial reaction to booking this movie?

Everything about Moonfall was very exciting. The audition was one of the first ones I got after the forced break by COVID and when we saw it was in Montreal and they were auditioning kids all over Canada we thought it was a long shot, but auditions are opportunities that can be very rare, so you should always do an audition if you are comfortable with it, and always do your best. Anyway yeah, this one was far from Vancouver so when I booked it, we were extra shocked and grateful. Honestly even after the booking, we were not sure it would really happen because of the virus and how things changed every day, so we did not even believe it would happen until we were on the plane! Montreal was the best, I loved it there so much, and I hope I get to work at Grande Studios again!

Did you get to meet and interact with your director, Roland Emmerich? What did you learn from him, and had you (or maybe your parents!) watched any of his previous films?

Yes of course, Roland was the Director so he directed me! Before we left, I watched Independence Day and I was very impressed and thought “This guy really knows what he is doing! I better know my role well!” Roland was very nice and so was Harald (Kloser). They both gave me lots of compliments and I loved that! It was very full-on too, I worked every minute of my time on set there with the exception of my legal breaks and lunch. I loved it so much and I hope I will get to work with Roland on another project someday. I don’t know how to specifically describe what I learned without spoilers, but yeah it was a huge learning opportunity.

What is your favourite object you have gotten to take home from any set?

It’s impossible to choose just one! These are in no order, ok? The first thing is actually TECHNICALLY a lot of things because I often get to take home wardrobe from my character’s “closet” when we wrap. I am obsessed with clothes and was given really cool clothing from the costumers on many sets. Most recently I got a mint hoody I love. I audition in those clothes a lot for good luck. The second thing is a special prop that Jeremy Brown MADE me on Dragon Fruit as a wrap gift. There is a super cool secret weapon in the movie that I will not spoil, and Jeremy MADE me a safer toy version of it. Before my mom saw it was a toy version, she looked very scared when he handed it to me! Third, there are two special items Noah Bailey ALWAYS has with him in Coyote Creek Christmas (no spoilers!) and Ryan, David Strasser (the Director), and Antonio Cupo (the Executive Producer) presented them to me TO KEEP AS GIFTS at wrap in front of the whole crew. It was very special. I am saving these things forever, even some of the clothes! AND one more ok? Fourth, I get to keep the signs that say my name on my set chair and/or trailer door during projects. I hang those up on my wall in my room.

Is there a dream role or character you would like to play in the future? If not character, are there any specific film/TV genres or franchises you would like to be in?

Ok so here’s the thing. I had a few wishes that I wanted to come true in acting... one was the Christmas movie... and one was to play a very specific other actor’s sibling in something. GUESS WHAT? Both those things came true in 2021. Do you know the odds of that sibling thing coming true... my mom said it seemed impossible! But it did come true SOMEHOW. So now I am setting my goals super high and not worrying about how impossible they seem or how many there are. My biggest next goal is to be in Marvel ANYTHING. And you know what, I think Ryan should be in Marvel too, so I think my next goal is to be in Marvel with Ryan! I also want to be a voice of a video game character pretty badly! I also want to do some comedy!

What are your favourite places to visit or eat at in Vancouver?

I am obsessed with sushi and Korean food and lately my favourite place is Shabusen Yakiniku House because you can get both. There’s also a place on Granville Street called The Colony that has a bunch of old arcade games and I love that place too but we haven’t been since before COVID. I hope it’s still there.

You also enjoy other forms of arts like ballet, reading, and writing comics. How do you find the time for all your activities, school, and your growing career in film?

Oh I have a lot of free time. It’s weird. It sounds like I do a lot of stuff but lots of other kids tell me they do like 10 activities really well! I don’t want to do 10 activities because I really like relaxing, so instead of doing like 10, I want to do a few and just do them really well. Ballet is great because I feel like a ninja in the clothes, I don’t have to audition to do it, and it’s definitely a sport. Reading and writing comics I can do while relaxing, and even when I’m on set!

Tell us about the role your parents play in your life and career, not only for you but your brother as well! You keep them busy, but they must be so supportive of you.

My mom does mostly all the acting stuff like keeping track of the auditions and taping and going to set. My dad is a little nervous about going to set for some reason, but I think he would be fine! We are very busy but no one seems to ever complain. The only time it’s a little sad is when we are apart for long during filming but we always do video calls then.

For other young actors like yourself, do you have any advice for how to be confident in front of the camera? What (or who) has helped you prepare for roles and memorize lines?

I think to feel confident you have to know what you are doing. I was confident when I was 3 for some random reason, and then I took some acting classes at LeBlanc School of Acting and those helped me know what I was doing for sure. I have had lots of coaches teach me stuff like Julian, Athena, Kirsten, Natalie, Brian, and Beatrice are a few of their names. Sorry if I forgot anyone! For most specific auditions, I use the things ALL those people taught me and then I work with my brother on the specific scripts. Oh and on the set of my last movie, my new actor friend Naomi King told me that you should learn the scene not the lines... but you will definitely learn the lines once you learn the scene!

We have our signature question for you – if you could be any ice cream flavour, which would you be and why?

Well... I would not want to be ice cream! But if I had to be, I’d definitely be Green Tea or Mango.

Thanks for the insight into your projects and thoughts, Azi! We cannot wait to see you return to action on our screens, and follow as your career grows. To stay up to date on Azi’s upcoming projects and get a behind the scenes look into his busy and exciting life, follow him on Instagram.

Photo credit (top) to: Candace Woods Special thanks to: NoodleHead Productions

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