wesccola

[jj-stein]

I love your concept of Blank, but Seagull, my dear friend, my beloved mutual, is Blank involved in fucking organized crime or something? Sparse temporary apartment, mysterious disappearance, only eating high calorie food, completely dropping relationships even though they were long term, etc??

Honestly it would be quite funny if he worked for Mad Mike's drug business as hitman, if you'll allow me to spitball. -pxppet

that is actually EXACTLY what i was going for!!! i completely forgot to mention that in my head blank is a lower-level demon that works for other demons, and so he leads a very sketchy and private life that he doesn't tell jameson much about.

another part of the sparse, run-down apartment he lives in is also attributed to the fact that he isn't human, and doesn't care much for physical comforts or has many needs.

blank did care for jameson, and didn't want him getting hurt or having knowledge that would get him in trouble, so i like to think, in a narrative sense, what blank is exactly and what he does for a living is left a mystery. hes more of a "space" or "vessel" for jameson to experience physical intimacy with someone non-threatening, cold and unemotional but still caring. blank's shitty place with an old crt tv and a run-down futon is somewhere that jameson sneaks off to while he's recovering and trying to find his own freedom and autonomy. to be perfectly honest, Blank exists in my lore as nothing more than a narrative ingredient to jameson's character arc and the flow of the "narrative" lol

although i do want to draw him sometime soon, this sallow, hollowed faced ghost holding cold hands with jameson haha

[lantsovsupremacist]

nikolai lantsov: maybe

this was going to be smut and it still is but i apologize i went from listening to dress to hope ur okay so it’s all over the place here with angst.

warning of some swear words? some smut (fem receiving). mentions of drinking and getting drunk. pre-sab.

at eighteen, the world was dizzying with overwhelming opportunity.

the age held the anticipation of beginning a life of your own. sure, the second army owned you even more now than before, but your night of graduation from the little palace’s grisha school still excited you. the fancy sapphire dress gifted to you by the royals reminded you of the waves glittering at night under the moonlight, an obvious nod to your role as a tide maker.

the two glasses of champagne at dinner went down like water. you turned corner after corner in your head to give chase but you could not find even the slightest buzz. with a frown, you kicked open the back door of the kitchen and quietly slipped inside.

the only source of light crept across the floor, directing you to the back. the muted colors surrounding you became brighter the further you walked. you smile expanded.

“little late to your own party aren’t we now?”

your eyes rolled around in your head before settling on the slouched body of the blonde prince, barely upright against a crate. taking quick steps to meet him in the corner, you shoved his legs aside for the extra room. the clear bottle of what you assumed from his breath to be kvas made its way into your hands.

“fuck you, nikolai. you obviously had no problem starting without me.”

a lazy and crooked smirk crept onto his face. it righted itself into a small smile as he watched you down more than a shot’s worth straight from the source. maybe it was simply because of the warmth from the booze, but he swore your knuckles chilled him as they passed over his on their mission to grasp the neck of the bottle.

you minded his touch with the suppression of a shudder. you had yet to consume enough alcohol to relax into it. instead, you examined his own outfit. whatever sophistication he had been meant to pull off was lost on his now untucked shirt and crooked tie.

the delicate knit of his brows whenever he finished laughing could never change, though. even when the prince was more commonly referred to as sobachka than nikolai and you could barely muster a change of moisture in the air, the expressions of your best friend remained steadfast. you took the constant as a comfort.

you kicked off of your heels, climbing onto the counter rather gracefully and snagging a bottle of something stronger. he stepped up to watch you and eyed your footing warily. when you opened one of the bottles and threw your head back at the smell, he knew you had found exactly what the both of you were looking for. he offered you a hand down, which you accepted gratefully.

four shots deep. that is how many it took for you to lose all sense of composure around nikolai. the golden boy in front of you—your best friend—was quite the picture with twisted curls and red cheeks.

and saints had you been pining after him for the past few years. while grisha belonged to a higher class than the commoners, you were still a soldier. he was still a prince. you both had jobs to do, roles to fill, and expectations to fulfill.

you presumed that was his threshold as well. with each glass thrown back, he had shifted closer and closer to you. his eyes trailed down your figure more times than you could count. shamelessly. while neither of you dared the waves between the two of you, the current had been pulling you to one another for years. neither denial nor acceptance.

“do you want me as badly as i want you?” he gathered any sobriety left in him and questioned you, “because as striking as you are in that dress i wouldn’t mind taking it off.”

nikolai lantsov could have been telling you one of his most elaborate lies, and it would not have mattered in the slightest. after sitting through a long night of speeches and passing through mindless congratulations, anything would seem more appealing. however, the golden boy in front of you did not require any of those excuses to be utterly intoxicating.

you could no longer be patient. he tasted like kvas and whatever you had both taken several shots of. it was shared between the two of you now, tongues intermingling in the warmth of each other’s mouths. the rush that started in your head worked into a distinct want at your core.

everything he touched turned to liquid gold, fire melting all of your fine edges to be molded by his hands. once his fingers trailed across your jaw they separated, one hand tangling in your hair and the other skating the curve of your spine. he pressed deeper into you, forcing you to nearly climb on top of him on the floor before he pulled you upright.

when you ran out of skin to attach your lips to, you brought an unsteady hand to his collar. his fingers left their place caught up in your hair and swiftly grasped your wrist before dropping it as a warning. he made an attempt to bring his hands down to the hem of his button down before you used his own ploy against him and smacked it away.

“you made me wait this long,” you breathed out, shaking with pleasure, “let me enjoy this, prince perfect.”

recognizing your admission as an action of teasing and not discomfort, he quickly replied, “we’ll have plenty of time for that later, baby.”

the sly drop of the affectionate bookend to his words did not go unnoticed. as if you were not already putty in his hands, you let him slip his hands into yours and guide them down to his waist. together, you brought his shirt over his head. his body instantly radiated heat inside of the cramped kitchen corner. following his lead, you planted his hand firmly on your shoulder, helping him push aside the sleeve of your kefta and slender strap of your gown.

“see,” his tongue glossed over your collarbones and his teeth lightly grazed your skin, “isn’t this much better?”

you stomped on his foot before throwing a look over your shoulder. eyeing the empty counter, you hopped backwards onto the surface and greedily reached out for nikolai. despite his teasing, he readily accepted your offer and closed the space you had made between the two of you. almost immediately, he made quick work of reaching behind you and undoing the back of your dress. you arched your back to aid him, cursing under your breath at just how skilled he was.

once the jeweled top was pushed down your chest and pooled around your waist, he brought a hand back to your chest. his mouth quickly followed. you gripped his shoulder, the other finding any part of his waist to claim. you felt his muscles tense and then react under your palm.

you wanted him. you wanted this. and fortunately, you had quite the reputation of getting what you wanted.

everything inside of you ached to be touched by nikolai. you felt the incessant need of developing him as a habit. as soon as the thought of the inevitable consequences of your best friend pressing your knees apart entered your head, you quickly banished it.

he was a picture. his hair had started to splay across and stick to his forehead. you pushed his curls back, locking on his eyes as blue as the seas. you trailed your hand down to trail your thumb across his lips before taking his neck to bring his lips to yours. at first, it was drawn out and warm. his tongue explored your mouth thoroughly. then, it was sparks as you quickly and greedily kissed a new part of his lips each second.

you gasped at his sudden touch under your skirt. pleasure pooled downward while his fingers fought upward. it was an explosion of anticipation in your stomach as he lowered himself to a knee, throwing one of your legs over his shoulder. you steadied yourself on the top of the cabinets, the feeling of falling building in your core.

“i-,” you fought back a premature moan as you squirmed on the counter, “i think you’re enjoying this a little too much.”

he kissed up your calf, following after his fingers and responded without looking up, “i live to please.”

you shivered at the sensation of his lips on your skin. suddenly and without warning, there was so much more. you squeezed his shoulder, breaths getting more shallow with each passing second. dropping his fingers, he quickly returned to attend to the bundle of nerves with his mouth. his tongue swirled in circles, once again dizzying you.

“mhm,” you struggled to find words, “saints, nikolai.”

his name on your lips nearly drove him over the edge. he kept a hand situated on your inner thigh but greedily wrapped the other around the back of your head. you all but encouraged his haste, dropping your leg from his shoulder and hooking it around one of his. you rolled your hips into his, drawing him closer than ever before.

you studied the lines of his body with your hands, committing each muscle to memory. you indulged in the hands on activity. his hand rubbing up your leg did not help slow your heart rate, which you are entirely sure you did not want, either way. you littered his chest and stomach with marks from your lips.

“i leave next week for my service.”

your lips dropped from his neck. the absence of heat and the distinct thud of his pulse pounding in between kisses could not compare to the plummet of your heart into your stomach. suddenly, you felt the effects of the last hour’s consumption all at once.

you swallowed hard, fighting to keep down the alcohol. running your tongue quickly over your lips, you took advantage of the second it gave you to study the boy’s face in front of you. his eyes avoided yours at all costs, making it all the more difficult to read his emotions.

his lips were swollen. cheeks painted with the hues of a rosy sunset. you wanted to know what shade of blue his eyes appeared to be now, but he still would not look at you.

deciding to blame it on the inebriation, you allowed your next statement to go unfiltered, “so that’s it,” you hiccuped, “i was just going to be a way to get your mind off of that, huh?”

the impending breakdown of years of friendship turned your stomach in an unpleasant way. you muttered a curse or three under your breath as you gathered the layers of your now wrinkled skirt in your hands, moving to stand up unsteadily. the movement forced his hand off of your inner thigh. he kept his other around the curve of your waist, fingers tapping a nervous pattern. you moved to push those off, as well, but he gripped your hip bone.

“don’t,” he said easily, attempting a sultry confidence but his seduction had worn off.

a different kind of want pooled in the seas of his eyes. it was no longer desire but desperation. you were sure yours were a mirror image.

“don’t make it too hard for me to let you go,” you stumbled, “don’t leave me,” your words bubbled over drunken and quivering lips.

nikolai bit into his lip at the sight of your tears. it might have been painful but it was a superficial, barely skimming the surface kind of hurt. the sight of your eyes welling up and the unsteady rise and fall of your chest ran much deeper. he felt like a blade was slowly slicing himself in two jagged and incomplete pieces.

his breath skipped in his throat and he fumbled for his words just as much as he did your hands, “i-you,” he was not sure if it was smart to say all that he really wanted to but it was true, “come with me.”

you looked up at him, daring to hope that you could find truth in his eyes. composing yourself by clearing your throat, you ran a hand through your hair, “you know i can’t.”

he was quick with his retort, “but you’ve graduated now! i could surely convince my father of the need for such protection.”

as much as your heart drew to his, like it was made to match the opposing pole of his the magnet embedded in his own, you could not agree with him, “nikolai as much as i appreciate the offer,” you ignored the way his smile dropped for the sake of your own ability to continue, “what life would that give me? one where i rely on you to give orders so that i can be by your side?”

“i need you by my side.”

“but will you be on mine?”

maybe you did not know how to live without nikolai. you tried to stumble away from him but you barely made it a step before you started to slip. right as his hand went to steady you, you finally let the tears fall. they were wicked and raw and unforgiving.

suddenly, your head was pounding and the remaining layers of your dress seemed to suffocate you. you had nearly slept with your best friend and now, he was leaving. you fought the thoughts telling you—screaming at you—that he only did this now and not years before because he was leaving. he would not have to do damage control on your heart or the relationship once shared between the two of you.

“i’ve got to go,” you sniffed, pulling up your dress and wiping away both tears and shame from your eyes, “zoya will be worried.”

she would not be. in fact, your best friend had covered for your outings with nikolai on multiple occasions and knew to expect you late. what would really worry her—if she even possessed such capabilities of expressing this incredibly human emotion—would be the state you returned in, one you never got in after visiting nikolai.

“please,” nikolai begged, “i know that you could go anywhere. maybe at first you wouldn’t fit in but you’re the puzzle piece nobody even knows they’re missing yet,” his words gave you pause, “i know you hate being thought of as anything but your own person, of being a soldier in a royal’s world, a woman in a man’s,” he continued with a deep breath, “but i need you to complete me. please, let me live in your world.”

you wanted everything that he spoke of but his words started to fade away. your thoughts were too loud and overpowering. they demanded an audience. it was hard to get out of your own head but you could not let nikolai distract you.

“it would never work,” you sighed dismally, “we would never work.”

“let me try,” nikolai pleaded, turning your hands over in his and sounding so young despite the heavy topic.

“i can’t take you away from your service,” you disallowed with a shake of your head, “from your travels, nikolai. i know you want all of that—,”

“i want you.”

“but you don’t need me.”

“maybe that’s true,” nikolai relented with a unique fervor in his eyes, “maybe i don’t need to be in love with you but i want to.”

you had been speechless on only a few occasions. you always had words or could be sure to find some. it was something nikolai appreciated and an annoyance for zoya.

nikolai wanted to be in love with. you reminded yourself that this admission did not mean that he was, simply that he wanted to be. you wanted to be a lot of things and they had certainly not come to fruition. he was a fool for deeming it even probable—not in the world you both inhabited, the very different roles you played.

you stole a tear from his cheek with your thumb, “i need my best friend, nikolai,” you nearly choked on your words, “i need to love you in that way, understand?”

his frown deepened. you could tell he was fighting it. everything. you managed a smile because you expected him to do this. he could learn to fly with broken wings if he wanted to, if he needed to.

you took his jaw in your hands, delicately murmuring for only him to hear, “you are so good and i am so proud of you. don’t think that i will not be your fiercest protector wherever i am.”

nothing could exist forever. for this one moment, you wanted it to be. you wanted to allow him to hold you, to kiss you, to carry you. you knew he would do all of it and more. but, you could not submit him to that.

“i love you,” he breathed out with whatever air he could conjure. his forehead rested against your own and his thumbs swirled color into your cheeks.

“i love you back,” you whispered for your best friend, your pocket merlin, jack of all trades, your person.

you tried to close the door, but he had jammed his foot in it stubbornly. you could not find it in you to slam it shut on him. you could not hurt him. so, you left it cracked. you would turn the lights off but take every ray of his light that slipped through the cracks.

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[robininthelabyrinth]

Niecest? With yandere!Huaisang?

Silver Mist - part 1/3 - ao3 

According to Nie Huaisang’s teachers, there was a small voice in people’s heads that told them what was good and what was bad, and that voice was called the conscience.

Nie Huaisang concluded, after some observation, that this was true – for other people, that was.

Nie Huaisang himself did not appear to suffer from this particular affliction.

Which was not to say he didn’t have a small voice in his head, of course he did, only he was pretty sure it wasn’t actually telling him the difference between good and evil. When he was very young, he thought the voice might be his mother, who had died (or possibly disappeared) when he was born – it sounded a bit like the way people described her, witty and enchanting, with a fox’s face and a fox’s mind.

A poisonous beauty, they called her, and they sounded almost afraid.

His mother’s voice might not have much to say on the subject of morality, but it had plenty to say on the subject of people: how to study them and learn the weaknesses even they didn’t know of, how to flatter them and lower their guard, how to deceive their eyes and minds until they did everything you wanted.  Men or women, it didn’t matter much – they were all there for the taking, ripe for the plucking, prey waiting for him to hunt them down. All he needed to do was want it and he’d be able to feast upon them at his leisure, harvest their desires for his own, eat their hearts out of their chests and pick his teeth clean with their bones.

Possibly literally.

His mother’s voice wasn’t very clear on that.

(How did a no-name no-family girl from nowhere marry a prestigious sect leader to become the second Madame Nie, a new disciple asked, laughing, not noticing how the others glared at him, what was she, a man-eating nine-tailed fox in human guise?

He didn’t last long.)

Still, no matter how much Nie Huaisang’s mother’s voice – or possibly his own – entreated and enticed him, Nie Huaisang didn’t go around convincing people to jump off cliffs or murder their spouses out of love for him, not even if he did secretly think it would be a bit funny. He might not have a little voice that told him right from wrong the way other people did, but he still had something to show him the way – something better.

He had his da-ge.

Nie Huaisang loved his da-ge.

Other people said that Nie Mingjue, the great and fearsome Chifeng-zun, was not easy to love, but what did they know? Nie Huaisang had never found it difficult. Sure, his brother was often angry, intemperate, volatile – prone to lashing out and then making it up later – cold and standoffish with those he did not trust – stern and unyielding in his righteousness, convinced of his position and unwilling to compromise – but that was all for other people.

For Nie Huaisang, his precious didi, Nie Mingjue bent his unbending spine, relaxed his rigid standards, denied his obdurate instincts, strained himself almost to the breaking point. He spoiled him and scolded him and believed in him when no one else would – he gave Nie Huaisang his heart, full and entire, laid it bleeding in his palm, before Nie Huaisang even knew that that was something he might want.

The sky could fall down, but his da-ge would still hold it up for him if he could.

And so Nie Huaisang did not, in fact, go around eating the hearts of unwary cultivators, neither metaphorically nor literally – except for a few times when he wasn’t paying close enough attention and let a little bit of that fox-face he’d inherited from his mother slip out, a handful of people falling madly in love with him and pursuing him until his da-ge beat them black and blue and kicked them out of the Unclean Realm, but no one could be held accountable for a few tiny slip-ups, surely. Nie Huaisang did not become everything that he could be, neither great nor glorious nor terrible, but rather stayed lazy and indulgent and indulged, luxuriating in his brother’s attention, whether positive or negative.

And then there was a war.

His brother was gone for months and months and months. He sent letters when he could, asked his friends to check up on him, worried endlessly about his precious little brother – but he was far away and could neither return nor allow Nie Huaisang to come to him.

It wasn’t fair.

Nie Huaisang got bored.

Maybe he also fucked his way through the Cloud Recesses, but he didn’t eat anyone’s heart in the process, so it was still mostly fine, he thought. According to the adorable stuttering version of the talk his da-ge had stumbled through for him at one point, long after Nie Huaisang already knew all about it, sex was something natural and wonderful that two people (or more) shared to express their affections for each other, nothing to be ashamed of, but also please don’t overdo it or do anything that would result in children outside of marriage, as that was more trouble than it was worth – just look at the Jin sect.

Nie Huaisang had a lot of affection to share, and avoiding by-blows was easy, with a bit of creativity; besides, there was a war on, and all those people didn’t really need their virginities, anyway.

It wasn’t enough, though. It didn’t make up for not having his da-ge.

It didn’t make up for not knowing how his da-ge was doing, because obviously he wouldn’t include details in the letters he sent and the people at the Cloud Recesses were inclined to think that Nie Huaisang didn’t need to know about the brutal realities of war, when all he wanted to know was if his da-ge was eating properly and sleeping properly and not working himself up into a stress migraine from unvented rage.

It didn’t make up for hearing that his da-ge was missing.

(He’d fucked that one out of Lan Xichen, who wasn’t supposed to say, on one of his frequent visits, licking bits of knowledge out of his mouth through grunts and thrusts and starry wide-eyed stares that seemed to be mostly puzzled at how he had been so thoroughly charmed by him.)

It didn’t make up for the sudden and horrible feeling of fright, of concern, of fear – the abrupt realization that his brother had been in danger during all this time, not merely called away by duty – the notion that he might not return – that Nie Huaisang might have to do without him forever.

And then his da-ge came back.

That was when Nie Huaisang abruptly realized that he was just too greedy to give up either his da-ge’s affection or sex, and in fact would ideally like them both at the same time.

(His da-ge had come back from the war injured. His robust spiritual energy had been drained from overuse, his strong body broken and beaten down by a force greater than him, broad shoulders bowed; his lips were pale, his limbs weak, and he clung onto Nie Huaisang as if to a savior, refusing to let him go even when urged.

Nie Huaisang liked that.

He liked that a lot.)

There was really only one problem with this little realization, beyond the obvious disappointment awaiting all of his previous lovers: unlike Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue really was possessed of that little voice that said do or don’t do, and he heard the sound of it loud and clear, even clearer than most. He was a righteous man, an upright man; even if he were to develop a sudden passion for his younger brother, who he had raised, he would die rather than act upon it.

Right, there was that bit, too – they were half-brothers, sharing the blood of the same father, but Nie Huaisang didn’t see that as a real issue. His mother’s voice laughed like a jackal when he mentioned it, and all the history books were full of salacious tales of noblemen who took twins as brides into the same bed or married someone who fell a bit too close on the family tree; the erotic works he collected as a hobby were stuffed full of such tales, and they were often among the most hotly requested for borrowing. The number of times he’d been asked to play the little didi, asking for his dearest darling gege or jiejie to give it to him hot and hard… if he had a coin for each instance, he’d be a rich man.

He already was a rich man. Maybe he ought to use some other metric.

No, the main problem was the righteousness that Nie Huaisang so admired when it was aimed at everyone but him. His brother had been making exceptions for him since the very first – why not this, too?

Still, sex was such a tricky subject for some people, and thinking back to the way his brother hadn’t looked him in the eyes for nearly a week after that initial talk, that was probably applicable here. Nie Huaisang loved his brother far too much to wish him any real harm – his brother had only the single heart, fragile and precious, and if it broke there would be no recovering it so he had to be careful – and some initial explorations, done under the guise of drunkenness, confirmed that Nie Mingjue had never considered the possibility of the two of them together in that way and almost certainly would be horrified and upset by the suggestion that Nie Huaisang had.

Forcing the issue might win him some small and temporary pleasure, since his brother didn’t know how to deny him anything, but it would shatter his brother into a million pieces to give up something so fundamental to his sense of self as his sense of righteousness.

Perhaps for someone else, that would be enough to convince them to stop.

Not so Nie Huaisang.

He was too greedy, too spoiled. He wanted what he wanted – his da-ge, in his bed, wanting him – and he’d never been denied anything he really wanted before, least of all involving his brother.

He went to his brother’s room at night.

“Da-ge,” he said with a smile. “Let me brush your hair.”

His brother grumbled something about being tired but acquiesced at once, accustomed to Nie Huaisang’s petty dictatorship of their household. He sat in front of a mirror and Nie Huaisang settled behind him, slipping his fingers into his brother’s hair and rubbing against his scalp until he could feel the tension in his brother’s body start to dissipate. He chattered as he worked, speaking of nothing and everything, and his brother at first responded with grunts and hums and occasional comments but soon enough succumbed to the feeling of safety and security and home, slipping as he relaxed into a state not unlike meditation.

He’d trained his brother well.

Normally, Nie Huaisang would only take a little advantage of his touch-starved brother’s torpor, which rendered him so very agreeable, asking for favors or presents or excuses – he’d won his first visit to the Cloud Recesses in just this way, not to mention authorization to start his aviary. In normal times, he couldn’t push too far, since what Nie Mingjue might agree to in a daze might not survive his temper when he’d returned to full sobriety, but Nie Huaisang had recently been watching his brother’s new sworn brothers using musical cultivation to soothe his brother’s ever-present temper, and it had given him all sorts of ideas.

It was easy enough to adjust his voice – Nie Mingjue wasn’t really listening to him anymore anyway – and to modulate his tone into something very near to a melody, the cadence quickening and slowing, rising and falling, infusing it with his own very special cultivation, and it wasn’t long before his brother began to instinctively incorporate the music into his own cultivation just the way he did when it was his sworn brothers who were playing for him. The situations were largely similar, after all, what with there being meditation, music, and a younger brother he trusted.

The fact that the melody was different from what Lan Xichen played, the instrument a voice rather than a guqin, was unimportant; as Nie Huaisang had hoped, his poor nearly tone-deaf da-ge either couldn’t tell the difference or didn’t care to. Nie Mingjue’s own talent took care of the rest, spreading the effect of the music through his entire body at double-quick pace, sinking him deeper and deeper into his pleasant, comfortable rest.

Nie Huaisang smiled down at his beloved brother, his fingers still deep in his hair even though the braids had long ago been fully taken out.

He leaned down and whispered in his brother’s ear, “Wake up.”

His brother’s eyes opened – but they were glassy and blank, unseeing and empty.

Nie Huaisang’s smile widened, and in the mirror he saw a grinning fox’s face where his own ought to be.

“It’s me, da-ge, it’s Huaisang,” he said, voice coaxing, his tone still half-singing. “You love me, don’t you?”

Slowly, as if his head were terribly heavy, his brother nodded.

“And if you love me, you must trust me.”

Another long, slow nod.

His smile widened still more, and the fox’s face gave way to the fox’s voice, which, it was said, could stir up the hearts of men and lead them to their doom.

“Because you trust me, you will listen to me, believe in me,” he crooned in his brother’s ear, watching in delight as the words were carried by the unconscious habit of cultivation straight into his brother’s core. “Whatever I say is how things are. Whenever you hear me hum this tune, you will remember that, won’t you?”

His brother’s brow wrinkled, just a little, instinctively fighting the spell for a moment, but Nie Huaisang pressed harder, with his cultivation and with his fingers digging into his brother’s temples, and after a moment habit kicked in, the tension released, the words accepted, the trance state complete.

His brother was as docile as a doll, as impressionable as wet clay.

His beautiful, wonderful da-ge.

For this first outing, he would not push too hard. His mother’s voice urged caution, care – the prize could not be won in haste, and if there was one quality Nie Huaisang did not lack, it was patience. He would move slowly, gently, and in the end he would get everything his black little heart desired.

Just like his mother had.

“Your didi, Huaisang, is special,” Nie Huaisang murmured in his brother’s ear. “He needs special care and love from you. You know that already, don’t you? That’s why you’re always so permissive with him, so indulgent. That’s why you let him touch you, even when you don’t let anyone else. Even where you don’t let anyone else.”

He let his fingers slip down his brother’s chest to settle into his lap, tracing lightly over the outline of his cock, even though he couldn’t really feel it through all the layers.

“You let him touch you here, sometimes,” he whispered, and the words flowed in with everything else. “And sometimes, as a treat, when he’s been good, you touch him back, make him feel good. It’s not wrong. Not when it’s Huaisang. It’s normal, natural, as easy and unremarkable as breathing – you don’t say anything about it to anyone else, but why would you? You don’t tell people about ruffling his hair, either.”

His da-ge’s eyes stared blankly into the mirror. He did not object.

“You’ll forget about this conversation when it’s done,” Nie Huaisang told him. “Every time I hum this song for you, you’ll return to how you are now, nice and relaxed and quiet and listening, and when you wake up you forget it, every time. That’s normal, too, and nothing to worry about.”

That should be enough for today, he thought. A small adjustment, yet well within the realm of what he could play off as a laugh if the spell didn’t take – and if it did, it would edge his da-ge’s mentality a little closer to what he wanted, to a world where his righteous brother didn’t perceive that there was anything wrong with bedding his own half-brother, his little spoiled fox that he loved so much.

Each future time he took his da-ge down into the quiet, he would reinforce the command, move him just a little closer to there – it would be like replacing a single item in a room at a time, moving so slowly and delicately that the person in the room didn’t ever realize that the room had completely changed.

“Time to wake up, da-ge,” he said, and snapped the connection between them.

A moment later, his brother’s eyes cleared up.

“Are you still not finished?” Nie Mingjue complained, as Nie Huaisang had all but expected. “Some of us wake up early, you know.”

“I was being thorough!” Nie Huaisang protested, rolling his eyes at the mirror and watching his brother smile at him. “You’re always telling me to be! It’s all ‘work on your follow-through, Huaisang’, ‘don’t give up halfway through, Huaisang’, ‘finish what you set out to do, Huaisang’ –”

“All right, all right. Off with you. And go to bed this time, I don’t want to see you at breakfast with circles under your eyes because you stayed up until dawn again, you hear me?”

Nie Huaisang raised his hands in surrender. “Da-ge’s so mean,” he pouted. “I do all that hard work for da-ge, working until my hands hurt, and da-ge just sends me away to bed?”

He got an eye roll in return. “You’re the one who barged in here and insisted on it!”

“I still did it! That means I deserve a reward,” he insisted, leaning back on the bed, spreading his legs.

A hint, although it could be laughed away as innocent if needed.

“You’re so spoiled,” his da-ge complained, but he stretched out his arms high above his head, twisting and cracking the air out of his back and neck, and seemed pleased enough by his improved flexibility. “All right, all right. You big baby. You can’t do anything yourself, can you?”

“Nope,” Nie Huaisang said with a grin, watching as his da-ge climbed onto the bed next to him, his expression open and free and relaxed, and started to open Nie Huaisang’s clothing as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do, his hand sliding down to wrap around Nie Huaisang’s cock as if he’d done this a hundred times before – although the clumsiness of the action suggested otherwise. “I depend on my da-ge for everything.”

“You really do,” Nie Mingjue grumbled, starting to pump Nie Huaisang’s cock firmly. Nie Huaisang made a happy sound, bucking his hips up encouragingly – he’d been hard since he first walked into the room, and honestly the feeling of a plan working out just as he’d intended was very nearly as good as the actual physical pleasure of having his da-ge’s hand on him for the very first time. “What am I going to do with you, Huaisang?”

“Many things,” Nie Huaisang giggled. “Many, many things.”

[litafficionado]

Four Questions with Garielle Lutz:

I’m extremely beholden to Garielle who took the time to respond to my silly, garbled, childish, intrusive questions. You can purchase her latest book Worsted here and here, among many other sites.  --------- Q.  You've attributed the resuscitation of your literary career in quite considerable measure to your teacher and editor Gordon Lish. It seems like you guys are particularly close, even as you seem to have largely confined yourself to Pittsburgh(mostly driven by your erstwhile teaching career but also by your liking the city over time). How does it feel to hear someone like Gordon speak so highly of you, “I think there’s more truth in one sentence of my student [Lutz] than in all of [Philip] Roth. Lutz gives [herself] away. “The speaking subject gives herself away,” says Julia Kristeva. I thoroughly believe that. What you see in Lutz, [her] lavish gift, is [her] refusal to relax [her] determination to uncover and uncover. It is, by my lights, quite wonderful, quite terrific.[…]Lutz is entirely the real thing?” Does one feel vindicated? How do you navigate the waters of self-effacement and self-indulgence as a writer and as a person? A.  I haven’t had a literary career before or after studying with Gordon Lish.  I don’t think one finds one’s way to him in hopes of launching a career.  Anyone with vulgar ambition along those lines would have been shown the door pretty quick.  I would never presume to be close to Gordon or to feel that I am part of his life other than in my role as a student. He dwells in another realm entirely. I attended his classes and tried to grasp, to the best of my abilities, the things he was saying about how to get from one word to the next.  He also talked about how to free a word from the constricting range of its permissible behaviors, how to drain it of every sepsis of received meaning, until there is nothing left of the word but the skeleton of its former self, just the lank, gawky letters sticking out this way and that, and then how to fill the thing up again, to the point of overspilling, but this time with something that would never have been allowed to belong in there before, and then see whether the word, now close to bursting, can hold up and maybe have a new kind of say.  I’m always surprised and relieved whenever Gordon says anything approving about anything I write.  I think that for a lot of his students, his opinion is the only one that counts.  

Q.  You've said, "A typical day goes like this: noon, afternoon, evening, night, additional night, even more night, furtherest night, then bedtime, though I don’t have a bed or furniture of any kind.” Have you always been a lychnobite, sensing the overwhelming superabundance of life after the sunset or is it a relatively recent development facilitated by your retirement from teaching? Do you consider yourself in any way to be a minimalist? Does your room bear any resemblance with a sparsely lit opium den where all exchanges happen at the floor level?

A.  I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it.  Lately I’ve been up until five, sometimes six.  But I’ve always found mornings the harshest and ugliest part of the day (maybe it’s just because of the place where I live, but I never open the blinds anyway).  There can be something awfully scolding about a sunrise the older you get  Evening seems to extend every form of leniency, and in the dead of night, expectations go way down, which is where they maybe ought to stay.  I do spend all of my time on the floor, but my apartment doesn’t bear any resemblance to an opium den.  It’s more like a crawlspace or the back of a  dollar-store stockroom.    

Q. Even with your reputation of being a page-hugger than a typical page-turner, how do you decide which books to read apart from your line of work? Do you try to keep it largely in the familiar territory, like exploring the oeuvre of a time-tested writer? How does one unshackle oneself from this constant niggling that one ought to read so many books? Here's Ben Marcus: “When I was in graduate school, there was this sort of cautionary adage going around by the poet Francis Ponge that we can only write what we’ve already read and one way to hear that is you’re just sort of doomed to kind of regurgitate everything you’ve read and so if you’re just reading all the popular books, the books everyone else is reading, in some sense you’re maybe unwittingly confining yourself to a particular literary practice that’s gonna look pretty familiar. I remember at the time thinking, okay well if that’s true, if I’m just fated to that, then I’m gonna read things that no one else is reading. I loved to just go to the library and pretty randomly grab books, because I think for a little while, and I’m kinda glad this passed, but I really just had this feeling that a writer just consumes language and just sort of spits it out. So it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t have to be a great novel for it to be worth-reading. And I still read very little fiction in the end compared to non-fiction, essays, works of philosophy, science. And the other sort of dirty secret is: I don’t finish a lot of books. I just don’t care enough. I only finish a book if I have to or if I really want to. And, often, I’ll stop reading a book three pages from the end. I think that as writers, we probably feel a lot of pressure about what kind of a reader to be, what kind of a writer to be in, and we feel this shame, like “I haven’t read DH Lawrence, I’m such an asshole.” You begin to feel like you’ve these deficiencies and you gotta make them up and you never will and a lot of it is just kinda tyrannical. Of course, obviously, we must be naturally motivated to read and read and read and read but I guess I just started to notice that…I got a lot of my ideas by just reading…e.g. a gardening book…like the weird way a sentence was structured.” Then there's Moyra Davey: “Woolf famously said of reading: “The only advice … is to take no advice, … follow your instincts, … use your reason.” A similar thought was voiced by her elder contemporary Oscar Wilde, who did not believe in recommending books, only in de-recommending them. Later, Jorge Luis Borges echoed the same sentiment by discouraging “systematic bibliographies” in favor of “adulterous” reading. More recently, Gregg Bordowitz has promoted “promiscuous” reading in which you impulsively allow an “imposter” book to overrule any reading trajectory you might have set for yourself, simply because, for instance, a friend tells you in conversation that he is reading it and is excited by it. This evokes for me that most potent kind of reading — reading as flirtation with or eavesdropping on someone you love or desire, someone who figures in your fantasy life.”“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” The image also has a mise-en-scène: overstuffed, disorderly shelves of dusty and yellowing books, many of them unread; books in piles around the bed or faced down on a table; work prints of photographs, also with a faint covering of dust, taped to the walls of the studio; a pile of bills; a sink full of dishes. She is trying to concentrate on the page in front of her but a distracting blip in her head travels from one desultory scene to the next, each one competing for her attention. It is not just a question of which book will absorb her, for there are plenty that will do that, but rather, which book, in a nearly cosmic sense, will choose her, redeem her. Often what is at stake, should she want to spell it out, is the idea that something is missing, as in: what is the crucial bit of urgently needed knowledge that will save her, at least for this day? She has the idea that if she can simply plug into the right book then all will be calm, still, and right with the world. […] Must reading be tied to productivity to be truly satisfying […] Or is it the opposite, that it can only really gratify if it is a total escape? What is it that gives us a sense of sustenance and completion? Are we on some level always striving to attain that blissful state of un-agendaed reading remembered from childhood? What does it mean to spend a good part of one’s life absorbed in books? Given that our time is limited, the problem of reading becomes one of exclusion. Why pick one book over the hundreds, perhaps thousands on our bookshelves, the further millions in libraries and stores? For in settling on any book we are implicitly saying no to countless others. This conflict is aptly conjured up by essayist Lynne Sharon Schwartz as she reflects on “the many books (the many acts) I cannot in all decency leave unread (undone) — or can I?”” What way out do you suggest? Do you deem it worthwhile to eschew any shred of obligation and be propelled in any direction naturally? Like you said you found grammar books and lexicons more engaging and enjoyable than the novels.

A.  I seem to remember that in some magazine or another, James Wolcott once said “Read at whim.”  That has always sounded like the best advice.  And I assume it means to feel free to ditch any book that disappoints.  Like Ben Marcus, I’ve had experiences of abandoning a book just a few pages from the end, but I often don’t make it that far in most things anymore.  I came from a long line of nonreaders, so I’ve never felt any guilt about passing up books or writers that so many people seem to talk about a lot, and I don’t expect other people to like what I like. Some books I’ll start about halfway in and then see whether I might want to work my way back to the beginning.  Others I’ll start at the very end and inch my way toward the front, one sentence at a time, and see how far I can go that way.  I seem to remember that in The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes recommends “cruising” a text, and maybe something like that is what I’m doing at least some of the time, if I understand what he means.  And every now and then I’ll read  a book straightforwardly for an hour and afterward wonder whether the time might have been better spent staring off into space. Too many books these days seem ungiving.  It’s the ungivingness that disappoints the most.  A lot of contemporary fiction has the gleam and sparkle of a trend feature in a glossy magazine, and I can appreciate the craft and the savvy that go into something like that, but I am drawn more toward stories and books that demand being read slowly and closely, pulse by pulse, the kind of fiction where everything--what little might be left of an entire blighted life--can pivot on the peal of a single syllable. Q.  I'd like to ask you so many questions. But let this be the last one for matters of convenience. Also, in a capitalistic world, one's enshrouded with guilt for taking one's time without being remunerative in any way. Among the books and films that you recently encountered, which ones do you think deserve rereads/rewatches? A.  I used to feel like the woman you’ve described so movingly above, someone who questions her choice of books almost to the brink of despair.  At my age, though, I no longer have a program for reading, a syllabus or a checklist, and I’m okay with knowing there’s a lot I’ll never get around to.  I’m happy being a rereader of a few inexhaustible books and chancing upon occasional fresh treasure.  The one book that has shaken me the most in the longest time is Anna DeForest’s  A History of Present Illness, which will be out next August.  It’s a blisteringly truthful novel written with moral grace and unsettling brilliance and an awing mastery of language.  A couple of recent books I have read in manuscript, books that totally knocked me out with their originality and uncanny command of the word, are Greg Gerke’s In the Suavity of the Rock (a novel) and David Nutt’s Summertime in the Emergency Room (a short-story collection).  I haven’t watched many movies in the past few months, and the ones I watched aren’t ones I’ll probably be rewatching anytime soon.  

[nurseofren]

Office Hours

Relationship: Charlie Barber x Student!Reader

Words: 3.3k

Summary: You decided to challenge Professor Barber’s new project in front of the entire class and he’s asked you to stay after class. What could go wrong, right?

Tags: Belting, spanking, bondage, naked female/clothed male, professor kink, left it open if the people want more.

ST Rambles: So uh, here’s this. I started it last week with the plot being completely different but knowing I wanted to dabble with impact play. I’m also thoroughly obsessed with the idea of fucking a professor, so it being Charlie is just. A dream, honestly. Enjoy this smutty smut. Tell me if you want more.

--

You’d never been asked to stay after class, your record completely clear and your GPA way too impressive to ever land you in any sort of hot water. But, as you sat in the overstuffed Chesterfield armchair, fingers toying with the swirl detail on its front, you couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming dread for what was about to happen.

Charlie Barber wasn’t necessarily intimidating, no, but you’d never been alone with him. And just during debrief you’d challenged the themes he presented on his latest project. His project. You know? The project he knows everything about? The one you have no business questioning because you have no part in its development? Yeah, that one. That was the only thing this impromptu meeting could be about.

Professor Barber had instructed you to wait for him, telling you he’d only be a moment as he dealt with the other students who stayed back willingly. Lifting a hand from the armrest you noticed the fine tremors, your heart pounding as you listened to the muffled voices just beyond the door. Another student was talking about their own project and how inspired they were during lecture. Why couldn’t I have praised him like that? you thought. Why did I make the choice of reprimanding his own work?

Charlie sent the students off with a bellowing laugh, informing them about the drafts due next week. His voice, so low and so stern, carried closer to the door, his footsteps steady as they led him nearer. There was no knock, but when the knob jangled at his grip you stopped breathing for a moment. There wasn’t a muscle left untensed as he closed the door, staying out of view for a moment while he settled his belongings on a credenza of sorts.

“I appreciate your patience.” Professor Barber’s voice was distracted, his long legs bringing him into view as he tugged off his suit jacket and folded it over the back of his chair. He didn’t sit immediately, though. A moment was spent first observing you, eyes flicking over your face, and the next he started on the cuffs of his shirt.

The silence he was allowing was palpable, catching in your throat and inspiring sweat at the backs of your thighs. “Oh, yeah. Yeah! Of course, mister – um, Professor Barber.”

He rolled the first sleeve up to his elbow and began on the second. “No need for overexuberance,” he finished the statement with your first name. Warmth flared in your face; you weren’t aware he knew your name, let alone your first.

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean to offend. I really just didn’t mind the wait. You didn’t take long at all. It’s fine, really.”

“You were waiting for twenty minutes.”

Professor Barber looked down at you with a hitched brow, a mocking challenge heavy in his features. He finally took a seat, your top teeth catching your lower lip for a second. He sat so his forearms were flat on his desk, fingers together and knuckles white.

“I mean. Yes. It was twenty minutes. But I… This is my last class of the week, so it’s alright, really.”

“Have any plans for the weekend?”

“Oh. Um… I guess not. Just studying. Like always, you know.” He let your mouth run and the quiet eat away at you once again. He only stared, nose twitching when your hands tightened over the armrests. “But, um, what is… what is this… Earlier in class when I-,”

“I asked your plans, not for an apology.” There was a tinge of urgency in the way he spat the words, his mouth a hard line as the room settled around them.

Averting your eyes, you now focused on a stitch fraying past the hem of your skirt. You swallowed, throat too dry for any good to come of it. “I’m sorry, I just feel the need to make it clear that I didn’t mean to-,”

“Let me make something clear,” he said, his clothes sounding while his left hand toyed with the tie around his neck, loosening it you assumed. “The next time you want to mouth off and talk down to me – the one producing this project—” his pause brought your eyes back to his, which he used to flay your nerves “—don’t.”

A bead of sweat slid from your neck to your tailbone, shivers making your lungs shudder. It was difficult to stay in place on the leather, thighs slipping while fear slicked them with sweat.

You swallowed, uncertain what he wanted if not an apology. “Professor, what can I do to settle this before any more parties have to get involved?”

A hum – no, a growl – left parted lips, his back coming up from the chair before he stood completely. He was looking down at you again, fingers tracing the edge of his desk before a palm spread flat over the surface’s center. His opposite hand lifted, sleeve sliding back down to his elbow when he bent it, two fingers crooking towards him.

“Come here.”

Pupils crowded his already dark irises, shadows pouring from his brow and down over his cheekbones. The sight of him, predatory and commanding, skipped your heart. Hitched your breath. Heated your ears.

“What do you mean? Like, bring you…something? I don’t, I don’t know what you want me to do.” You had a small inkling as to what he wanted, though you rejected the thought, marking it preposterous as soon as it formed.

Professor Barber’s shoulders tided once, high and harsh, another low growl rumbling through grit teeth. “Come. Here—” the hand over the desk flexed into a blood-starved fist “—Now.”

“Are you asking me to…t-to bend over your desk?” You whispered the second half, nails biting crescents into the thick leather.

“No,” he said. “I’m telling you.”

A spark lit between your legs, lips parting with a pant when you accidentally pressed your thighs together. Charlie’s gaze raced toward your accidental action, his throat bobbing before he stepped back from the desk and shook his tie looser.

“I think you’re playing a bit too innocent.” Without looking away, his hands undid the buckle of his belt, his jaw flexing while he observed you from his distance. “This is how you settle this, little girl.”

A whimper left you, more accidental insight into what he was making you feel. You considered it for a moment, thinking about the repercussions should anyone find out, regarding the consequences should you fail this class. Mostly, though, you found yourself giving into the way you were completely throbbing for him, how your heart was in your ears and your breath was hot against your agape mouth.

Standing, dropping your eyes to watch your feet carry you toward him, you stopped once the tips of his shoes lined up with yours. A hand trailed up the buttons of your shirt, fingertips catching on each before long fingers gripped the entirety of your throat. There was no constriction, only encouragement to look at him when they tugged up.

He was looking over your features, finding your fear and feeling your pulse beneath his grip. The tip of his tongue glinted behind his teeth before his eyes settled on yours, your breath stopping immediately.

“Take my belt off.” It was a breathy drawl, heat rolling off of him both in body and breath.

Not looking down, not that you could, you trailed the tips of your fingers along his torso before you caught the smooth leather, you right hand grasping the buckle and leading it to freedom until it dropped to hang limp in your hold. A light squeeze around your throat made your heart race, a whine leaving before he lifted the pressure.

Before you could realize, he spun you so your back was to his chest, his belt hitting the floor with a sharp thwack. The professor’s hands worked in urgency to undo your shirt, sliding up your abdomen when it was completely undone; warmth pooled in your belly, his heated palms exploring over your bra until they wandered to your back. Quick thumbs unhooked the garment, leading the shirt off your shoulders and past your wrists before guiding your bra in the same path.

“Did you lock the door? What if someone comes in?” You trembled against him when his head hooked into your shoulder, nose brushing against your lobe.

A low grumble stifled your neck. “Did I say you could speak?” Charlie bucked his hips into your ass, his erection obvious even through clothing. The force of his thrust stumbled your forward, aiding him when he flattened his hand between your shoulders and pushed your front onto the desk.

The frozen wood lit your bare skin with shock, the contrast sticking your lungs and igniting goosebumps to envelope the entirety of your body. He kept his hand steady in its pressure for a moment, considering how obedient you’d be before he lifted it.

A thwip sounded behind you. “Wrists together.”

“Professor, what-,” a yelp replaced your inquiry, a stark hand meeting your ass over the fabric of your skirt.

“Wrists.”

Pain stung in fine pinpricks over the flesh he’d acquainted his hand with, your arms straining to meet at the base of your spine. The rough threading of his tie found its way knotted over your skin, your hands locked in place even when he left them. Completely at his will now, he led a large hand up your back.

“Mm, being a good slut now, are we?” Another hand slipped under your skirt and flipped it over your bound hands. The professor smoothed over the earlier affected skin, feeling the warmth his exertion had inspired.

That same hand led down your leg, a rush of air telling you he’d knelt behind you. Metal scraped against the floor before you were distracted by the feel of his lips pressing behind your knee. A hand followed the lead of his face, nose trailing up your thigh and eventually pressing into the apex of your thighs. The accompanying hand went further, cupping your ass so his thumb could dip into your slit. Your hips bucked into him, mouth falling open with a curse.

The professor swirled his thumb in your slick, the noise lewd yet heady in the otherwise silent room. He paused to press his lips to you, kissing into the flesh before biting at it. Another curse from you, this time trailing with a whimper. A chuckle stuttered into your leg, his thumb pressing into your entrance. A choked moan fogged the desk beneath you; he felt good. And it was his thumb for fuck’s sake.

“You’re tight,” he pushed his thumb deeper, pressing it into your walls and rocking it back and forth, your eyes rolling back while your fingers tightened into fists. He turned his hand so his fingers could reach down to your clit; your foot kicked forward, wrists straining for freedom as his touch lit your nerves. “And so, so reactive.” Professor Barber pushed into you once more and pulled away completely.

The hollowness he left made you ache for more, but a foreign texture leading up the inside of your leg distracted you from this need. It was cool, not the heat of his hands, and smooth in how it glided with ease over your skin. He stood completely, the mystery object stopping at your apex for a moment, pushing into your folds, and then cracking against your slit with a lightning-fast flick.

“Fuck!” Your hips bucked away from it, shaking the contents of the desk just enough for a pencil to rattle free from the edge.

His hand gripped over the cross-section of your restraint, pulling back so your shoulder blades grew closer. “Tell me how that felt.” His words were dripping with breath, twisted with a latent need.

Having taken a moment to absorb the sensation, you couldn’t deny the way your cunt was throbbing for it, begging for more of whatever it was. You swallowed, sucking your teeth and closing your eyes. He didn’t deserve an answer, but you didn’t want him to stop.

“Good.”

More friction from the object, a loop of sorts catching your clit and rubbing it just right, a whine pushing through locked teeth before he stopped his machinations. “I want to teach you a lesson, understood?”

Words were unnecessary, a nod of your head against the sweat-slick desk conveying your answer just fine. He shuttered at your permission, a grunt sticking low in his chest when his hand left you. Metal jangled and you were quick to realize exactly the kind of lesson you were to receive. Realization flooded your skin with heat, your breath coming fast when panic set in.

“Professor Barber, there’s no need,” you worried out. “I really understand, I don’t-,”

The speed of the belt whistled against the air before you felt its force meet your left cheek, your weight shifting up to your toes when your body couldn’t escape its punishing bite. A thread of agony grated against your throat, but as the pain set in and it nestled into your muscles you couldn’t help but want more. It wasn’t agony that had come from your lips, but brutalized pleasure, so refined and concentrated it overwhelmed you with want.

“Understand all you want—” a second hit, this to your opposite cheek, lit a fire in your chest, slick wetting your inner thighs when you clenched “—that little stunt earlier isn’t going unpunished.”

Your chin started to tremble, teeth chattering as every nerve ending split open with pain-laced pleasure. Drool pooled at the side of your face, mingling with the sweat that fell willfully from your neck. He’d stopped, a new sound coming from behind when the smooth band came to brush over the raging skin; the touch was gentle, even so making you wince as the belt’s edge caught on the edges of your new raised marks.

“This is what I want from you,” that earlier sound came now with a heavy sigh, a breath of satisfaction. “Compliance. Submission. Understanding.” It was a wet, repetitious noise, a pattern of first quick patterns, but they would slow every now and then; when they did, it was always combined with the sound of hitching breath or an urgent exhale.

The time he was taking was driving you crazy, knowing he was watching your injuries come to fruition while he was stroking himself at the sight. “This is torture, you know?” It was a growl more so than a whine.

A third strike came perpendicular to the first, an “X” undoubtedly welting on the surface. Your teeth grit together, spit spraying across the finish before your nostrils flared fog beneath it. A heat sank over your entire back, warm breath and heated lips falling over your ear.

“Punishment, little girl. Not torture.” He pressed his lips to your neck. “Not yet.” That sound slowed again, a growl vibrating from his chest into yours. “Not here.”

The cold returned when he fixed his posture. Not completely, though; a hand flattened itself over your midback, a scalding, heavy pressure meeting your entrance. It made your moan, just the thought of his inside you, feeling how big he was when remembering the fullness only his thumb had incited. Professor Barber pressed his hand down with each nudge of his hips, inching into you with every lung-stalling, thick, throbbing inch of his cock.

“Oh, Professor,” you whined, eyes rolling back at the feeling of being filled by him. You swore you could feel him in your throat the more he pushed in. When you thought there was no more, he kept inching in, his own breath catching when he growled as he neared bottoming out.

“Fucking tight. I knew you would be. And so wet.” His hand inched up once he buried himself completely in your pussy, fingers coiling around a swirl of your hair. “A little masochist, hm? Like the pain, little girl?”

“If I say yes will you hurry up?”

A quick, deep laugh prefaced the heavy hand that smacked over your left cheek, pussy clenching onto his cock and making you see white for a second. Barber coughed, hair-wrapped hand pulling back and straining your neck toward him.

“That mouth,” he tsked, pulling out at leisure and feeling your walls desperately attempt at pulling him back in, “I’ll remember to gag you in the future.”

With that he finally, finally slammed into you, your hips bruising against his desk with each new plunge. The belt unfolded in your periphery when he let it go, his hand instead gripping into your hip and pulling you onto him and keeping your steady. He once more took hold over your wrists and your shoulders left and met the desk in pace with his thrusts. His breath came faster, every inch of him fucking into you with ease. He was hitting you perfectly, branches of impending release spreading over your skin and tightening in your belly.

“Shit, your close.” He kept steady, his pace and position the perfect catalyst of pleasure. “You think you deserve to cum?” Unsure if he wanted your words, you kept your mouth shut and instead frantically nodded, whimpers and whine leaving with every intoxicating crash of his pelvis. A seethed, another growl leaving him when you met him with silence. “Speak, you little slut. Settle this. Tell me!”

“God fucking dammit! You! I want you to make me fucking cum, Barber! Jesus fucking Christ!”

One last smack lit over your right cheek and your hips stalled, legs stiffened, and breath caught. A collection of moans, praises, curses, and cries left you, incoherent to you as you drowned in the alight pleasure that came from cumming on his massive cock.

Soon after, several deep, erratic thrusts carrying him towards his own climax, Barber’s hips stalled and he filled you further with hot, thick streams of spend. The sensation of his cum coating your walls shivered through you, your shoulders now strained as you listened to him come down.

He pulled out, fixed his pants, restrung his belt and untied your wrists. His casualness was so attractive, so routine even as you remained skirt-up and shirtless on his desk. It wasn’t processing that that had just happened; that Professor Barber had just fucked you – belted you – and you remained panting, feeling his cum linger out of you, all while he collected his bearings.

“My office hours end soon.” It wasn’t serious, his voice teasing yet stern. “You’ve learned your lesson, I trust?”

The smile you bit back was painful. He was funny, too, apparently. Finally opening your eyes, you stood from his desk and turned to face him, fixing your posture so your tits were on full display. Tracing your tongue over your bottom lip, you looked up at him and dragged a single hand up his chest. His jaw twitched, cheeks pink with sated pleasure, face framed with sweat-damp hair. He’d enjoyed himself just as much as you.

“I don’t know. I’m obviously not the best student. Maybe I need more teaching.”

Professor Barber’s face tightened as he tried to hide a smirk. He caught your wrist and dragged his thumb over the palm of your hand. “Oh, I know you will.”

“Was this my last class of the week, Professor?”

He couldn’t hide it any longer, eyes narrowing as his mouth quirked. He leaned in close, gripping tighter onto your arm. “So eager. Young. A little naïve, I think.” Your other hand went to dip into his pants, but he caught this one as well. “Definitely naïve.” He stood upright again, looking down at you through the intense dark crowding his eyes.

“Don’t schedule anything after my class on Monday. You’ll be… tied up.”

[sherwoodland]

The Codependency myth.

A liberating and counterintuitive text from the book Attached, by Amir Levine, PhD and Rachel Heller, MA. We need connections, not detachment. Codependency does not exist, it's not an accepted diagnosis and never will be. Romantic love is an attachment bond. Pop-psychology gives you the wrong answers because it's not scientific.

“Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological; it is our greatest strength”.

Sue Johnson, PhD.

THE CODEPENDENCY MYTH

The codependency movement and other currently popular self-help approaches portray relationships in a way that is remarkably similar to the views held in the first half of the twentieth century about the child-parent bond (remember the “happy child” who is free of unnecessary attachments?). Today’s experts offer advice that goes something like this: Your happiness is something that should come from within and should not be dependent on your lover or mate. Your well-being is not their responsibility, and theirs is not yours. Each person needs to look after himself or herself. In addition, you should learn not to allow your inner peace to be disturbed by the person you are closest to. If your partner acts in a way that undermines your sense of security, you should be able to distance yourself from the situation emotionally, “keep the focus on yourself,” and stay on an even keel. If you can’t do that, there might be something wrong with you. You might be too enmeshed with the other person, or “codependent,” and you must learn to set better “boundaries.”

The basic premise underlying this point of view is that the ideal relationship is one between two self-sufficient people who unite in a mature, respectful way while maintaining clear boundaries. If you develop a strong dependency on your partner, you are deficient in some way and are advised to work on yourself to become more “differentiated” and develop a “greater sense of self.” The worst possible scenario is that you will end up needing your partner, which is equated with “addiction” to him or her, and addiction, we all know, is a dangerous prospect.

While the teachings of the codependency movement remain immensely helpful in dealing with family members who suffer from substance abuse (as was the initial intention), they can be misleading and even damaging when applied indiscriminately to all relationships. Karen, whom we met earlier in the televised race, has been influenced by these schools of thought. But biology tells a very different story.

THE BIOLOGICAL TRUTH

Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities. The emphasis on differentiation that is held by most of today’s popular psychology approaches to adult relationships does not hold water from a biological perspective. Dependency is a fact; it is not a choice or a preference.

A study conducted by James Coan is particularly illuminating to that effect: Dr. James Coan is the director of the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. He investigates the mechanisms through which close social relationships and broader social networks regulate our emotional responses. In this particular study, which he conducted in collaboration with Richard Davidson and Hillary Schaefer, he used functional MRI technology to scan the brains of married women. While these women were being scanned, Dr. Coan and his colleagues simulated a stressful situation by telling them that they were about to receive a very mild electric shock.

Normally, under stressful conditions the hypothalamus becomes activated. And indeed this is what happened in the experiment to the women when they were alone awaiting the shock—their hypothalamus lit up. Next, they tested the women who were holding a stranger’s hand while they waited. This time the scans showed somewhat reduced activity in the hypothalamus. And when the hand that the women held was their husband’s? The dip was much more dramatic—their stress was barely detectable. Furthermore, the women who benefited most from spousal hand-holding were those who reported the highest marital satisfaction—but we’ll get back to this point later.

The study demonstrates that when two people form an intimate relationship, they regulate each other’s psychological and emotional well-being. Their physical proximity and availability influence the stress response. How can we be expected to maintain a high level of differentiation between ourselves and our partners if our basic biology is influenced by them to such an extent?

It seems that Karen from our example instinctively understood the healing effect of holding her partner’s hand under stressful conditions. Unfortunately, she later gave in to common misconceptions and viewed her instinct as a weakness, something to be ashamed of.

THE “DEPENDENCY PARADOX”

Well before brain imaging technology was developed, John Bowlby understood that our need for someone to share our lives with is part of our genetic makeup and has nothing to do with how much we love ourselves or how fulfilled we feel on our own. He discovered that once we choose someone special, powerful and often uncontrollable forces come into play. New patterns of behavior kick in regardless of how independent we are and despite our conscious wills. Once we choose a partner, there is no question about whether dependency exists or not. It always does. An elegant coexistence that does not include uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability and fear of loss sounds good but is not our biology. What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit, which means that if she’s reacting, then I’m reacting, or if he’s upset, that also makes me unsettled. He or she is part of me, and I will do anything to save him or her; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.

Despite variations in the way people with different attachment styles learn to deal with these powerful forces—the secure and anxious types embrace them and the avoidants tend to suppress them—all three attachment styles are programmed to connect with a special someone. In fact, chapter 6 describes a series of experiments that demonstrate that avoidants have attachment needs but actively suppress them.

Does this mean that in order to be happy in a relationship we need to be joined with our partner at the hip or give up other aspects of our life such as our careers or friends? Paradoxically, the opposite is true! It turns out that the ability to step into the world on our own often stems from the knowledge that there is someone beside us whom we can count on—and this is the “dependency paradox.” The logic of this paradox is hard to follow at first. How can we act more independent by being thoroughly dependent on someone else? If we had to describe the basic premise of adult attachment in a single sentence, it would be: If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, first find the right person to depend on and travel down it with them. Once you understand this, you’ve grasped the essence of attachment theory. To illustrate this principle, let’s take another look at childhood, where attachment starts. Nothing better demonstrates the idea we’re conveying than what is known in the field as the strange situation test.

THE STRANGE SITUATION TEST

Sarah and her twelve-month-old daughter, Kimmy, enter a room full of toys. A friendly young research assistant is waiting in the room and exchanges a few words with them. Kimmy starts to explore this newfound toy heaven—she crawls around, picks up toys, throws them to the ground, and checks whether they rattle, roll, or light up, while glancing at her mom from time to time.

Then Kimmy’s mother is instructed to leave the room; she gets up and quietly walks out. The minute Kimmy realizes what has happened she becomes distraught. She crawls over to the door as quickly as she can, sobbing. She calls out to her mother and bangs on the door. The research assistant tries to interest Kimmy in a box full of colorful building blocks, but this only makes Kimmy more agitated and she throws one of the blocks in the research assistant’s face.

When her mother returns to the room after a short while, Kimmy rushes toward her on all fours and raises her arms to be held. The two embrace and Sarah calmly reassures her daughter. Kimmy hugs her mom tight and stops sobbing. Once she is at ease again, Kimmy’s interest in the toys reawakens and she resumes her play.

The experiment Sarah and Kimmy participated in is probably the most important study in the field of attachment theory—referred to as the strange situation test (the version described here is an abbreviated version of the test). Mary Ainsworth was fascinated by the way in which children’s exploratory drive—their ability to play and learn—could be aroused or stifled by their mother’s presence or departure.

She found that having an attachment figure in the room was enough to allow a child to go out into a previously unknown environment and explore with confidence. This presence is known as a secure base. It is the knowledge that you are backed by someone who is supportive and whom you can rely on with 100 percent certainty and turn to in times of need. A secure base is a prerequisite for a child’s ability to explore, develop, and learn.

[itashiro-hitsuchiha]

Ship bias for Saber Artoria, Saber Mordred and Erza Scarlet

Send ‘Ship Bias’ and I will share up to 5 Ships I have a bias for for my muse!

@lemusegallery

Alright this may be a long post but I'll gladly do it. For you see simply listing the ships I have for them is too easy and boring. So instead I'll be giving reasons behind the ships and why I typically have a bias towards them. Also the ships I list may not all be romantic ships. I will list the type of ship I am referring to with each muse. Mostly because with these muses in particular I do not have that many romantic ships with them. Also putting a read more into this cuz of how long it may be and I don't want to clog up the whole dash.

Alright I'll just start with Mordred since she has the weirdest line up imo.

Mordred x Fran (BrOTP) - I just fucking love Mordred and Fran being in unison when it comes to kicking ass. That gif of them fist bumping just makes me excited every time. So naturally when writing Mordred if I can get my Fran up in the thread those two will act as pretty decent friends after awhile depending on the thread of course.

Mordred x Artoria (Notice me Senpai) - From all that I gather from playing FGO Mordred has a strange relationship with Artoria. Although if the two were in their normal minds and they are summoned together then things can get interesting as while Mordred may be somewhat hostile at first, they can actually talk and get some closure as after the events of Apocrypha Mordred has come to understand Artoria's position a little better so she won't be as bitter towards her. If anything it was fun in the first summer event to watch Mordred essentially try to get Artoria to notice her and get her praise only to get one-uped each time. They can have a nice wholesome, yet disfunctional dynamic at times and I'd like to see if I can explore that a bit more.

Mordred x Shirou Emiya (???)- I am not sure how to describe this ship. It wouldn't be romantic per say, but I do feel like these two could have an interesting relationship develop. Mordred can appreciate Shirou's determination and stubborness as it mirrors her own, but also with his relationship with Saber it could form a good bridge between them. Idk. I just like to see how this sort of ship could go.

I don't really have any more than that for Mordred as I don't see her as a romantic type. Being a homunculus she doesn't live a very long life regardless so her time is usually short unless summoned as a servant and then she could theoretically live as long as her master, like in Chaldea. Though some crossover potential does exist that I love, but I won't discuss that here. To add to that she has shown no real interest in romance that I can derive from what I've seen of her, so therefore my Mordred can be classified as mostly aromantic and possibly asexual. She knows of sex, but she doesn't have an interest in it as that sort of thing was not taken into account in her creation process and with how she was raised she REALLY had no room to consider it or even want it. It's not impossible to get her to do it, but it is very challenging and will require a LOT of effort.

Now for Artoria.

Artoria x Shirou (OTP)- needless to say I watched the first Stay Night as my introduction to the series. Even into UBW I thoroughly love this ship the most with her. The two just click on so many levels and their dynamic is amazing. Plus Shirou loves to cook and Saber loves to eat (as she kinda needs to eat a lot). Idk if there's anything else I can say about this ship that hasn't already been said, but yeah its my favorite one.

Artoria x Rin (BrOTP)- Seeing how Rin originally wanted a Saber class servant and how she was a friend of Shirou these two can be pretty fun together as well. Rin helps the two get out of their shells and explore the more fun side of life and what it has to offer. I think they're cute as a Bro sort of duo.

Artoria x Mordred- See ship above

Artoria x Lancelot (???)- I mostly like to see how things can go if they can have closure after the events of Zero and actually sit down and talk. (Saber needs to do that with a lot of people).

Much like Mordred Artoria never really had much time to consider romance, but interacting with Shirou definitely helps her grow out of her shell so she can at least consider it. When trying to ship romance with her, if you're not Shirou then you may have a tough time, but really you just need to earn her respect to spend more time with her and perhaps she'll grow on you and give you a chance. Much easier than how Mordred is.

Lastly Erza, Who is admittedly easier to ship with than the other two swordswomen.

Erza x Natsu (BrOTP, or possible OTP)- Erza and Natsu have this fun relationship dynamic. She almost acts like an older sister to him (as well as most of team Natsu) and she definitely has no problem telling him off when he really needs to get punched. Though I can also see them growing romantically (Fight me!) and I would like to see how that would actually go. (Plus the hentai of the two is top notch)

Erza x Jellal (Duh!)- I like the history that those two have together and seeing how they make each other flustered just by talking and feeling awkward its just great. While yes he has hurt her in the past (very badly I might add) Jellal doesn't try to pursue a romance with her because of that fact and he doesn't want to hurt her again, which I believe she is aware of it and fully understands and doesn't want to force him to try anyways. If he feels like he can safely pursue something with her she will be there waiting for him and happily accept him.

Erza x Mira (BrOTP)- Oh my god! these two are just great when they get the chance to sit and talk with each other. Their history allows Mira to talk to Erza about things that no one else could get out of the great Titania. Not to mention all the teasing Mira can do to her and get away with it unlike if Natsu or Gray tried it. Anytime these two get together for girl talk its just great.

Erza x Kaza (OTP)- I know its kind of cheating to list my muse with another of my muses, but hear me out. You see Kaza was someone I once had as a character several years ago, but then dropped for a long time and focused on Vorona for years of development that Kaza did not get. He was my first OC and I wanted to bring him back. Originally he was made for the Naruto universe, but when bringing him back I figured I'd change him up a bit. So I tinkered and decided to make him a Fairy Tail magic swordsman from Edolas who stayed in Earthland. So after making that I realized he may be best suited to be shipped with Erza or Kagura as they are the main swordswomen in the Fairy Tail universe. Her bluntness and occasional lewd minded thought process (really if you look at some of the things she says its pretty funny how thirsty this girl can be, also seduction armor....need I say more?) could pair well with Kaza's shyness towards the subject. I just think these two can be pretty funny and cute together as well.

While it may take me time to get used to it. Shipping with Erza can be pretty easy so long as you keep in mind that she does have a tendency to react violently if the wrong things are said. Easiest way to start shipping with her, be a member of Fairy Tail and/or be a swordsman of some sort. From there it's just a matter of how well the chemistry can be.

Alright. Hope this is sufficient with the meme and that you enjoyed reading this. :)

[takaraphoenix]

Now that DuckTales came back from its corona-enforced hiatus and now that I am currently enjoying Phineas and Ferb for the first time, I noticed a crucial reason that goes into why DuckTales 2017 is, unquestionably, my absolute favorite cartoon from the 2010s, no competition. And I felt like making a post about that crucial reason - now, brace yourself, I’m not actually going to talk a whole lot about DuckTales itself, I want to talk about its cartoon format and why this (old) format works infinitely better for me than the (new) streaming format.

Let me also preface this by saying that I’m a 90s kid. I grew up setting my alarm at 6 o’clock on a Saturday/Sunday so I wouldn’t miss the newest episodes of my favorite cartoons. And I’m fully aware that the way I grew up shaped the way I approach these cartoons.

Before I can break down why this old cartoon format, that is still being used by DuckTales now, works better for me than modern cartoons, I have to explain what exactly I mean by “format” here, so here are the criterias I’m looking at:

length (episode-count)

structure

release

The format I am more partial to that was used during my childhood and that DuckTales, and some others, still use is simple:

A lot of episodes (DuckTales is currently on 63 episodes in 3 seasons over 3 years, with an seasonal episode average of 24), as well as a weekly release of one episode.

For a contrast, have three (finished) cartoons with the more streamlined, modern format:

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has a total of 52 episodes, 13 episodes per season, and released a whole season on a day.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has a total of 30 episodes, 10 episodes per season, and was also released a whole season on a day.

Carmen Sandiego is on 25 episodes (counting the special as an episode), with about 10 episodes per season, likewise releasing a whole season on a day.

Now let’s break that down one by one!

The weekly release builds up anticipation. I know, I know, the argument binge vs weekly release is one to be had with any show nowadays - and I do think that there is a downside to the binge-watch. I consume the whole thing in a day (which is more than easy with a cartoon that only drops 10 episodes each 20 minutes long), I will be excited about it for roughly two more days, if it was really good another week, and then I’ll have moved on to the next thing I mass-consume. The weekly release has the benefit of keeping you on your toes - the resolution of the story is something you have to wait for. And it builds up excitement. It also... makes me grow more attached, because I am given more time with these characters. While, run-time wise, whether I consume the entire season in a day or it is spread out over episode-count numbers of weeks, it comes down to the same time spent with those characters, I will spend more time thinking on them. In the week that passes between two episodes, thinking about what may happen next, what x character is currently going through, how it will affect them. In a binge, I have the answer like an hour later and will no longer be thinking about this, speculating or anticipating.

The length of a season - and, ultimately, the total end-count - is the most crucial factor, because it also affects the structure of the show.

More episodes loosen the plot. A 24 episode season has more room than a 10 episode season, obviously. And instead of having to trim off all the fat and streamline it to only focus on the seasonal plot, it offers filler episodes that allow focus on side characters and development of character dynamics more thoroughly.

That kind of storytelling structure, where the seasonal main plot steps more into the shadow, also allows the “casual watch” (meaning, you don’t necessarily have to watch it in order. In theory, you could just jump in into a random episode and will be mostly caught up).

My biggest complaint about most of the modern cartoons I watch that are released in binge form - and thus, only with about 10 to 13 episodes a season - is that they don’t really get me attached to the more side or minor characters, because there is simply no time to focus on them properly, we have to spend what little time we have on the actual main plot.

24 episodes allow shenanigans, adventures that deepen bonds and explore secondary and minor characters, explore facettes of the main characters.

10 to 13 episodes have the benefit, and reason, that this allows you to actually sit down and binge-watch the whole season in one day. That’s its intend.

And I absolutely think that stories suffer from that.

Final season aside, I thoroughly enjoyed She-Ra, but the side-princesses were entirely sidelined. We never explored their realms, their family or situation, Scorpia’s mothers were teased in one picture, but with a larger episode order, we could have actually gone to her kingdom or explored this in flashbacks.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts was an amazing show and I loved it, but Benson and Troy’s relationship was incredibly sidelined, the other two girls that had joined the team with Troy (and Troy himself) were never really fleshed out with their own personalities and past - because there are only 10 episodes a season and you just had to focus on the main plot. In a larger format, we could have had whole episodes focusing on those three bonding with the main team in casual shenanigans, the mutes could have been explored more thoroughly.

DuckTales gives me that. It explores the triplets as individually drawn personalities, with their own motivations and their own adventures at times. We get whole episodes focused on Webbie’s friends, exploring them and their motivations. I have a far better grip on those characters, because the show has the time to focus on them, explore them.

Binge-watching can be fun, I do it a lot, but the shortened episode count of seasons is a real loss for many TV shows. And while, yes, many of the old shows with weekly releases and 24 episodes had a lot of fat that could have actually been trimmed and there are the occasional actual filler episodes that are skip-worthy, I do think that there should be a middle-ground. Give a show the amount of episodes it needs to tell its story, which includes character-focus and exploring character-dynamics. Too many TV shows nowadays, not just cartoons, paint only the most basic picture of who the characters are and how they stand to each other, but due to the show’s length, doesn’t really give focus to explore them in more detail. Don’t trim too much.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Suicide and the Homestuck Epilogues

I don’t really want to make a super long post at this time. Turns out, I did so anyway! I don’t have too much to express on this topic that you might not have already figured out for yourself. But I feel like what there is to discuss about suicide in the epilogue is important, so it’ll do well to get this off my chest.   

One of the most serious themes in the epilogue, explored THOROUGHLY in Candy, is about the Will to Live. The will to move on with your life and see the next day.    This is disguised as a metaphysical battle with non-canonicity and irrelevance, but multiple characters in the epilogue have metaphorical and literal battles with their own hopelessness. Characters on the cliff-edge of suicide.   

These depictions of the characters caused an extreme reaction in the fans reading the story. It can be incredibly distressing to read something from perspective of a suicidal character, especially if you’ve been fighting that battle yourself. However it can be therapeutic if you read a story about someone actually discovering a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dim.  A fictional depiction that hits so hard, ending with a candle of hope, can flip a switch in your mind.  

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of how Homestuck both failed and succeeded at giving a light at the end of the tunnel.   

Skip to the end if you don’t want to read the whole thing - I’ve done a TL;DR.  

So there are five characters I would like to touch upon:

Dirk Tavros (jr) John Terezi Dave

All of these characters warrant discussion in the context of hopefulness and hopelessness.  

Dirk:

Dirk is the first character I want to get over with. Dirk’s an example of homestuck giving a hopeless ending to a character.

Despite Canon!Dirk’s struggles with his self worth, with the ideas that he’ll become a bad person, getting a nice enough resolution when he met Dave, epilogue!Dirk has lost that battle against himself due to means entirely out of his control. Because of how close the square root of Dirk is with “bad”, in the form of his prescratch self’s carelessnes and his offshoot connections to Doc Scratch, Dirk’s cursed with the inevitability of becoming that evil ultimate self no matter how hard he tries to be a good person.  

Dirk is not entirely evil. He’s lost his humanity but still clings to some memory. I’m pretty sure he kills John??? But he wouldn’t kill Dave, and I don’t think - no matter what he does to him - that Dirk would ever kill jake. 

Now, CANDY!Dirk. Candy!Dirk sees no point existing in a world where he cannot maintain canon relevance and seize the narrative. It would also be dangerous for him to continue existing in the world. 

But the way Dirk’s friends see his suicide, the way this is played out in Candy if you’re isolated from his shenanigans in Meat, is a very significant depiction of people struggling with a friend who killed themselves. 

There’s the critical failure from Meat in retroactively making this look like one of the best things Dirk could’ve done. Even if his friends led shitty lives, they led their own lives. But his friends in Candy don’t see it that way, and it wouldn’t be that way if Dirk didn’t become his ultself. As far as they believe. he maybe saw himself as a hopeless case and died.   

Because of Dirk’s death Dave in particular is dealing with a lot of feelings. He’d known Dirk as a better version of his really nasty bro-dad. Because of Dirk’s death, Dave feels deprived of his friend and family member, he feels like if Dirk had been alive he’d have taught him about love.  

I found this touching. Knowing how suicide impacts others can greatly affect a decision. Even Dirk, who was distant from all his friends and whose suicide protected them from his influence, ended up being missed for all the good things he could’ve given the world.  

So, all in all: Dirk’s relationship with suicide is depressing. It was better depicted in the comic, which had a hopeful resolution. This epilogue shits all over that. There’s still some important messages however, in that Dirk being alive would’ve given everyone very different lives, some ways for the better, some ways for the worse. Dirk’s existence is not meaningless.   

Talking of meaningless existence, let’s move on to....

Tavros:   

Nope, not John yet.  John’s going to take a lot of thinking. Let’s deal with baby Tavros.  

Tavros is not a depiction of a suicidal character. He is however a key player in the “hopelessness” of the Candy timeline. John sees Tavros, and his father Jake, as in a hopeless situation. Tavros and Jake’s changing situation influence’s Johns thoughts on his timeline at the end.   

Tavros is born into a world that is not canon, into one of the worst households imaginable where all the cards were held against him from the start. His name is fucking Tavros. That’s immediately dooming him to a life of being treaded on. Tavros lives with his mother, the domineering Jane Crocker, and her fuckclown, and while the other kids - Harry Anderson, Vriska - live spoilt happy childhoods, Tavros is never allowed to be a child expressing his individuality. What is his personality? It’s pretty much being a bit smart and doing exactly what he’s told.  

Tavros reminds me of a more muted Gohan in the Dragonball Z universe, if Goku was a fragile human dweeb instead of a saiyan and ChiChi became Space Hitler. If Gohan never got those tastes of freedom when fighting against the Saiyans, then he’d have no capacity to stand up to his mother. 

John fantasizes about helping him, and Tavros catches onto that fleeting fantasy, but it ends in disaster as Jade tries to reason with John that there’s no way he can keep Tavros safe, then John gets into a fit of rage and nearly injures him as well as all the other kids in the room. Tavros becomes scared of John.  

There’s something here about John seeing himself in little Tavvy. They’re nothing alike personality wise, but Tavros is John’s full blooded brother, and what he might have become like had he been brought up in a dysfunctional home.

At the end of the story, after years of this treatment has led to Tavros becoming a very passive boy who has an obsession with faygo, Jake finally makes the decision to leave his wife and go live with John. Even though Tavros is 15 and his personality or lack thereof is mostly realised, he’s given this spark of hope that maybe he will develop a bit of individuality. After all, John sees him as one of the most important, devastating consequences of the timeline, and somebody that he must help out.   

It is fitting that Tavros finds a record player at the end and put on some fun music, a self-expression of sorts.   

Right okay, time to get into the meaty part.   

 John and Terezi

There are some parts of these characters that I want to write about in isolation, but their relationship is the major distinguisher between their internal battles and, say, Dirk’s internal battle. John and Terezi are examples of two suicidal characters who interact with each other. The interactions between them cannot be isolated from their suicidal subtext, because they influence each other’s outlook on the world and their futures.    

I’m having difficulty, however, figuring out how to structure this part. There’s too much beef to get into if I’m going to discuss their histories.  So let’s try to make it brief:  

Terezi’s Context: Terezi has history as a character with suicidal subtext, especially in the Pre-Retcon universe.  She was overwrought with guilt and grief, became alienated from her all friends, spent all of her time either in the dreambubbles looking for vriska or unhealthily warrowing in her orrows in her abusive relationship with Gamzee. She then goes on what appears to be a suicide attack against Gamzee, wanting him to fight back.... until he does, at which point she tries to break free, indicating a will to live in there somewhere. In the pre-retcon Terezi finds herself having both a “hopeless” and a “hopeful” resolution. She dies by her own knife, under Aranea’s influence - yes, Terezi stabbing herself with the other half of the cane sword is ironic on like 12 levels - but in watching everybody else die, ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to fade away. Terezi is filled with determination, and will not rest until she sees to it that John’s on his way to fix everything. After this though she backs into her depression again. One of these Terezis tries to use her powers and does not see the effect. Even though she must’ve known there’d be a timeline where the effect hasnt happened yet she loses all self esteem and tells John to go leave her to die. The other Terezi, in seeing John return, is filled with a glimmer of faith and sends John off to follow her instructions.  I’m pretty sure the depressed didn’t die. The one who died in the chalk outline however walks sadly in paradox space, seemingly hopeless now her story’s ended, before reuniting with Vriska.    POST retcon Terezi has a plethora of self esteem issues, many of which were exposed by the knowledge of the pre retcon existing. In the body of A6A6I5 she’s chasing the idea that the other her had “figured out” all those self esteem issues, which we know to be false, and Terezi cannot connect with others properly despite being so good at reading them.  This lack of strong connections and lack of self esteem makes her feel a bit empty inside.   After remembering the pre retcon then seeing the vision of herself and Vriska reunite, Terezi decides to chase after Vriska, refusing to let her die against Lord English. But because of Furthest Ring shenanigans, she can’t find her.  

So Terezi ends Homestuck as a character with... not a whole lot of light in the tunnel, but there’s something there. That something takes the form of 

1. The hope that she’ll find Vriska some day 2. Her friendship with John, a growing connection with somebody other than Vriska.  

John Context:   

You know what? There isn’t a fucking lot! John throughout the majority of homestuck, completely opposite to Terezi and pretty much every other character, has NO SUICIDAL SUBTEXT WHATSOEVER. Hooray, no 500 word expository essay! It’s not until the CREDITS where John looks miserable.  

...John in the credits, now living on a peaceful new planet after focusing for 3 years on his sburb adventure, feels completely lost. Where his family and friends have met with the alternate versions of their parents, Dad Crocker isn’t actually John’s family, so that relationship doesn’t work as a surrogate for his lost dad.   John doesn’t know why he feels so empty inside and depressed, when his friends are trying to make him so happy. But as soon as he starts recieving messages from Caliborn you get an indication that John WANTS conflict. He wants to serve a purpose.  And the prologue of the epilogue (ha!) supports this.  

He’s captivated by Rose’s discussion of “canon”. Since he’s tied to canon, he feels some responsibility for preserving it. But Rose and Roxy’s reactions imply that John is about to go on a suicide mission. John laments that he’s spent so much time being depressed when he could’ve been enjoying life instead. This implies here that John wasn’t suicidally depressed at this stage, and he starts to lament how he hasn’t put his life back on track. 

So John, at this stage in the prologue, is a depiction of a hopeful AND hopeless character. However the hopelessness does not derive, yet, from any lack of will to live. It’s lamenting how he has so little time left.    This lament is still related to the discussion of suicide. John thinking of how much he’d miss out on if he left the world and died. So, altogether, John in the prologue is someone who has a light in the tunnel that someone else might sniff out. But that light might still shine on some readers who relate.  

CANDY: 

This is Terezi’s chronological start, and the “meat” of John’s suicidal subtext. 

As soon as John splits the world into Candy and decides to enjoy his life on Earth C, he begins trying to appreciate the world and get a taste of all the things that he thought he was going to lose out on had the suicide mission started.  However, things seem “off” to him.  He thinks Roxy is not in-character, Jade’s fucked up Davekat, Jane’s becoming a nazi, GAMZEE’S HERE which is an IMMEDIATE red flag, and everything is starting to go off the rails.   John wonders if this is all his fault. He sees everyone on earth C as not being themselves, as being almost like “NPCs”. They don’t have the same reactions to stuff as him. They don’t have the same feelings. Except for ONE person - Terezi, who is isolated from all these shenanigans and is the perfect venting post, giving John grounded feedback that he agrees with based on his previous knowledge of the kids.   This is not yet an interaction between two obviously suicidally depressed characters, but the idea of the world being “fabricated” and people acting “fake” is already here, and THIS is something a lot of people who have struggled with depression may be troubled by. The fuel to John’s theory is his position in an actual fictional world where the events are not canon, but even so, it’s still something real people go through.   

I think it’s worth pointing out that John and TZ are going off completely different time scales, emphasizing the disassociation they have with the timeline. John only feels grounded while talking to Terezi, who is stuck in the past. Terezi is seeing her friends grow up into crazy-ass adults without her.  

John’s depression escalates dramatically when he has a go at everyone on his son’s birthday party and nearly hurts the kids, then he felt like everybody hated him. This scene was powerful, but was also just like something out of a DBZ fic I read where everyone forgot Gohan’s birthday, he upset baby Goten (the only person who he felt unconditionally loved by), and then he goes to blow himself up somewhere. Yes, THAT scale of melodrama.   And John wants to float up into space, to leave the earth, maybe freeze up there. He is now suicidally depressed. He feels awful. It’s only going to get worse for the time being.  

After that point John turns to Terezi again and we find out she’s the same fucking way. Her journey to find Vriska, which looked to us at first to be cautiously optimistic. is a bit of a suicide mission itself. She does not intend to come back if she can’t complete the mission, even to pick up new supplies. Terezi is starving to death but she refused to return because she sees Earth C as a false paradise, a fake recreation of Alterna where everything is a bit too perfect and the people are too happy and she feels lost when she left the only route to happiness she can see behind in Sburb.  Turns out Remem8er didn’t so much give her a new perspective as it doubled the dependency she had on Vriska.  

John and Terezi connect with each other because of how they both see themselves as empty, and Earth C as empty, and John tries to appeal to Terezi’s need for friendship. He tries to get her to see the light side of living. But because he has hard time seeing it, he can’t express it.     He tries to help her get over vriska, by saying she deserves better companionship. This DOES plant a seed in Terezi’s mind, the idea that she’s wasted her life looking for someone who has been a shitlord to her.   

To an extent, they have been enabling each other’s depression. Seeing each other as the only “real” characters and discussing that idea, John going into how he thinks “everybody is already dead”, Terezi confirming other characters are acting strange and expressing how she hates the new world so much she’d rather die than return empty-handed, they’re lighting the fire to their own negativity. John’s in panic mode about losing the one outlet he has. And if anything’s made Terezi feel alienated from Earth it’s seeing how it is turning out.... But there’s not a lot John can do about this, because yknow, she feels the same way in Meat.    

This interaction between two suicidal characters has a positive and negative representation of dealing with those thoughts.  John’s begging Terezi to come back and forget about Vriska, which is a good thing, but Terezi’s too stubborn. She won’t budge. John has to traumatically read what may as well be her suicide message to him, further cementing his own issues. Bear in mind - because of her predicament, he has has been sidetracked from talking to her about his argument, and probably thinks he’s been a moron for venting to her about all of this while she’s been slowly dying in space.  Altogether I’d say this conversation veers towards absolute hopelessness, at least for those who have read Candy first and haven’t been spoiled on what happens to Terezi next. 

The next scene’s also retroactively hilarious, but that doesn’t stop it from being powerfully depressive.  John find the car with her “”””””blood”””””” and freaks out. 

In losing Terezi, who he saw as his one outlet to canon, John loses all of his composure. He is completely incapable of holding himself together any more.

Remember that DBZ fic I mentioned earlier where Gohan runs off and blows himself up with a suicidal tantrum? Yeah. It was a lot like this, but with rocks flying everywhere.   

John at this stage is at rock fucking bottom. He’s completely hopeless. 

Then 10 years pass. He’s been so depressed his wife and kid have left him. But... he’s still around.  Dave at one point thinks John’s going to kill himself, directly addressing this subtext, but John was actually talking to Karkat. Karkat’s position as a revolutionary leader, Dave’s caring for him, and John’s presence at Jade’s wedding to Dave despite having thrown a mega-tantrum that made him think they’d hate him forever, all of these things are........ starting to contradict John’s idea that the world is full of empty heartless people who don’t feel things. John has not been rejected by everybody.   

He accepts Terezi’s gone, and rips her picture into tiny pieces, letting them drift in the wind. This is the start of John’s progress away from his suicidal depression. 

He bumps into Vriska, has a go at her about Terezi, then Vriska does.. THAT with Gamzee. Gamzee’s death does restore some peace in the hearts of the viewers, at least. Not entirely relevant but I felt it was positive.  John’s been calling Vriska Jr shitty for all this time too, but she and Harry are alright characters who feel real enough to us as the reader. It’s now that we may be starting to question whether he was correct in writing off the world as his own bad fanfic. We’re questioning whether John is justified in hating Candyland as much as he does. If people care for him, if Karkat’s going to become Jesus, and if it birthed these two losers, then... is it so terrible? Maybe there’s hope?   

He bumps into Rose  who thanks him for everything he’s done. Rose is SO IMPORTANT here because she was the one who planted the idea he was in a fake world to begin with, and now she’s telling him even though it’s not canon, she feels happier than ever COULD in the canon world. John’s wishy washy on this. When he talks to Rose he feels optimistic, but when he gets back to his house, he’s thinking about how she just confirmed nothing matters at all.

At his house, he has a couple of surprise intruders. Turns out Jake discovered free will. John has some real talk with him. And while he’s at first negative, Jake’s infectious mood and the opportunity to give Tavros the life he deserves gives John that little push of motivation he needs to go speak to Roxy.   

His chat with Roxy is the climax of Candy!John’s arc. She gives us, for the first time, a third-person perspective of depressed John. We see him how she sees him, a sad little man who appears to be blaming outside forces for problems that he isn’t willing to confront himself.

She TEARS DOWN his perception that the world is fake. She explains why she may have seemed fake and why he was a fucking fool for thinking so. She says she doesn’t CARE whether it’s canon or not, because she knows a bit of how it would’ve gone down, and it would not have been good for John or Rose.  Roxy throws a great big surprise on us as the reader - she’s been dealing with gender dysphoria the whole time and overcompensating for it! Holy fuck!!! Our minds have just been blown!!!!

So the audience, and John, who have for this whole time been feeding into this depressing idea that the world is fake and it’s probably better for John to be dead than in this fake life, that everything is terrible.... Roxy’s rant makes us do one of the most amazing double-takes I’ve seen a story throw. 

John..... sees light for the first time in years.   He decides to take the step to work on his relationship with his family. 

And then it ends.  

All of this - Rose, the wedding, the kids, Jake and Tavros, Roxy - The way these make us revise our perspective on John’s depression is one of the most hopeful representations I have ever seen in media.  An AMAZING turnaround for a suicidal character. They made us hyper-invested in all the bad things John’s feeling, taking advantage of our awareness he’s correct in thinking it’s fake.  Taking advantage of all the nasty thought that may have crossed in our minds about the world not being real, about people acting not real, the little cells we build ourselves into...... and opening the door to a wide world with people who have had a lot going on that we’ve been blinding ourselves to.   

Roxy going into how we have our whole lives ahead of us and countless years to fuck up, to discover new things, breaking down how John and Terezi think that because they hadn’t figured things out as young people they were never going to be happy....  

Candy!John is an overwhelming success. Fucking KUDOS to the writers for this representation.  But to get there, you have to slog through the entire thing. And there is a risk that maybe you relate to his depression, but not to how he saw through his depression. That would be for yourself to confront.  For me personally, I honestly feel that this has given me a refreshing outlook.  It makes me so happy to be writing about John’s turnaround after all of this analysis of his depression.    

...Okay, fun’s over. Now to the depressing ending. The point where the epilogue kind of fucked up.   

MEAT: 

It’d be unfair for me to make you read through this with the bias that Meat is an entirely depressing resolution for two characters struggling with suicidal depression. There’s much that Meat gets right with John and Terezi. I think, however, it trips at the finish line.  But how badly it tripped depends on whether you think the comic falls into the trap of suicidal depression, or just about subverts it

Let’s get into it!  

John for the start of Meat is contemplating how he’s just launched himself into a bit of a suicide mission. Roxy and Calliope walk away without giving him a hug, which is... upsetting. Not sure why, if they knew he was going to die??? Legitimately makes me angry that this happened. But going back to the point - John is isolated in his fate. He does not have any friends he knows to back him up. He’s leaving the fake fake Earth C for good.   John leaves notes behind for his friends. These will never be read.  

Ouch. Off to a rough start already. This has the makings of an angst fic by itself.  

When he’s fighting Lord English with all these other versions of his friends, he’s actually having a bit of fun. But all his friends die and you get the impression he’s very very doomed. And he gets bitten by the tooth, etc. Oh and Davepeta performs a suicide attack! Holy fuck, forgot about that! But there’s no suicidal subtext, Davepeta’s just being a martyr, so nothing interesting to dissect here.  

AFTER the fight with Lord English:   John just floats in space. He’s seemingly hopeless. He does not take any action to help himself, having sensed he’s got nothing to back to. But PART of this is the influence of Dirk Strider, planting thoughts in his head. Dirk wants John to stay there, until he finds Terezi.  But John does challenge the depressing thoughts Dirk’s putting into his head:

Dirk’s relationship with John and Terezi’s depression has increased importance in the end chapters, but for now, it looks like he’s trying to get them to reunite. Is Dirk actually feeding their emotional dependence on each other? Even though we know they still have that dependence isolated from his influence, I get the impression he’s trying to make things unhealthy.  

 Either way, John has no willpower to go ANYWHERE until he finds her. John for these two chapters is drifting aimlessly, hopelessly. He’s signing himself off for martyr death.    

Terezi finding John has equal meaning - she was willing to die until she bumped into him. 

A mixed interpretation so far of the suicidal depression. They were both waiting to die, but the way John was going to die was so abstract that it doesn’t feel as impactful as when he was depressed in Candyland. I think this would’ve had a weaker impact on the viewership. But the moment he finds Terezi, it becomes a hopeful interpretation, and remains that way for the next few chapters. 

On Meat 28 and Meat 31, they spend these chapters dealing with their suicidal depression, in particularly Terezi’s. She’s directly confronting all of those emotions, with a person she cares about that she thought she’d never see again. Terezi is still incapable of letting go. She’s still starving to death out here and refuses to return, but... she doesn’t want John to leave either. She wants him to stay.  Terezi is being very foolish here, and it’s unknown how much the decision to stay escalated John’s death. It’s notable that John would rather stay here with her than go back to Earth for backup or healing, or drag her back kicking and screaming.   

They’re still on the edge. They’re at what we assume to be their low point and don’t think anything matters, and they have little self preservation... but because they care about each other, John gets motivation to go back to Earth with Terezi, and she becomes concerned about his failing health.  

John continues trying to get through to Terezi and convince her to go back. The below conversations takes place:   

John sees hope in Terezi, because she gave him hope when he thought nothing could get worse. He values the hardass attitude she brings to the table, kicking everybody else back into gear. John thinks several times through the epilogue that if Terezi was on Earth, she would’ve stopped everyone from falling apart.  

I think this is relevant because the scene in GAME OVER itself is an example of the characters finding shining hope and determination even when the narrative forces have taken a hard dump on them. It’s an important reminder here when John and Terezi are deciding whether they want to live or not.   

And here’s my favourite part of the entire conversation: 

John has now given TWO examples of Terezi fighting on when she just wanted to give up. And the relationship this has with the reader is Terezi’s acts of self preservation are indicators that maybe she does want to live? If she wanted to die, why would she eat fucking shaving cream--- okay maybe yes most people who want to die would try that, but in this situation she’s crazy and thinks it tastes like cream.   

Because John’s giving Terezi reasons to live, she gives him an opportunity to live by performing some haphazard surgery and removing the tooth embedded in his body.  

Following this, they realise their connection to each other, and consummate their relationship... in the back of his dads car.   

Hooray, you cry! Terezi and John have found reasons to live - they care about each other, and as each wants the other to live, they want to survive so as not to disappoint. They’re able to connect with each other in ways they can’t connect with other characters.  

AT THIS STAGE, this has an... optimistic outlook. Terezi letting go of Vriska is very very important. But you might be noticing she’s latching onto John. If it was left like this, and they went back to earth and fell in love or whatever, it might have been a happy enough resolution for two depressed characters. Not as RAW as Candy!John, but Terezi’s been through enough already that it might have been as impactful. And John’s finally getting what he wanted all throughout Candy. Cliche... but happy days. If they could’ve overcome their depression it, would’ve been fine.    

.....

And then Meat 35 happens. 

Soon as Dirk takes the narrative back he decides to start killing John with LE poison inside his body.  John fucking dies in the middle of a love confession.  

Oof!!!  Well there goes any hope for John’s depression arc. But at least he was happy and canon when he died. It wasn’t as deep as Candy’s anyway, and we were expecting it. John’s death does NOT feel like a suicide, because he wants to live. So Meat!John is a mixed result for a suicidally depressed character; someone who was suicidal, but then found the will to live, and then had his life tragically taken from him.    

Terezi though, Terezi who I wrote a 500 word paragraph INTRODUCING the context of her suicidal depression story, is now left with absolutely nothing. Because she had done a rebound away from dependency on Vriska, and now latched onto John, Terezi doesn’t know what she’s doing on earth. Her perspective hasn’t changed and she still thinks it’s very fake. She feels like all of her friends are embroiled in social dynamics and petty fights that exclude her. She feels like she can’t confide in anyone about the traumatic shit that she’s been through, including John’s death.   

At least, that is how Dirk wants her to feel.  

Terezi has a history of challenging the narrative. She rewrote the timeline with the retcons, but before then, Terezi’s spoken to people who have tried to write narrative prompts in her head. In this act of defiance, Terezi calls out Dirk for being full of shit when he tries to go into how depressed she’s feeling. 

This challenge, though weak because we know Dirk’s right on the money, ends up turning this confrontation from a fully depressing one into dark comedy, not ENTIRELY unlike the scene in Candy where John’s crying over her... stains. Because Homestuck is dealing with a hopeless case, it can’t just END it like that. Terezi, despite feeling that way, refuses to allow herself to be seen as completely hopeless and gets mad at the author for reading into her like that. This is getting metatextual but the self-awareness in this conversation is an important reminder to the reader that this ultimately a story, and maybe Terezi isn’t as hopeless as Dirk’s making her out to be.  

Of course, Dirk tells her that she can put an act on her whole life, and never be happy. Terezi... agrees with him, insofar as we know. Despite her challenge, she gives up on living with the Earth kids, joining the villain to create a new sburb session. 

Terezi’s conversation with Roxy was dysmally depressing. However, Roxy was thinking about her and trying to get through to her. Roxy seeing through Terezi’s feelings makes me think if she’d stayed on Earth, they would’ve become friends of some kind?  That would’ve been a light at the end of the tunnel. If Terezi had showed Roxy that John had died, that’d have been a massive step. But Terezi chooses isolation, leaving the planet for a new, more canonically relevant adventure.   

This scene does make it seem utterly hopeless for Terezi, especially when Callie says later that while John may theoretically be revived, he will never be relevant again. So while Terezi continues to be relevant, she’ll be isolated from the TWO people she cares about most.   

...There’s a flicker of hope there though. If you read Candy, there’s a scene where Vriska tries to send Terezi a sort of apology love confession. And we see Terezi recieving the messages for this!!!! But, she doesn’t read them onscreen. We don’t SEE her become aware that Vriska’s alive. And “seeing” is important.  Terezi in the Epilogue is also doing some goofy shit. While life on the Dirkship is probably depressing as fuck, she’s trying to eat Metal Candy for shits and giggle despite Rose challenging her.  Terezi’s personality defiantly shines through, when John dies, when Dirk wants to make her grovel, and when she’s on a ship with Robot Rose. The comic can take everything from her, but it can’t take away her goofiness. Terezi continues to live in defiance of the comic.   

BACK TO HOW THIS RELATES TO DEPRESSIVE SUICIDE, How do I rate Terezi’s arc? Both in the epilogue, and across homestuck?   

I get the impression the reason other characters have been able to move on from this stuff while Terezi gets dragged back into hopelessness is because of meta reasons. She’s the dark comedy, and one of the most continuously relevant characters. If things calmed down for her maybe she would be a less interesting or funny character. She’s cursed by her own relevance. Like Vriska, and John! Except instead of dying or being sucked into a new world she just continues being a bitter protagonist.       But.... what Terezi’s story brings to the discussion on suicidal depression is hopelessness. The sparks of hope and self awareness presented at the end are good to remind the reader this is just a silly story, but there’s not too much light for her at any stage. Getting continuously trodden down, throwing away her own chances of happiness. Not being able to get over anything. Therefore, Homestuck fails to bring a light at the end of the tunnel for Terezi Pyrope, even after all of these years of going into this theme.  Even if she has hope from Vriska, there’s the issue that she’s chasing after John like she was chasing after Vriska. Terezi’s fallen into the trap of being a character who goes around in circles with her depression arc. If you were personally invested in her getting better, you might be hurt by her presentation. The story tries to mitigate this by giving Terezi enough self awareness to poke fun at her own situation, and stop it from feeling too much like a melodramatic dragonball z angstfic like John’s. After all, Terezi would rather be tragicomic than plain tragic.    

Holy fuck, this is long!!!!!! Thanks Terezi!    

DAVE: 

To cap off this post I wanted to do a character that did not have a direct depiction of depressive suicide, but still related back to suicidal themes and did, ultimately, kind of kill himself. Dave in the Candy timeline. 

Dave goes through a lot of shit in his timeline. He’s in a terribad  relationship with Jade at the start, and all of his attempts to seek advice on his own sexuality are met with opposition by... fate itself. John’s not very useful. Dirk KILLS himself.   

Things go from bad to worse for Dave. He loses Karkat for good, when Karkat gets outraged at everyone for letting Jane’s bullshit slide. 

Dave... does not appear suicidally depressed following this. But he is a very repressed man. And years in the future when Obama comes to offer him the choice of accepting his ultimate self form, leaving EVERYTHING behind? He takes it without a second thought. Dave is so miserable that he doesn’t give a fuck if he does, because he gets to become an awesome robot with awesome powers and memories.  In the Meat! postscript, he abandons the Candy!planet to go fight the relevant fight in the new session Dirks’ overtaking.   

Because of how detached this suicide is from the suicidal depictions of Dirk, John, and Terezi, it’s not easy to analyse. But I think that this would count as a mixed representation.  JUST like Terezi, Dave has given up on his new world and decided to go run away for adventures elsewhere. JUST like Dirk, Dave’s let go of his individuality.   UNLIKE both of them, he’s with the good guys, he has enough individuality to still be himself, he has ALLLLLLLL of the self confidence... for now, and he is already making new friends. 

Unfortunately because most people IRL can’t merge their minds with epic robots, things for regular ol Candy Dave appear to have been so awful he gave it all up just like that for Obama.  If it wasn’t so absurd, it would probably be depressing, and I think a lot of Dave fans who read a more depressed interpretation of his character might see this as a failure on the part of Hussie to depict light at the end of the tunnel.   

Now we’re at the end of this stupidly long essay, let’s do a TL;DR:  

DIRK: Hopeless depiction of character dealing with suicidal depression, when their depiction was previously more hopeful

CANDY!JOHN: Excellent representation of character overcoming suicidal depression, best in the comic by far

MEAT!JOHNL: Weak representation of character dealing with suicidal depression

TEREZI: Semi hopeless representation of character dealing with suicidal depression

CANDY!DAVE: WH4T  

TAVROS: Not depressed, but symbolic of Candy’s hopeful outlook

EPILOGUE

Oh, sorry,  I mean “Conclusion”. Except we can’t really call it that either. Oh you meant the ESSAY?  Okay!!! Right.  

The epilogue’s depiction of sucidial depression is mostly upsetting. It’s negative, with a not very hopeful outlook.  

But what bits of there ARE end up being very powerful, in particular Candy!John who is the focus of this theme.  

However, Terezi - the COMIC’s focus character for sucidal depression -  does not get a good enough deal at the end to be seen as having much hope. The story tries to mitigate this with self awareness that it is, in fact, a story. 

It does this MORE with Dirk, and Dave too.  Dirk is hyper aware of his status as a fictional character. Although he kills himself, it’s not much of a suicide when he’s doing it to consolidate his influence elsewhere.  

But Dirk’s depiction as a supervillain shits on a previous arc he had, where he thought he’d be better off dead than alive because he might become bad one day.  Dirk was getting over this. Then the epilogue makes it look like Dirk would’ve been better off dead!!! He lost all of his individuality.   

So, Dirk is the most critical failure of this theme. Terezi is a big failure but as always she’d be salvagable if there was more content.  Candy!John is an overwhelming success.  Tavros is a part of John’s success.  Dave is in a weird place. I’d call him a failure though.    

The lesson to be learnt here is that.... even though the end did some GREAT things, like Candy!John, it’s advisable to distance yourself from relating too hard to characters going through suicidal depression. If they are like Dirk or Terezi you might be feeling depressed yourself at the end. 

It’s not up to the author to live up to the reader’s vision of how something should end. In this case Hussie gave hopeless endings to characters. But if you’re consuming media responsibly, you make sure you are not too sensitive to negative depictions like this, which while relatable are still the fictional musings of some dude.  

It’s not fair to ask Hussie to give everyone a happy ending, if that’s not his artistic vision.  We can criticise it artistically all we want, but we can’t call it unethical, not unless he’s deliberately aiming to hurt people. And despite everything, I don’t think he ever has been.   

What do you think? Do you believe the epilogue team wrote a good representation of characters coming to terms with depressive suicide, or suicidal tendencies?  

[sweetness47]

Rescue

Pairing: Alpha!Demon!Dean x reader (Non Con), Alpha!Sam x reader

@spndarkbingo – Demon Dean

@spnabobingo – Touch Starvation

@heavenandhellbingo – The First Blade

@spndeanbingo – A/B/O

@samwinchesterbingo – fuck or die

Word count: 1368

Warnings: MATURE 18+ READERS ONLY…smut, knotting, claiming, non con, unprotected sex, rape, blood play, abandonment, violent themes THERE ARE TRIGGER WARNINGS HERE!!!!!!

She had been hunting with the Winchesters for a couple of years when Dean took on the first blade. She watched it change him. He became distant, dark, and it frightened her. A LOT! Numerous times he was found attempting to take her against her will, and if not for the timely interventions of Sam or Cas, he would have succeeded. She took strong suppressants as well, and that helped secure her safety for the time being, well that and the fact that neither Sam nor Cas would leave her by herself anymore.

She was almost grateful when Dean buggered off with Crowley to explore his newfound darkness. The bunker went back to being their home instead of a prison. YN had more time to herself, the two ‘bodyguards’ having eased off their protection detail. They thought she was safe now that the threat was gone. Research was almost nonstop, there had to be a way to free Dean from the mark, but as of that moment, none had been found.

The nightmare began about two months after Dean had left. Everyone had gone to sleep, well except Cas, but in the morning, YN was gone. There were signs of a struggle in her room, ripped fabric, blood, but no sign of her. Cas tried searching for her, but came up empty every time.

YN squinted at the bright light as she struggled to focus. What the fuck had happened? Her head felt like a basketball and…oh god! Her face went ashen as she recalled the events before she’d lost consciousness. Dean had broken into her room and tried to grab her. She’d fought back, but he overpowered her and smashed her head against the wall a few times. And now she was here, wherever here was.

A cool breeze sent a new realization of terror through her: she was naked, and worse…tied to the bed. He planned to rape her.

He actually planned for much more than just raping YN. Dean had developed feelings for her before the first blade took over, and now he could have her, however and whenever he wanted.

Her eyes widened as he entered the room, torso bare, jeans hanging just right on those perfect hips. His grin was as wicked as his gaze, she shivered as his eyes raked over her naked form, nausea rising as she struggled to break free. She knew the bonds were too tight to break free from, but she had to try. If the circumstances were different, if Dean wasn’t under the dark influences of the Mark of Cain, she would gladly become his. But not like this.

“Relax sweetheart. I’m not gonna kill you. But I am going to have you lots, knot you over and over, claim you, and fill that belly with pups. You’re going to be mine!”

Her fear increased tenfold as he walked over to the bed and sat on the edge. YN tried to move away as he reached his hand out to touch her soft skin, but it was no use. He grabbed one of her breasts, roughly kneading the sensitive flesh, twisting and pinching the nipples. Then his fingers ventured lower, running through her folds, finding evidence of arousal, even as she fought against it.

YN whimpered as he slipped a finger inside her slick, then a second. He began fucking into her hard, adding a third digit, wet sloppy sounds filling the room as he assaulted her. She tried to ignore him, tried to fight the coil in her abdomen, but failed. Her orgasm slammed into her hard, coating Dean’s fingers with her slick.

Then he took out the blade, and her terror was renewed. The tip scraped lightly along her breasts and her sternum before cutting a thin line down the middle, not deep, but enough to bleed. Tears ran down her face as pain flooded her system. Then he made another slice across one thigh, then the other.

She yelled and cursed his name, then, in her anger, she spit in his face.

Wrong move.

His eyes darkened, and she was the recipient of a backhand across the face. “Bitch!” he snarled.

Too late, YN realized her error. He rid himself of his jeans and boxers, then climbed on her, forcing her legs apart. Brutally, her thrust into her slick coated entrance, ripping through her innocence, bruising her tender flesh. He pounded hard, bending his head to lick red droplets from her chest. He growled low as he climaxed, knotting YN, then sinking his teeth into her scent gland, claiming her.

He lay there lapping at the wound, running his tongue over the cuts he’d made, while his seed spilled inside her. YN felt ill. Her body hurt, and now she quite possibly carried this man…no, monster’s, pups. Tears ran down her cheeks, unable to hide her fear.

Dean got up and put his pants back on. He took a glance back at his captive. “Thanks for the ride sweetheart. I’ll be back later for another round.” And he left her tied down, not bothering to clean up any of the blood or semen from her trembling form.

True to his word, Dean came to her three more times, each more violent and harsh than the last. His pleasure seemed heightened as he bit her, hit her, licked the blood from the cuts he inflicted upon her already battered body. His sexual assaults were brutal to say the least, unyielding and primal, without a care for her own well being.

He brought food to her, but she refused to eat. If this was to be her destiny, she didn’t want any part of it. She wished death would claim her, it would be better than this hell. Anything would be better than this.

Day three, Dean sent a lackey to clean her up as she had also refused to let him do that too. He wasn’t allowed to fuck her, but that didn’t stop him from forcing her to give him a blow job. He finished cleaning her, and was rewarded with death for disobeying the Demon’s one rule. Dean knew what had happened, and made sure his other followers knew the consequences should any of them think of trying something similar.

He took to washing her himself, despite the hatred she openly displayed for him. He force-fed her as well, making sure she swallowed the food, and didn’t vomit it afterwards. She managed to fool him occasionally, but for two weeks straight, he persisted. She needed to be healthy to carry a strong healthy litter of pups for him. Her health, or lack there of, didn’t stop him from raping her multiple times a day, cutting her, blood play, torturing her daily. Dean’s rut had long since ended, but she was his, and he thoroughly enjoyed playing with his toy.

After the third week, Dean decided to road trip with Crowley again. He placed guards he trusted to watch her and feed her, but not touch her in any sexual way. YN was stiff and sore, but she also began feeling the effects of his abandonment. And worse still, she realized she was indeed carrying pups, just as he wanted. For as much as she hated what this demon had done to her, she craved an Alpha’s touch now, and the craving was getting worse. She couldn’t keep food down, Dean’s scent was fading away, and she couldn’t shake the loneliness that plagued her. She hated him for what he’d done, but her body missed his touch.

One week after Dean left, Cas and Sam found YN and rescued her. Both men were horrified at the bruises and scars that covered her body. She was pale and severely malnourished. Sam was furious with Dean, he wanted to rip his brother to shreds. It was Cas who stopped him from doing so, telling him to focus on helping his friend instead. Sam agreed, only because he could see that YN needed him.

Cas healed the scars and the malnourishment, and told Sam of the pups, two of them. Sam asked if the pups were normal or if they were demon, not that it would change Sam’s decision to help his friend, but he needed to know. Cas confirmed that they were normal, and then told Sam about the severity of her abandonment sickness.

Sam went to YN’s room, smiling as he watched her nesting. He could tell she was still not well, she looked lost, and his heart broke. YN looked up at the younger Winchester and began crying. Sam crossed the room in seconds and gathered her into his arms, letting her sob into his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair in an effort to calm her.

“Cas told me about the touch starvation sickness YN. What do you want me to do? You’re carrying Dean’s pups as well. If the sickness gets worse, it could be harmful to them, and to you. You’re my best friend, and I love you like a sister, although I have to confess to being attracted to you. I did think about us as a couple on occasion.” He brought her face up to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to see you suffer, but I won’t force you into anything you don’t want.”

She bit her lip as she studied her friend. “Are you offering to claim me over your brother’s mark? Do you think that would help?”

Sam nodded. “Cas seems to think it would. YN, I want to help you, and if that means claiming you, then that’s what I’ll do. You and the pups are the most important thing in the world to me. I’ll love them as if they were my own. Do you want me as your Alpha?”

YN nodded, reaching up to brush her lips against his. Sam responded, thrusting his tongue inside her mouth. YN moaned, leaning into his strong embrace as his hands undid the waistband of her jeans. She reciprocated, her hands eager to free his throbbing erection from the confines of his own pants. Need consumed both Alpha and Omega as Sam reached between them, finding her wet, but also needing the last bit of affirmation that this was what she wanted. She nodded.

He thrust inside, the slick coating his shaft as he did. YN arched up to meet his entrance, her body shaking with the force of her orgasm. Then he moved, and she met him pound for pound. His release came swiftly, and in one fluid motion he sank his fangs into her shoulder, overriding his brother’s, claiming her as his. The fever and pain subsided almost immediately as the pressure of the knot met her nerves and senses.

Once the knot shrank, he rolled over to the side and pulled her close, both spent and needing rest. She moved her head to look up at her Alpha.

“Sam?”

“Mhmm?”

“Thank you.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

He kissed her forehead. “I love you too, Omega.”

@legion1993 @akshi8278 @alwaysdreamingforthebest

[gdelgiproducer]

What’s been your favorite staged version of JCS? (Non-concert)

First, a list of the staged (non-concert) versions of JCS I’ve seen: two high school productions (about which you’ll hear nothing in this post; it’s unfair to judge them in competition with pros), the closing performance of the 2000 Broadway revival, two performances of the national tour that followed said revival (one of which featured Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen – Pilate on the original album, Broadway, and in the 1973 film – as Herod), and four performances of a national tour initially billed as Ted Neeley’s “farewell” engagement in the role of Jesus. In total, discounting the number of performances of each, five productions, only three of which we will consider here.

The 2000 Broadway revival had basically all the problems of the video of the same production: I’m sure Gale Edwards is a fine director of other shows, but she missed the boat with this particular iteration of JCS. (Not having seen her original production at the Lyceum Theatre in 1996, which unfortunately never left that venue and was reportedly far better than the one that went wide, I can only comment on this version.) Her direction and the production design that accompanied it were full of the kinds of blatant, offensively obvious attempts at symbolism and subtlety that appeal only to pseudo-intellectual theater kids. In real life, there’s no such thing as obvious good vs. obvious evil (things just ain’t black and white, people), and any attempt to portray this concept on stage or in a film usually results in a hokey “comic book” product, which is kind of what the 2000 production was. 

The first thing Edwards did was draw her line in the sand. “These are the good guys, and these are the bad guys.” The overall production design played into this ‘line in the sand’ feel as well, being so plain in its intentions as to almost beat you over the head with them. There may have been some good concepts mixed in, but for a show that runs on moral ambiguity, they were very poorly executed and did damage to the piece. Some examples:

Annas and Caiaphas were devoutly “evil,” seemingly designed to inspire fear.  It’s easy to see good as so very good, and bad as so very bad; to want to have the evil in a nice little box. But it’s not that simple. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and now you know where my Star Trek loyalties lie, curse you!) once said, “…villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those that clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”  Evil isn’t always a clear and recognizable stereotype. Evil could be lurking inside anyone, maybe even in you, and you would never know. People aren’t inherently evil. Like good, it’s a role they grow and live into. And since history is basically a story of the developments and actions of humans over the ages, maybe it’s a mistake to view the characters who’ve played their parts in it so one-dimensionally. It doesn’t dismiss the evil they did, but it does allow one to understand that this potential to be good or to be evil is in everyone, and that it’s not always as simple as just doing the right thing.

Judas was an almost thoroughly unlikable prick (though Tony Vincent played him a tiny bit more sympathetically than Jerome Pradon in the video); in beating Jesus over the head with his cynicism and curt remarks, any sense of a fully three dimensional person was lost, leaving us with a total, utter dickhead. If the audience is to truly feel for Judas, and appreciate his fall, it’s imperative for them to see his positive relationship with Jesus. More importantly, it has to be readily apparent. It shouldn’t be the audience’s responsibility to assume as much. I never once saw any love, or even a hint of friendship, between Jesus and Judas in the 2000 production. Judas’ interactions with Jesus were a constant barrage of either completely in-your-face aggression, or more restrained (but still fully palpable) aggression. No hint of a conflict in him, or at least none the audience could see, and what use is a conflict or emotion if the audience isn’t privy to it?

And when not telegraphing an ultra-specific view of the story’s events, everything else about the design would’ve left a first-time viewer befogged. Young me liked the industrial, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Gotham City atmosphere of the set. Older me still likes it (though I am firm in my opinion it works best on stage), but realizes what a mess the rest of it was. We’ve got Jesus and the apostles straight out of Rent, Roman guards that looked (with the choice of riot gear) like an army of Darth Vader clones with nightsticks substituting for light sabers, priests that practically stepped off the screen from The Matrix, a Pilate in generic neo-Nazi regalia, a Herod with showgirls and chorus boys that seemed to have visited from a flash-and-trash third-rate Vegas spectacular, a Temple full of ethnic stereotypes and a mish-mosh of dime-store criminals, and a creepy mob with a striking resemblance to The Addams Family that only popped up in the show’s darker moments. Lots of interesting ideas which might work (operative word being “might”) decently in productions of their own, all tossed in to spice up a rather bland soup. The solution to having a bunch of conflicting ideas is not to throw all of them at the wall at once; you look for a pattern to present itself, and follow it. If no pattern emerges from the ideas you have, it’s a sign you should start over.

You can see what my basic issue was: where other productions at least explored motivation, examining possibilities and presenting conflicting viewpoints for consideration, the 2000 production (when not utterly confused in its storytelling thanks to conflicting design) blatantly stated what it thought the motivation was without any room for interpretation – this is who they are, what they did, why they did it, so switch off your brain and accept what we put in front of you. Which, to me, is the total opposite of what JCS is about; it didn’t get famous for espousing that view, but for going totally against the grain of that.

The national tour at least had Carl and Barry to recommend for it the first time around, but for all the mistakes it corrected about the 2000 revival (swapping out the shady market in the Temple for a scene where stockbrokers worshiped the almighty dollar, with an electronic ticker broadcasting then-topical references to Enron, ImClone, and Viagra, among others, was a fun twist, and, for me, Barry Dennen gave the definitive performance of Herod), it introduced some confusing new ones as well:

For one, Carl – and, later, his replacement, Lawrence Clayton – looked twice the age of the other actors onstage. Granted, Christ was only 33 when this happened, but next to both Carl and Clayton, Eric Kunze (I thankfully never caught his predecessor) looked almost like a teenager. When Ted and Carl did the show in the Nineties and both were in their fifties, they were past the correct ages for their characters, but it worked – in addition to their being terrific performers and friends in real life whose chemistry was reflected onstage – because they were around the same age, so it wasn’t so glaring. Without that dynamic, the way Jesus and Judas looked together just seemed weird, and it didn’t help anyone accept their relationship.

Speaking of looking weird together, the performer playing Caiaphas – who was bald, and so unfortunately resembled a member of the Blue Man Group thanks to the color of lighting frequently focused on the priests – was enormously big and tall, while the actor in the role of Annas was extremely short. Basically, Big Guy, Little Guy in action. Every time I saw them onstage, I had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. I’ve written a great deal about how Caiaphas and Annas are not (supposed to be) the show’s villains, but that’s still not the reaction I should have to them.

The relentlessness of pace was ridiculous. It was so fast that the show, which started at 1:40 PM, was down by 3:30 PM – and that included a 20-minute intermission. What time does that leave for any moments to be taken at all? A scene barely even ended before the next began. At the end of the Temple scene, Jesus threw all the lepers out, rolled over, and there was Mary singing the “Everything’s Alright” reprise already. How about a second to breathe for Mary to get there? Nope. How about giving Judas and Jesus two seconds’ break in the betrayal scene at Gethsemane? The guards were already grabbing Christ the minute he was kissed. I was so absolutely exhausted towards the end of the show that I was tempted to holler at the stage to please slow down for a minute. The pace didn’t allow for any moment in the show to be completed, if it was ever begun; it was just too fast to really take advantage of subtle touches and moments the actors could’ve had, and as a result, I think they were unable to build even a general emotional connection, because one certainly didn’t come across.

The cast was uniformly talented singing-wise, with excellent ranges and very accomplished voices. (In fact, the second time around, the woman understudying Mary, Darlesia Cearcy, walked away with the whole show in my opinion, and I am incredibly glad to have seen her career take off since then.) But, in addition to some being more concerned with singing the notes on the page just because they were there than imbuing them with emotion and motivation, the cast was undercut by the choices that production made with the music. For one, there’s a huge difference between singing “words and notes” and singing “lyrics and phrases.” When you have a phrase like “Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here / We’ve not much time, and quite a problem here…” you sing the sentence, and if sometimes a word needs to be spoken, you do that. You don’t make sure you hit every single note by treating each like a “money note” (which you hit and hold as long as you can to make sure everyone hears it), dragging out the tempo to hang on to each note as long as you can. Generally, the actors were so busy making sure every note was sung – and worse, sung like a money note – that they missed the point of singing a phrase, and how to use one to their advantage. Caiaphas and Pilate were particularly egregious offenders. (I’ve never understood some of these conductors who are so concerned that every note written has to be sung. The result suffers from it.) 

And then there’s Ted’s production. Of the three, it’s the one I liked the most, but that’s not saying much when it was better by default. 

The production design was stripped-down, the set basically limited to a bridge, some steps, a stage deck with some levels, and a couple of drops (and a noose) that were “flown in.” The costumes were simple, the sound was very well-balanced, and the lighting was the icing on the cake. Combined, the story they told was clear.

The music sounded very full, considering the pit consisted of a five-piece band relying in part on orchestral samples.

Ted, for being of advanced age, was in terrific form vocally, if his acting fell back a little much on huge, obvious, emotive gestures and choices. (I love him and all, but his attempts at acting were kind of like a “Mr. Jesus” pageant, striking all the appropriate Renaissance poses. The film, through editing and close-ups, allows him a subtlety he just ain’t got onstage.)

And there were some beautiful stage pictures; for example, there was a drop with an image of a coin with Caesar’s head on it in the Temple scene, and it fell on the crowd when Jesus cleared out the riff-raff. In the leper sequence that followed, the chorus’ heads popped out of holes in the cloth, under which they undulated, pulsing to the beat, and rather than being treated as a literal mob scene, the sequence had a very dream-like effect, a mass of lost souls reaching out to Christ. It was rather like a Blake painting, with a creepy vibe in a different manner from the typical “physically overwhelm him” approach. He didn’t interact with them, didn’t even turn to look at them, until finally he whipped around with a banishing thrust of his arm, hollering “Heal yourselves!” Sometimes it was over-acted with annoying character voices (remember, I saw this four times), but when it wasn’t, the effect was chilling.

My main beef with the show was, oddly enough, on a similar line to my beef with Gale Edwards’ production: it drew lines in the sand. But in this case, it drew them with respect to Jesus’ divinity. 

As written, JCS deals with Jesus as if he were only a man, and not the Son of God. The show never suggests that Jesus isn’t divine, but neither does it reinforce the view that he is. Portrayed in detail in JCS is the mostly-unexplored human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. He agonizes over his fate, is often unsure of his divinity, and rails at God. Not so in this production. Aside from “The Temple” and “Gethsemane,” there was never any room for doubt that Jesus was the mystical, magic man portrayed in the Gospels.

At the top of the show, after a fight between his followers and the Romans during the overture (a popular staging choice I’m not a real fan of, but you’ve got to do something during that moment in a fully staged version, and I understand why it’s an easy choice to make for exposition purposes), Jesus made his majestic entrance, spotlit in robes that looked whiter than Clorox bleach could produce, and raised a man from the dead. Well, where’s the room for Judas to doubt? Clearly “this talk of God is true,” we just saw it! If this guy is actually capable of performing miracles, and more than that specializes in necromancy, good luck telling him that fame has gone to his head at the expense of the message and he’s losing sight of the consequences! Try explaining to anyone that that person is “just a man”!

If that weren’t enough, Jesus went on to have a constant connection with God throughout the show, speaking to a spotlight that focused only on him and often served to distract him from anything else happening onstage, and at the end, during “John 19:41,” his body separated from the cross, which fell back into the stage, and he ascended to heaven. 

Now, though the former was admittedly played to excess (some reviewers unkindly compared Neeley to a homeless man with Bluetooth), there are arguments to be made in favor of both of these choices: a Jesus who constantly seeks a connection with God that isn’t reciprocated, searching for guidance or at least a friggin’ clue, is great foreshadowing for his eruption – and acceptance – in “Gethsemane.” As for the ascension, depending on how it’s staged, there’s room for argument that it could be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, as the moment when Jesus’ spirit is born, as Carl Anderson once put it (meaning, to me, that his message is given life and strength when his body fails him). But this production didn’t have that level of shading and layers to it, and coupled with the resurrection at the start, it defeated the rest of the story.

None of ‘em’s perfect, and I don’t think I could create the perfect one. Thus, concert.

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

“Bad Times at the El Royale” Movie Review

Bad Times at the El Royale is the sophomore effort from writer and director by Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) and stars Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Lewis Pullman, and Chris Hemsworth. In this film, a group of total strangers all stay at the same place: the El Royale hotel, which sits split in half by the state border between California and Nevada. As the film progresses, the characters get to know each other in ways that may seem unusual to others, but are truly only the tip of the iceberg. No one is who they say they are, including the hotel manager, Miles; perhaps even the hotel has secrets of its own. With the walls closing in and everyone getting increasingly antsy, can the guests solve this mystery before it’s too late?

This is the first Drew Goddard film I’ve seen; having not personally been privy to The Cabin in the Woods, I had absolutely no threshold or expectation for exactly the kind of film that I was in for in terms of style or script. I was curious as to how the plot would play out with the marketing and trailers having given basically nothing of it away, even accidentally. I’m very happy to say that not only did I thoroughly enjoy this movie, I enjoyed how much it enjoyed itself (to a point). Drew Goddard is an excellent screenwriter, and it is no small thing that he has an immensely talented ensemble cast to help the writing along to reach its full potential. The actual narrative plays itself out as a Hateful Eight-esque set-up a bit more in line with a “what if Clue, but the 70’s” aesthetic wherein the story opens with a mysterious dialogue-free sequence meant to shock and intrigue the audience, and then follows each character around on increasingly elaborate plot threads that one can discern weave together at various points if you’re paying enough attention and eventually piece together most of what’s going on just-too-late for the third act to really kick things into high gear.

This approach to storytelling, while having been done a few times before, is always pretty fun both as an actual exploration and exercise of mystery filmmaking and as a genuine throwback to the earlier days of films that let themselves take their time and allow the audience to relish in the fun of trying to figure it out themselves. And although the actual script (while clever) does get a bit too convoluted and show-offy for its own good on a cinematic level, it continues to work and impress enough on a theatrical level that I found myself struggling to care whether or not the film was as smart as it thinks it is because I was just having too much damn fun with it. That’s the strength of a great script, and one that I would absolutely lump in with the great “theatre films” currently under the umbrella of my cinematic vocabulary (i.e. The Hateful Eight, Thoroughbreds, etc.). It’s strange that thus far, Tarantino is the only director that I know of who continues to make that genre of film with this kind of scale, but this is a welcome surprise entry in a film category which hopefully only grows as the years go by (seriously we need more films that play out like plays with increasingly more elaborate and creative but noticeably exclusive cinematic tricks to help the story along – the genre really is full of untapped potential). The productions design is also gorgeous, with 70’s period detail just packed into every frame, of which there are many great ones (including a shot that follows Hamm down a long corridor that’s bound to be taught in film classes as a showcase for how to make your shot increasingly more interesting the longer it goes on).

The performances, of course, are all top-notch. Every member of the cast is pulling out all the stops they’ve got. Jeff Bridges has always been a reliable actor for playing a broken man who can barely remember how to talk to other people but seems warm enough, and you can tell Jon Hamm is just having all the fun in the world with the dialogue his character is given. Dakota Johnson is also really quite good here; it’s nice to be reminded that she’s a legitimate actress and not just one half of the two members of 50 Shades that have any discernable talent. In fact, the only real surprises among the cast’s swell of talent are Cynthia Erivo (here making her film debut after transitioning over from Broadway and television) and Lewis Pullman, who plays the hotel manager. Erivo is an excellent screen presence, continuing to surprise and delight with each new plot turn until one has no idea what she’ll end up doing next. Unfortunately it ends up being nothing quite as exciting as what most of the other characters are given to finish with, but that’s more the fault of an overloaded (but still clever) script than her as an actress. She holds her own well enough against titans like Jeff Bridges that one might think she’d been acting with legends like him for a while.

Pullman too has his own pretty great turn as the hotel manager. I can’t precisely remember what it is I’ve seen him in, but his acting ability has noticeably grown since then; what he’s asked to deliver in the way of lines is both hilarious and immensely disturbing, and Pullman rides that line with more natural balance than a tightrope walker in Cirque de Solei. I won’t say much about Chris Hemsworth’s character because I believe that knowing as little about him going in as possible increases the joy of watching him outperform everyone else like the second coming of Brando, but suffice it to say, he steals every scene he’s given right out from under them as if he’d just learned the secret to always winning Texas hold ‘em. It truly is an incredible thing to witness.

Where the films finds its flaws though, are in its monstrously clever script. Now, don’t get me wrong, I mean every word I’ve written on it thus far, but still it must be addressed that in order to have a clever script, it also needs to remain clear in transition from scene to scene, and occasionally Drew Goddard’s mystery boner tends to run away with itself and lose the audience in the process. It still remains fun, but that fun sometimes gives way to a bit of confusion as some decisions either in the editing room or in the script itself take the audience out of the current moment to show them the relevance of that moment to the broader story in terms of timeline or character motivation. It’s only in the third act when this stops happening, and upon reflection, it probably could have stood to happen a little earlier (though exactly where I do not know).

Following this train of thought, the second act itself is pretty long and while I certainly enjoyed watching the actors show off that they can act like nobody’s business, some of those scenes placed in the separate rooms could have stood to be a little bit shorter. I was never bored, per se, but I did start to feel those scenes being stretched out a bit too long. Perhaps this was done as a way to increase the character developments or tease further mystery, but to me, it just felt a little overdrawn. As well, there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate relevance to the idea of the hotel being literally split in half by the California/Nevada state line. There are some general rules that get addressed early on about gambling laws and monetary values, but other than that, the idea of the state line division doesn’t actually factor into the plot at all, and ultimately feels like it just Goddard trying to be clever with something he didn’t want to edit out but found no use for. In that vein, there are also one or two plot threads that never get explored or resolved that ultimately feel odd considering every other thread of their type that do get a fair amount of screen time devoted to them, but to say any more would spoil one of the larger surprises of the film, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Still, despite these noticeable (if ultimately irrelevant) flaws, Bad Times at the El Royale is a good time at the movies and gives us a welcome entry in a genre too-often passed up in both in terms of the sheer level of creativity required to play in its sandbox and the ingenuity it takes to explore that labyrinth of creation once brought to life. The performances are excellent and the characters are vibrant among gorgeous period design. It’s weirdly funny, greatly mysterious, bizarrely intriguing, and one of the better pure fun experiences in this cinematic calendar year; definitely recommended, even if only once or twice.

I’m giving “Bad Times at the El Royale” a 7.9/10

[huntertheblackwolf]

Assassins, Companions, And Family Chapter 1 Part 2

This is a continuation of Chapter 1 and I truly hope that you enjoy it! Love you, my pups!💜

2.8k words, almost 3k!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~♡■♡~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hunter eyes snapped open, sensing someone watching them, causing him to jolt the pup awake.

"Finally found you. You're very hard to trace back, you know? With the help of one simple spell, however, it wasn't that difficult. For me, anyways." Said Loki as he walked out of the shadows, wearing casual clothing. "And you've already sensed me before I even made myself known." Loki said, holding his hands behind his back confidently.

Hunter stood up with a wince, Loki noticed, and bended over the pup. Hunter wrapped the blanket tightly over the egg again and gave it the cub, who clutched it in its mouth.

"You have a pup." He said with fascination on his face. "A wolf one at that too. They're very loyal companions, especially male ones and this one seems loyal to you already. Impressive. You continue to surprise me at every turn!"

Hunter looked up at Loki, directly in his eyes, and tapped his foot twice. The pup, now known as a male wolf, took off, the egg secured in his mouth. Quickly taking out a gun, he tried to pull the trigger, but with a wave of Lokis' hand, he was stopped by the same spell as before. The golden webs.

"Now now. I'm just here to talk." Loki said

Hunter glared, still trapped in the webs of gold, trying to find ways to get out quickly. Loki spoke up again.

"I want to know why you want to kill me. I've never seen you before. So why? Did someone send you?" He asked when he obviously already knew the answer.

Hunter covered up his embarrassment behind an emotionless mask, seeing he was found out.

"..."

Loki looked at him and cocked his head, thinking for a moment. He waved his hand and the spell released Hunters head only.

"You don't talk very much, do you? Or can you even talk at all? I've heard you snarl, but that's all." Loki said with a hint of false sadness seeping in.

Hunters red eyes burned as they glared viciously at Loki. A growl started to slowly build up as Loki continued to talk, knowing Loki was aware of what was going on.

"You growl now! What's under your hood, I wonder still? We were interrupted last time when I tried to pull it down. Now that no ones here to disturb us, why not take the chance." He said with a grin.

Loki started to walk towards Hunter, who flinched and tried to cover it, as Loki stopped directly in front him. The growling started to increase in volume, as Loki reached a hand towards Hunters hoodie.

"Let's see what we have here." He said smug.

With a quick tug, Hunters face was revealed and Loki pulled his hand away before Hunter could lunge at it. The growling that was increasing in volume stopped and silence replaced it.

Loki eyes slowly widen as surprise, anger, and sadness filled them.

"What in the Norns? Loki whispered as he stared at Hunter's face and stepped back a bit. "You're so young. What happened?" He said in shock.

With his body frozen, Hunter couldn't do anything to stop Loki from pulling down his hoodie. He snarled at Loki as he questioned him, but it was a sad imitation to the one before. He tried to install fear, but it sounded desperate.

"That's a very poor intimation, you know." Said Loki in a whisper again. "I planned to actually kill you, but I also did plan something else if I was impressed by you." Loki paused and then continued after awhile. "You're coming with me." Loki confirmed.

"Yes. You're definitely coming with me. Especially if you're living here. I already planned everything out of course." He laughed to himself as he said this.

Hunter's eyes widen as Loki said this and tried to keep snarling, but couldn't anymore.

"I'm going to let you go and you're going to call your cub. I'm doing this out of the 'kindness' of my heart. Try to hurt or kill me, I will take you with me by force. Understand?"

Hunter stopped snarling, but glared at him, Loki falsely smiling at him. Hunter slowly nodded and Loki waved his hand, the golden webs disappearing.

Hunter pulled up his hoodie quickly after being released. They both seemed to have a standoff with each other, Hunter being a bit shorter then Loki, until Hunter tapped his foot once. A hushed movement came from near the boxes as the pups' face only came out, the eggs blanket still in its mouth. Noticing Hunter, he quickly bounced to him, being careful with the egg. Steeping towards the pup, Hunter slowly grabbed him and the egg with a wince, still injured from Ironmans' blast, and cradled them in his arms. The pup, now noticing Loki, let out a soft growl, trying to scare him off. Loki only smiled at him.

"Very cute." He said towards the pup and turned back to Hunter. "You're hurt, aren't you? I'll fix you later. Do you have anything else you need to bring with you, however?"

"..." Hunter turned around, grabbing a worn out backpack from behind some boxes, and with some careful maneuvering with the pup and egg still in his arms, he put it over his shoulder.

"Is that all?" Loki questioned and with Hunter giving a stiff nod, he raised his hands and started to wave them around.

"Close your eyes and try to cover your pups as well." He said with a smile and stern voice.

With a slight glare towards Loki, still not trusting him, but knowing he had no choice, he listend and closed his eyes. Covering the pups' ones with his hand carefully. Loki finished his spell and they were off.

Even with his eyes closed, Hunter saw colors bursting from behind his eyelids. He suddenly felt his feet contact solid ground, not noticing he was off the ground until now. He still had his eyes shut and his hand over the pups'. He heard Loki land next to him and Loki started to speak.

"You can open your eyes now."

Slowly doing so, Hunter noticed that they were somewhere different. In what looked like an expensive living room, and outside the window was the view of the New York City's skyline, the sun beginning to set.

'Still here. Good. Can't escape though. He'll find me again with magic. Follow until plan can be developed. If I can even get a chance.' Hunter thought as Loki spoke with a knowing look.

"Welcome to my housing. You can let your pup and egg down, you know. I don't murder animals, especially such magnificent creatures like wolves. But I understand, so let me show you your room." He said, knowing Hunter would follow him, as he stared to walk down a hallway.

He was right as he heard almost silent footsteps following him. Turning a corner, he stopped at a door and turned towards Hunter.

"This will be your room. I expect you to still be here and I think you already know what will happen if you're not."

Loki started to walk away as he spoke up one final time.

"And I also expect you for dinner later this evening however, so get ready. There are clothes in the closet and take a shower." He vanished around a corner as he said this, his voice carried out.

Hunter was looking at the his new room door, tighting his grip on both of his companions, as he stared hard at it. The pup whined and Hunter snapped out of his trance and looked down, his eyes softened as he looked fondly at the pup. Looking up again, he slowly gripped the doorknob, careful of his precious cargo, and opened the door wide.

Inside was a simple decor, with a bed, drawers, a table, armchair, two wide windows, and two other doors. Hunter quickly closed the door and locked it, before he carefully let go of the pup. Seeting his backpack on the armchair, he went towards the bed and carefully set down the egg, wrapping the egg up tightly. The pup climbed up the bed, who received help from Hunter, quickly curled around it once he got up on the bed.

He explored the two other doors, seeing one was a closet filled with clothes and the other was a bathroom. Turning around, he looked outside and saw the sky getting dark. He did a soundless tsk to himself seeing this. With a look towards the pup and egg, seeing them well and asleep, he got ready to have dinner with Loki. Knowing he had to protect his small, animal filled family, he choose not to find ways to kill or attack Loki. Not yet anyways.

'Protect. Don't attack. Not yet.' He thought as he collected clothes he believed would fit him, to the bathroom. He quietly closed the door, setting the clothes down, and he removed his cloak, hanging it. Starting the shower as lukewarm, he removed the rest of his clothes and carefully undid the bandages around his chest. Slowly steeping in, he silently whimpered in pain, clenching his teeth and gripping the stall.

Being quick about it and scrubbing hard, dirt started to leave his hair and the water was turning dark brown as it swirled down the drain. Being careful with the injury, he scrubbed himself down, and allowed water to wash it away. Checking that he was thoroughly clean, Hunter quickly stopped the shower and dryed himself. Finishing, he stared getting dressed in a three piece suit he picked out, believing that it looked good. After bandaging his chest with what he found in the bathroom, he tied his boots which completed the touch. Exiting, he unhooked his cloak and placed it on himself, putting his hood on his head, blocking the light from setting on his face.

Approaching the bed, he set the covers onto his family, seeing it the only way to block out the cold and for warmth to gather. With the job done, he started to quietly walk towards the door and open it. Looking back, he saw them still asleep, and he left the room, hoping nothing would happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~●□●~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walking into the kitchen, he noticed Loki, who was dressed formally, reading a think book. Loki looked up and noticed him. He started to speak.

"You're here. Good." He said, snapping the book shut. "Food has arrived. It's not poisoned if that's what you're thinking. I know what it's like so don't fret. Let's eat and 'speak'. I want to get to know you." He said with a smile and walked towards the dining room with Hunter already following him.

Loki looked back at him and commented on his outfit as they sat down at their respected seats near each other, and food was already on their plates.

"Very nice outfit. You at least know how to dress yourself which is good. Can't have a buffoon now, can we? Although, the cloak ddoesn't pull it off. Does it hold any meaning?" Loki said with a smile and he questioned Hunter, trying to see if Hunter would answer.

Picking at his food, Hunter tried to ignore him and eat some of it.

"It's very impolite to ignore your host, you know? Are you afraid?" He asked

Hunter looked up at him and stopped eating.

"I gathered some paper and a pen" Loki said as he poofed up some, "so you can 'speak' to me and answer my questions. You already know what I asked, so answer me."

Hunter harshly glared at him and carefully moved the paper and pen towards himself and started to write.

'No, I'm not afraid of you. Yes, it holds meaning.'

"You're not such a complete moron then. How old are you?"

'17.'

"Almost an adult. You have advanced skill, however, for your age. You must have been taught from a young age, no? Forgive me, but it seems that I didn't ask for your name. What is it?"

Hunter nodded at both statements, but hesitated as the pen he was holding hovered over the paper. He finally wrote after a few seconds.

'My name is Hunter.'

"Hunter." Loki said slowly as he tested it out. "It fits you. How much do you know of me? You already know who I am, but I want to know how much. You did try to kill me after all." He chuckled, saying this.

With their dinner forgot, Hunter answered the question with reluctance.

'Yes. You're Loki, the one who destroyed New York, Midtown Manhattan and brought in those aliens. God of chaos, mischief, and trickery. You have a 'genius-level intellect' and a longlife span. In my...research, I've discovered that you are able to shapeshift, use telekinesis, conjuration, presence concealment, mental manipulation, and illusion manipulation. You also seem to have superhuman stamina, agility, speed, strength, and durability. You also have a regenerative healing factor. In short, you are... a master sorcerer and God.' Hunter started to eat again as he quickly finished writing it down.

"My. You are interesting. I'm glad I picked you up and didn't kill you." Loki chuckled as he said this and stared to eat as well.

"You're not wrong you know. About me, I mean. You're the only one who know their things and did their research and listened. Congrats. " he said sarcastically.

Finishing his food, Hunter stared to write again.

'Thank you.'

"You're welcome. Might I ask about your pup? Where did you acquire him from?"

'A raid. My former employer tried to betray me, but I already knew what he was planning to do. So before he could, I raided his place and killed everyone there. Went to the basement and found the pup's kin killed and their skin peeled. For 'fashion' or something else. Don't know. He was the runt of the litter and was left to die in a small cage. They might have believed that he was too small so they must have left him for dead. Got there in time though.'

"Apologizes. It must have been hard to find him like that. The human race are rather fickle beings. What is his name?" Loki asked.

Hunter seemed embarrassed for a moment before answering.

'Shadow. I found him the a corner, tucked away in the shadows.'

"Ha! What a unique, but an unusual name. And the egg? What is it?"

'It's a raven. The egg was left behind by its parents as they flew away with their other two offspring. They must have believed it dead.'

"You seem to have this sort of luck in finding abounded companions. What will you name it?"

'Yin. Associates with Earth, darkness, and cold.'

"You already thought this through, haven't you?"

'Yes.'

"You're very responsive. You were very aggressive before and you even snarled at me. Why so calm and cooperative now? Surely, you're furious at me from taking you from your 'home'. Why aren't you trying to kill me now?"

Hunter glared before hiding behind an emotionless mask and he started to write.

'You have the upper hand, so I can't do anything. If I strike, you'll try to bring harm to my family. I'm not stupid you know. I'll kill you when I have the chance though. Or not. I haven't decided yet. Well my...employer hasn't decided. They said to take you, alive or dead. To wait for orders if I have you in sights.'

"Can't do that now, can you? Speaking of which, however. How much was is your employer willing to pay you?"

Silence settled in and Hunter wrote with reluctance again.

'$10,000'

"I'll double it."

Hunters hand stilled in shock as he replayed the words, trying desperately to grasp his emotions and shove them in a box. He replied quickly, succeeding in hiding his emotions.

'Why?'

"You have skill. Work for me and I'll allow you and your companions to live here. You have potential to grow and enhance yourself and your skill. You held your own against the captain and the little spider. Even got Thor off of me. You're very good for your age and have skills people wished they had. And your skills, as I said before, will keep growing. I want that, you, and your companions while they're growing. Don't worry, I'm not trying to them away from you. They seem to be able to grow with you. Hel, I'll even train you."

'What do you need me for specifically? You rarely...team up with other people and seem to be able to hold your own against these so called heros.'

"You already have enough skills to do so, that's why. I need someone to do some chores for me and to tie up lose ends. You'll be able to do that and not get caught. Right?"

'Yes.'

"Do you agree then? No harm will come to you or your family. I'll pay you for every job you do for me only. All you have to do is listen and obey me. Just end the contact with your other employer. Sounds fair, doesn't it? So deal?"

Hunter thought of all the pros and cons and wrote down his answer. He also immediately took in what it will do for his family and what it would provide.

'Deal.'

[startrek-readerslog]

Last Full Measure by Martin and Mangels

So we have skipped some time in the series and now are in the Expanse after the Xindi attack on Earth. Which honestly really surprises me, as it felt like the Xindi was something that could have really been explored in the novels, but maybe because it was so thoroughly explored on screen it shut out a lot of room for story in a novel. Anyway, let’s get into it!

The Author(s):

 Upon some simple googling it looks like these two write their Star Trek novels TOGETHER. I found only a few that Martin wrote a few novels by himself and that Mangels wrote only one short story without his pal Michael Martin. It looks like the two of them wrote a lot of DS9 comics together, as well as stuff for the Titan series which follows Riker post-TNG. 

The Summary:

The MACOs are annoying the hell out of the Enterprise crew, and the Enterprise crew would like to annoy the hell out of the Xindi. To back up a little the intro takes place way after the Xindi incident and at the Star Fleet monument to those who died in war. Its from the POV of someone who we don’t know. Jump back to the Enterprise in the Expanse. They are trying to find anything that they can about the Xindi’s home world and where they are building a weapon. So the captain and some MACOs head down to a trading planet on some intel, while T’Pol has the helm. (A lot of main crew are incapacitated due to an anomaly in the Expanse, so Tucker and Hoshi effectively get written out of the book) While on the Enterprise T’Pol picks up traces of the Xindi fuel and sends Travis and some MACOs out to see whats up. 

So we have an A story line and a B story line. In the A story line they find someone who has been moving packages for the Xindi and kidnap him to take them to where he takes the packages. He does this a little too willingly because he is being paid by the Xindi to bring them there. They make a near death escape and blow up the fake station. In the B story line they find out that the trails are because there is a processing plant nearby for the Xindi fuel. With some loss of life they manage to blow it up, and almost everyone aside from a few metaphorical red shirts make it out. 

My Thoughts:

So this book was 40 dollars...which is a little ridiculous for a 16 year old Star Trek paperback. That was a steal compared to the 80 dollars some people were asking, so I was coming into this book with some anger that I paid 40 dollars for it. However I think this is the best full length novel that I have read so far. 

First of all it is strongest in its ability to recreate the feeling of an episode of the show. It has that classic A story line and B story line that feel indicative of almost an episode of TNG. Following different story with different POVs was really a strong suit of this novel.

Second the authors really took the time to develop almost every character we met, even the ones who died. This made their deaths feel like they have a little more meaning and affect. It also kept me guessing who of the side characters was going to live and die.

Third, it explored something new and interesting that they didn’t get to explore in the show! The relationship between the MACOs and the crew was tense at times especially with Reed, but really we didn’t hear more about it. None of them were developed enough for me to care about. In this novel I felt the authors realistically explored the relationship between the MACOs and the crew and also got to develop that relationship. It makes sense that they would hate each other, and also make sense that they have bonding moments.

LASTLY TUCKER IS ALIVE?????? EXCUSE ME I THOUGH THAT THE NOVELS WEREN’T ALLOWED TO CHANGE CANON LIKE THAT.

I give this book a solid 8/10, fun read that I genuinely enjoyed! Next in the novels we are back to our old friend Dave Stern for Rosetta.

[livingcorner]

Raised Bed Gardening | Best Soil Recipe| joe gardener®

The GardenFarm raised beds in all their producing glory.

In this podcast, we continue our discussion on raised bed gardening. In case you missed it: I had invited my email group to send me any questions they hoped I would answer on the topic of raised bed gardening. I received a huge response, many from folks who plan to start raised bed gardening for the first time this season. If you would like to join the conversation and contribute to future topics, click the red “Get Free Updates” button at the top of this page.

You're reading: Raised Bed Gardening | Best Soil Recipe| joe gardener®

Last week, I covered benefits and drawback of raised bed gardening as well as site selection, layout planning, material selection, and site preparation. It was rich with information learned through my many years of raised bed garden experience (also detailed last week) and a lot of research. If you haven’t checked out last week’s podcast, I strongly recommend you start there.

Building healthy growing medium is a process that starts with the right foundation “recipe” and quality ingredients.

This podcast explores some recommendations for the bed construction, but especially, the construction of the soil. Yes – good, healthy soil needs to be constructed, but it’s easy to do. Let’s get started.

Building Your Raised Garden Beds

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, it’s best if your space is fairly level. How level depends on the materials you are using. Concrete blocks, for instance, are pretty unforgiving in structural soundness on uneven surfaces. If using a metal trough, the trough itself will need to be level, or you can level the soil surface inside the trough.

If you can’t dig, use wood supports, stone retaining walls, etc. – depending on the grade with which you are working.

Regardless – when all is said and done, you need to end up with a level soil surface. Why? Primarily, the movement of water. Whether during a rainstorm or when you’re irrigating the bed, that level surface will prevent erosion – protecting tender plant roots, keeping nutrients where you want them, and preventing the need for extra maintenance.

If using wood, I really recommend that you use all-weather wood screws (at least 3” long) rather than nails. Screws are more forgiving if you make a mistake or if – for any reason – you need to remove the board. They also provide better overall stability.

To prevent splitting wood boards, I also recommend pre-drilling the holes for your screws. For those of you new to the DIY world, small drill bits are available at any home improvement or hardware store to fit your power hand drill. Drill bits are inexpensive and will make quick work of the job.

Before adding raised bed garden soil mixture, I like to break up the ground surface underneath to give roots all the growing room they want, even when it’s deeper than my beds alone provide.

The moist soil and plant material being held will put pressure on your bed side walls. Depending on bed length and the material you are using, it may be wise to add some wall support. To prevent those walls from bowing out, I recommend adding a 2”x4” or some other center post, driven securely into the ground and placed against the wall on the interior of the bed. (It helps to cut the bottom end of the 2”x4” stake into a point to make it easier to drive it into the ground).

Since wood has the potential to bow or warp, note the direction of the grain at the end of each board. Over time, boards will warp in the direction of the grain, so position the boards with the grain pattern pointing in, toward where the soil will be. By placing each board facing inward, the ends won’t pull away from each other but toward each other instead.

Consider using mortar if you are building with concrete blocks, bricks or stone. It’s certainly not a necessity, but it will add to the longevity of your bed structure. If you don’t use mortar to adhere your concrete blocks together, I recommend using rebar, which can be driven down through the hollow cores or using some other method of staking to better hold up to the bed pressure.

If you are building on top of your native, non-contaminated soil; break up the ground surface before adding soil to the bed structure. The healthy raised bed soil will infiltrate and improve the health of that subsurface over time, and regardless of how high you are building, it doesn’t hurt to offer your plant’s roots the opportunity to reach down even deeper.

For those of you building on hardscape or over contaminated soil, don’t feel like you are missing out on not being able to break up the surface. Having that subsurface available for root growth isn’t a necessity, by any means.

Additional Structure Considerations:  If you are dealing with gophers or other subterranean root-chompers, these burrowing pests are best prevented during the raised bed construction phase. Consider adding a layer of chicken wire or other metal mesh to the bottom of your raised beds. The most durable option is galvanized hardware cloth with ½” or 1” squares. Stainless steel hardware cloth reportedly lasts even longer than galvanized.

Burrowing rodents are crafty creatures, so extend your mesh barrier up, alongside the sidewalls of your bed structure. Picture a sort of basket along the bottom of the bed. Be sure to attach the edges very thoroughly to the side walls.

You may also want to go a step further and start with a layer of hardware cloth underneath your raised bed structure, extending into the ground outside your bed borders. Yes, this can be a lot of work, but you’ll only get one shot at this preventative measure, without having to deconstruct your raised beds down the road.

I’ll dive more into pest control in Part 3 of this series, but obviously, your best opportunity to prevent pests from getting through the bottom of your beds is while the beds are empty.

Add hardware cloth to the base of your raised bed structure to protect your crops from gopher, vole, mole and other burrowing critter damage.

Regardless of the size you are building, the depth you are creating, or the material you are using; I don’t recommend weed cloth.

You might think it’s a neat and tidy improvement to place that clean, black weed cloth at the base of your garden bed. Weed mat – regardless of material – provides no benefit and will hamper drainage as the pores eventually clog.

If you are trying to block the growth of weeds or any other undesirables in your garden spot, weed cloth is just not necessary. The depth of the soil you will be adding will smother most, if not all, undesirable growth. What little does make it to the surface can be easily pulled out. This little bit of maintenance will be well worth having soil that drains properly.

The only time I would consider an exception to this rule and risk drainage loss is when fighting Bermuda grass. Check out Part 1 of this series for details.

Garden Comfort & Accessibility:  If you are building your bed at a height which will allow you to sit and tend to the garden, consider incorporating a flat ledge area on which to perch. Having 6-8” to sit on is particularly important if you have back issues or other health considerations.

I will cover more on design considerations for adaptive gardening in Part Three of this series

Now – on to the best part, the soil!

Why is Soil Health so Important?

The soil is the anchor in which you secure and feed your plants. The soil, itself, doesn’t really feed the plants in the commonly-understood sense. Instead, the soil is the environment that promotes a healthy ecosystem below the surface – that can facilitate (or hinder) the ability for air, water and nutrients to be utilized by plants and their roots at an optimal level.

As gardeners, we can engineer raised bed soil to maintain proper hydration and create an environment that sustains a myriad of life, called the soil food web.

A healthy soil food web is busy with billions of microscopic organisms as well as larger creatures, like earthworms, all working together. Healthy soil promotes the processes of nutrient development and delivery (to plants).

In other words: Don’t feed the plants. Feed the soil so it can feed the plants.

Even back in the days on set for the DIY Network series (+61404532026) Fresh From the Garden, I was already perfecting my raised bed soil recipe. Here, I’m adding composted cow manure. Just underneath you can see the granite dust from mineralized soil. After three years, 52 episodes and 52 crops, I never had a failure.

A soil food web is complex, so building that healthy ecosystem doesn’t mean a trip to the home improvement store, buying lots of bags of garden soil to fill up all your raised bed space. Sure, you can go that route, but it will be expensive, and it won’t provide you with robust growing medium. You build a healthy growing medium.

Building Your Garden Soil

Over the years, I’ve developed a mixture of elements that has brought me abundant gardening success. The method I describe here isn’t like a recipe for souffle’. I won’t tell you to be sure you add a teaspoon of this or 12 oz. of that. My method is – like my soil – organic. It varies a bit each and every time I follow it. These are estimated percentages that work well for me, but they don’t need to be exact.

I use a mix of organic material to create a diverse blend. As mentioned earlier in this series, your soil is not the area in which I recommend cutting corners cost-wise. One thing I learned early on is that you get what you pay for. Your biggest investment is in your soil. The health of your plants and success of your crop depends on it.

Don’t expect to have the perfect soil straight out of the gate year one. Building great soil is a process over growing seasons. The method I describe for you here will build a healthy soil foundation, from which bountifully-rich soil will develop in seasons to come.

I do recommend that, when you are initially filling your raised beds, mix all the ingredients together. Incorporate it well, so that the elements can be properly introduced to each other. As I get into soil maintenance later, you’ll learn why I don’t mix up established soil, but to “get the party started” – mix and mingle everything well.

The U.S Composting Council encourages all gardeners and growers to “strive for five.” This refers to the goal of making the organic matter in your soil 5% of the total (by weight).

The rough estimate to make that 5% happen is to include organic material of about 30% by volume to the total. All references here are by volume and – again – only approximate. So with that in mind, here’s how I achieve those magic percentages:

50% High-Quality Topsoil: This makes up the bulk of your bed.

Read more: Eight Eggplant Recipes You’ll Love

Purchase topsoil in bulk or bags. If you purchase in bags, buy a trusted brand and look at the ingredients, which will often be regionally-sourced.

If you need over a half pickup truck load, I suggest buying in bulk. Find a reputable landscape supplier by getting referrals. If you don’t know someone to offer a recommendation (or even when you DO get a recommendation), take the time to talk with the supplier. Ask questions as to what goes into making their topsoil. I even go so far as to inspect it by smelling it and giving it the Squeeze Test (okay, I’ve been known to give it a taste test once in awhile, too).

The Squeeze Test is simply taking a handful and squeezing it. It should hold together but, then, break apart easily when you run your finger through it. If it’s sticky or hard to get apart, it’s too heavy. Excessively sandy soil won’t hold together in the first place.

Good topsoil should not be sticky or sandy. It should tend towards the darker side of brown vs. gray or clay in color, and it should smell earthy – not rancid.

Whenever possible, it’s well worth the time to inspect the quality of a supplier’s topsoil before you buy.

Note that I check bagged soil in the same way. I never open a bag. I look for a bag that has already broken open – there’s usually at least one.

If in doubt, look for a mark of certification from some nationally-recognized organization which indicates the soil contains certified compost. With certified compost as an ingredient, you can feel confident that the topsoil will be good quality too. You don’t want to make the same mistake I once did – not checking quality beforehand and then not being home for delivery. I found a pile of fill dirt on my property – not the topsoil I had ordered.

It’s not that uncommon for suppliers to provide fill dirt as “topsoil,” and you don’t want to start your beds with fill dirt.

30% High-Quality Homemade or Certified Compost: Use what you can make, but source the difference from a reputable supplier.

I make a lot of compost at home, but it’s never enough. Therefore, it’s very likely you’ll need to purchase compost beyond what you make as well. Not all compost is created equal.

My suggestion is to do your homework. The supplier may have some printed information regarding their product. If not, take the time to talk with the supplier here too. Ask questions as to what goes into making their compost. Questions like:

Where does their feedstock come from?

What materials do they accept?

What don’t they accept?

How do they make their compost?

Your common sense will help you identify any red flags. Don’t be afraid to walk away from a supplier who can’t provide good answers. Compost is an investment, so choose wisely.

An easy way to play your compost purchase safe is to find a supplier that offers Certified compost, as deemed by the U.S Composting Council. Their website offers some solid advice and a database of composter members.  It’s how I buy my bulk compost, and I have never been disappointed.

Quality compost comes from quality ingredients, so vet your supplier. While you might not have a backstage pass to the daily deposits, companies that make and sell compost should have plenty of information to share with you.

It’s no secret that I love compost, but is there such a thing as too much? Actually, yes. Compost is fantastic (I’ve even lept into glorious piles of compost – don’t miss the end of that linked episode), but it doesn’t provide all the complex elements (like minerals) necessary for healthy, balanced soil.

We’re down to the remaining 20% of your raised bed soil volume. What’s next? Think of this 20% as a cocktail, and it’s up to you to concoct your signature mix.

There are many great mediums you can select from and six I consider favorites. Any four of these can be added in increments of about 5% each. You could use 10% of one and 5% of two others, but I like the results from keeping each of these to around a 5% individual rate.

Top Six Organic Materials to Add to Your Topsoil and Compost:

Leaves:  Well-aged, shredded leaves are one of my favorite additions. They are free (I’m a frugal guy, so I love that), and they add great bulk. So, what do I mean by well-aged? I shred the leaves, wet them down well and, in six months to a year, they are rotted and ready to be incorporated.

If you don’t have access to plenty of leaves, ask around. I guarantee friends and neighbors will be happy to share their supply.

Mineralized Soil Blend:  Here’s another case where finding a good landscape supply company is important. Years ago, I discovered the value of adding soil containing minerals. It made a noticeable difference to the success of everything growing in my garden.

Minerals are the most important ingredients that no one seems to talk much about. You can check out a lot more on mineralizing your soil in my podcast on the subject.

Mineralized soil blend is widely-available and, typically, locally-sourced; so it’s make-up will depend on your area. Here in the Atlanta area, granite is everywhere, so most mineralized soil blends here are made of granite dust. Azomite is another common and great option.

Vermicompost (Worm Castings):  I have seen dramatic differences in my garden when I’ve added worm castings (aka worm manure). If you can find this in bag or bulk, buy it. While it’s not readily available, nor is it inexpensive; it’s worth it. Fortunately, a little goes a long way. You won’t need much to make a big difference.

Worm castings are significantly higher in all the primary nutrients your plants need to thrive. In fact, worm castings add five times the nitrogen, seven times the phosphorus and ten times the potassium than ordinary topsoil.

Castings add one more layer of complexity to overall soil makeup. Suffice it to say; this medium is one of my secret weapons to creating highly-productive garden soil.

Adding vermicompost (composted worm manure) to your raised bed gardens will provide another layer of organic richness. It’s been one of my not-so-secret weapons for soil success for years.

Mushroom Compost:  This dark brown, pliable organic material isn’t made of mushrooms.

It’s the byproduct of ingredients in which the mushrooms grow – what’s left over after mushrooms have been harvested.

Mushrooms are grown in mixtures of natural materials like hay, gypsum, corn cobs, cottonseed hulls, etc. But by the time that material has been composted, bagged and sold as mushroom compost; it’s light and crumbly. It contains about 3% nitrogen and potassium, a bit of phosphorus and other bonus elements, like magnesium and calcium. Since it’s a neutral pH (6.5-7.0), it won’t have an impact on your soil pH.

Ground Bark:  There are many varieties of ground bark from which to choose, but pine is the most commonly available. Although pine bark is slightly acidic, I’ve never found that to have much effect on the overall pH of my garden soil. Be sure to use aged bark for this application. Freshly-chipped wood will rob from rather than benefit your soil during initial decomposition.

Ground bark is a good carbon source. It will break down over time, and its coarse texture provides space for the movement of water and oxygen through your garden beds. Topsoil, compost and most of the other ingredients I’ve listed here are similar in texture. Ground bark brings a diversity of particle size that can really amp up your plant health.

Composted Cow or Poultry Manure:  Well-composted animal manure has been a mainstay of organic soil fertility for thousands of years because of the nutrients, organic matter and variability of particulate matter that it adds to complement overall soil make–up. That hasn’t changed. What has changed are farming practices and the resulting risk of manure.

Composted manures added to today’s garden soil can contain synthetic herbicides that are still active, even in well-composted manure. For that reason, I recommend you use cow or poultry manure but not horse manure.

Purchase composted cow or poultry manure by the bag and from a trusted source. If it’s an off-brand or you are buying in bulk, buyer beware. Many people have poisoned their soil with killer compost (including me), by inadvertently adding herbicide–tainted ingredients usually found in horse manure.

I do not add horse manure – anymore – because horses are more likely to consume hay which may have come from fields sprayed (or oversprayed) with persistent herbicide. Persistent herbicide doesn’t break down for several years. It passes through the horse’s digestive system and goes through the composting process without losing any of its killing power. The traces of herbicide (no matter how minute they may be) will kill or severely disrupt the normal growing habits of many garden edibles as effectively after being composted as the day they were manufactured.

There may be a source of horse manure you would really like to use. In that case, you can perform a bioassay test. Perform this simple test before you ever let the manure come into contact with your plants, soil or compost pile. I didn’t perform a bioassay test on the horse manure from my GardenFarm, and I suffered the consequences for four years.

Worm castings are significantly higher in all the primary nutrients your plants need to thrive. This image demonstrates an important visual of how worms break down organic material to create a soil profile that helps bind soil particles in a moisture-rich environment.

Those are the “ingredients” I use. Here are the ingredients I do not use:

Horse Manure:  It bears repeating. If tempted to use horse manure, be sure to check out the link for the bioassay test. That little bit of time could save you years of grief.

Peat Moss:  This may come as a surprise. Peat moss is, however, not a sustainable material. It takes hundreds of years for peat to develop in peat bogs.

Did you know that peat moss can defeat your soil’s ability to take in moisture? Ironically, it’s often recommended for its water holding ability. It can aid water retention, but once peat moss dries out, it is difficult to re-hydrate. Have you ever watered a dried out container, but the water just rolled off the surface? Often, that’s due to peat moss in the container soil.

Artificial Fillers:  Although it may be tempting to take up space with fillers as you first build those raised beds, I advise against them. Although they might save you some initial cost, even organic fillers can be problematic. Over time, they will break down, and the surface of your garden bed will sink, requiring you to add more soil later.

Most importantly, fillers can hinder drainage. That’s counter-intuitive, I know, but the research has proved it. I performed my tests using containers so that you can see it for yourselves. Whether in a small space like containers or a large space like raised beds, the science remains the same.

Fill Dirt:  This, too, might be tempting as a cost savings, but it will hinder all your other efforts to build that healthy growing environment.

What is fill dirt? It’s the stuff that lies under the first few inches of dirt on the ground. That first layer of earth is topsoil; and it’s been built up naturally – to varying degree of health – with organic matter, access to light and air, and other good stuff that happens naturally near to the ground surface. Fill dirt is underneath the topsoil and includes none of the inherently good qualities of topsoil.

Some additional materials worth consideration as additives:

Biochar:  I’ve heard good things about Biochar. I’ve only recently begun adding it to my garden, so it’s too soon to give you any personal observations. Biochar does have some nutrient value. It’s a pure carbon source that doesn’t break down, but it does help make existing soil nutrients available to plants.

Biochar – a pure carbon source that doesn’t break down but does help make existing soil nutrients available to plants. (Photo: Mark Highland.)

Fire Ash:  I recommend against putting any fire ash directly into your garden beds. If your fire ash is all wood-based, it can be a good addition (in a small quantity) to your compost pile. Don’t use charcoal fire ash, as that can include some ingredients that aren’t good for your organic garden.

Mycorrhizae:  This fungus is very popular as a soil ingredient in bagged products. Healthy native soil typically has this fungus already (but don’t use your native soil in your beds). Adding mycorrhizae to your soil may provide a benefit. At any rate, it won’t do any harm.

As with containers, raised beds can leach nutrients more quickly; so as a final step, it’s a good idea to add some slow-release, non-synthetic, nitrogen-based fertilizer – like Milorganite – to the mix. It’s like the dash of cocoa powder on a great latte – adding a little extra kick.

Maintaining Healthy Soil

Building that initial raised bed garden environment with quality ingredients will provide you good results the first season. However, those crops you grow will be making non-stop nutrient withdrawals from those beds.

Just like with your bank account, it’s critical to make deposits that keep up with (or better yet exceed) your withdrawals. How do you do that? Amend your soil once or twice each year with organic nutrients (like those I described above) – not synthetic fertilizer. By amending your garden beds, you will see better soil in season two, great soil in season three, amazingly rich soil in season four, and so on.

Good soil is like fine wine; it will get better and better with time.

Before you amend your soil for the first time and about every couple of seasons, I recommend that you get a soil test. You can contact your local county extension office for that, and the tests are pretty inexpensive ($20-30). A soil test will determine the pH levels and deficiencies of your soil to help guide your amendment choices.

The nutrients you provide the soil will be most optimally taken up by your plants when the soil is at a neutral pH. So, it’s important to understand when and how your soil pH is off and how to get it re-balanced.

Living in the Atlanta area, I grow all year round, so I amend my beds at the end of each main season after I’ve cleared the beds of crop materials. In early September – before I plant my winter, cool-weather crops – I topdress with an inch or two of compost. In late March – before I plant my summer crops – I do the same. Since the beds are clear, it’s easy to spread the compost and let it go to work.

Amend your soil once or twice each year with a topdressing of quality compost. An inch or so goes a long way to keeping your soil productive.

Sometimes, I lightly scratch the compost into the bed surfaces, but I usually just lay the compost on top, cover with mulch and walk away. Why? Remember that microbial party we got started when first building the bed soil? Well, all those microorganisms are getting along by now, and they can’t wait to meet more. So, they will naturally and quickly work all the compost back down into the party with the rest of them.

If I were to “disturb the party” by tilling in my compost, I would be doing a disservice to the existing soil food web. I would be:

Breaking up existing networks being utilized for the transfer of nutrients

Disrupting drainage space

Introducing lots of oxygen (which would burn up much of the existing nutrients)

When I’m amending my soil with ingredients other than compost, such as worm castings or mineralized soil; I prefer to add the ingredient(s) to compost and, then, add the mixture to the bed surfaces. On the off-chance something undesirable has made its way into those mediums, compost works as a buffer to help neutralize any potential negative effect.

Rejuvenating Old Garden Beds

Perhaps, you are working with existing raised beds that have been depleted and don’t have all of that microbial action going on. Many of you asked if you should remove the existing soil and start all over. To that I say – no.

Replacing your existing bed soil is laborious, expensive, and time-consuming. Unless the soil has become contaminated somehow, it’s best to revitalize the soil through amendment. You might be surprised at how quickly garden beds, even those that have been neglected for years, can be rejuvenated.

If this is your situation, I still recommend against tilling the soil. Instead – using a pitchfork or a broadfork, stab the garden soil deeply and wobble the fork around to create a little space around the tines. Then, fill those spaces with compost. Here again, I highly recommend you start with a soil test, so you have a better understanding of what you need to “deposit” into those stale beds to get them ready to be available for “withdrawals.”

A broad fork is a good tool to provide deep access for amendment penetration in existing raised beds and bring new life to tired and compacted beds. It’s any gardeners best tool of choice for opening up soil space and a much better option than a tiller for maintaining soil integrity.

Other Garden Bed Maintenance Questions

Are your beds too full to amend? If your bed surface is plumb up to the top of your sidewalls, remove any debris – if possible. If there isn’t any debris to remove, but your bed is filled with organic soil and materials; don’t worry about amending this season. That organic material will break down over the season and should provide at least enough space to amend by the next season.

Read more: Was the ‘forbidden fruit’ in the Garden of Eden really an apple?

Should you add fertilizer when you plant? I received many questions asking if fertilizer should be added to planting holes. Nope. When you build your soil the right way – slowly over time – everything your plants will need will already be in the bed.

If it really makes you feel better to add something at planting time (I can respect that), just add more compost. Adding fertilizer puts you at risk for burning your plants. What you place in the planting hole may be more than the plant can handle, and it will suffer or die rather than thrive and produce.

Mulch and Its Many Benefits

If there is one thing I love almost as much as compost, it’s mulch. I love mulch! Why? It protects the soil from heat, erosion, and pests. What’s more, mulch improves the soil by breaking down slowly over time and adding the resulting nutrients.

Mulching will reduce evaporation and the amount of supplemental water you need to provide. An exposed soilbed – especially in a raised bed – dries out. It can develop a crust that can be resistant to water, and the exposed soil can blow away. Mulch will solve that problem.

A free and ample grass clippings supply kept my $25 Victory Garden Challenge garden mulched.

Did I mention that mulch significantly reduces weeds in the garden bed? Yep – that too. And thanks to the multi-benefit mulch protection from above, the microbial party will remain happier and healthier under the surface.

Also, it just looks nice. We all like our garden to be beautiful to look at – even if we don’t all broadcast our successes and failures on national television.

A one– or two-inch layer of wheat straw, arborist wood chips, shredded bark, grass clippings, composted leaves, etc.- anything natural is okay here. Shredded leaves happen to be my favorite mulch and are just another key to the success of my or any garden.

I recommend against rubber mulch for the same reasons I recommend against using tires as a container (check that out in Part 1 of this series if you missed it.)

Mulch is to soil above ground what compost is for plants below ground. I can’t imagine any garden under my watch without both.

Efficient Irrigation

It’s true – raised beds can dry out more quickly. How quickly depends on the depth and width of the beds as well as the sidewall material and thickness. Good soil and mulch will reduce drying, but good irrigation is also important.

Life is so busy for all of us these days. So, having a good watering system in place will make it much easier to reap abundance in the garden. Myself, I go a step further and take full advantage of some quick, easy and inexpensive tools to automate the irrigation of my beds.

Depending on your set up and spacing; emitter tubing, soaker hoses or a drip system will provide the perfect moisture level. These methods deliver water slowly and directly at the roots of your plants – where that water does the most good!

A side-by-side comparison of plants grown with and without biochar. Clearly, this amendment can benefit plant growth. (Photo: Mark Highland.)

I have all the details on the why’s, when’s and how’s of watering in my upcoming Efficient Watering Resource Guide (stay tuned!) Each of these options are inexpensive, easy to use and available at any home improvement or garden center. If you are on a well, you will appreciate that each of these systems are low-pressure. Here’s a brief rundown:

Soaker Hose:  The flexibility of soaker hoses make them great for raised beds. Soaker hoses are porous, allowing the water to seep out slowly along the entire length into the surrounding soil.

Not all soaker hoses are created equal. I love to recycle, but I don’t love to use soaker hose made out of recycled tire rubber. Most soaker hoses are made that way, but I have concerns with chemicals from that recycled rubber leaching into my soil.

I prefer to use food grade, polyurethane hoses from Water Right Inc. They’re lightweight and durable. I need my garden to be television-ready, so I also like that they come in various earthy colors that look good without standing out.

A bonus tip: Place your soaker hose under mulch for extra water efficiency.

Emitter Tubing:  There’s quite a bit of technology that goes into these unassuming tubes. Non-porous emitter tubing is similar to porous soaker hose, except it waters with an even pressure from the beginning of the tube to the end of the tube and, often, at every 18”.

Emitter tubes are also flexible and low-pressure (8.5-60psi). They self-flush to prevent clogging and have copper shields around each opening to deter root penetration. At around $20 for a 50’ length (they come in other lengths as well), emitter tubes offer a lot of watering flexibility, since you can also tap into them to add supply tubing to direct water to specific areas.

Emitter tubing is a high-tech, efficient, and affordable choice for watering raised bed or in-ground gardens. (Photo courtesy of Rain Bird®.)

If you’ve ever used soaker hose and had it spray up onto your plant foliage, you’ll be happy to hear that non-porous emitter tubes don’t have that problem (although if you add a layer of mulch, errant water spray won’t occur from soaker hose either).

You may be concerned that the water is dispersed only every 18”, but research has shown that soil capillary action transports water horizontally as well as vertically. That means, water from each emitter will spread across the bed toward the water from other emitters, and any roots in between will receive moisture.

Drip Irrigation Systems:  These systems can include drip tape or drip line. Most commonly, drip kits include a lightweight, flexible tube with an emitter at its end so that you can direct water to a certain plant or small area. For most raised beds setups, emitter tube or soaker hose are your better options.

Easy Automation:  Each of these watering methods can be easily automated, which gets me back to my original point. We are all busy, so why not automate irrigation? A battery-operated or spring-loaded timer, a quick connect coupler and a quick shut-off valve are all you need.

These accessories are all inexpensive and readily available. By adding them to your watering system, you can completely control the level and timing of water delivery. The process will be automated, so it will happen whether you’re home, stuck in traffic, or on vacation. Your plants will thank you.

Automatic timers are inexpensive and widely available. They are an easy way to simplify getting the right amount of water to your plants. They’ve put my irrigation life on autopilot.

Ode to Hand Watering:  I must admit, though, I love watering. Throughout the garden season, I periodically hand water even though my plants are being watered automatically.

Whether it’s because I want to enjoy the therapeutic benefits (I know, not all of you find watering therapeutic), or because I notice a plant looking droopy and needing a little extra help getting through a hot, dry week; I like to turn to my wand attachment.

The wand attachment provides a gentler spray than most other sprayers, and the extension pole makes it easier for me to get that water delivery right down at the base of the plant. Since I don’t have to stoop over to target the base, I’m able to multitask and spend watering time looking over new growth and inspecting the plants for signs of pests or disease. The earlier I can spot those troublemakers, the better.

The Final Resort:  I don’t recommend the overhead watering method – using a sprinkler. Delivering water from above the plants increases the evaporation of your water, and the wet plant foliage is at higher risk of disease.

Now before this upsets you sprinkler users, I will share with you that I often watered my Fresh from the Garden beds using a sprinkler. When I did, I made sure to run the sprinkler early in the morning.

Sometimes, overhead watering is your only option. I get it. If that’s the case, just be sure you are watering in the early morning to decrease evaporation and allow your plant foliage the remainder of the day to dry off.

What is Sufficient Moisture? How much should you water your raised garden beds? In the absence of rain, provide an inch of supplemental water per week. Emitter tube or drip emitters will allow you to calculate when you’ve watered an inch because the watering rate is predetermined for you.

Otherwise, there are two easy ways to determine sufficient moisture level:

Tuna Can Test:  Place the empty can in the area being watered and, once there’s an inch of water in the can, you know there’s also an inch of water in your soil.

Finger Test:  Stick your finger into the soil, down to about the second knuckle. If your finger comes up dirty, there’s enough water in the soil. However, if it comes up dry and relatively clean, the soil is too dry, and it’s time to increase watering levels.

There are still some questions that need answering in Part 3 of this series, so I encourage you to check back next week for all that information. Which questions are being answered? More of the questions submitted by the members of my email group! If you aren’t a member, I encourage you to join the conversation. Joining is easy and fast – just scroll to the top of this page, click the red “Get Free Updates” box, and enter your email address.

You might also be interested in joining my Facebook group. We have some great conversations there, so I hope you’ll join us.

If you haven’t already done so, listen to the podcast recording for this episode. It’s linked at the top of the page and includes some stories and bits and pieces not included here. May I suggest you listen in while you start diagramming out your raised beds and plant locations?

Links & Resources

joegardener Blog: Backyard Composting: A Simple Recipe for Making Great Compost

Podcast episode 028: The Role of Minerals in Making Great Soil

Podcast episode 029: My Five Biggest Gardening Mistakes of All Time (and What I Learned From Them)

Podcast episode 042: Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 1

Podcast episode 044: Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 3: Animal Control & More

joegardenerTV: How to Get the Best Drainage for Your Container – Why What You’ve Been Taught is all Wrong 

GGW episode 106: Composting-From Grand Scale to Your Backyard

GGW episode 410: Weedless Gardening

Join the joegardener Facebook Group

U.S Composting Council

Milorganite

Water Right Inc.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources: Cropwatch: Using High-Carbon Char as a Soil Amendment to Improve Soil Properties

CobraHead: Broadfork

Rainbird® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of livingcorner.com.au

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/raised-bed-gardening-best-soil-recipe-joe-gardener/