#not creepy level old I don’t think just it probably wouldn’t work well realistically old

[confusedamphibian]

Kinda controversial but I think iruma and Clara would have a better romantic relationship than either irumerie or iruazz

[dadsbongos]

It’s in the Walls

Movie/Game/Show: The Boy

Dynamic: Brahms Heelshire/Reader

Warnings: you got a whole ass man living in your house without you knowing, you’re a mom

Summary: There’s a large house up for sale on a massive price-cut, who wouldn’t take that deal?

~~~

“Mom!” the shriek was high-pitched and echoed through the winding walls of the maze the manor made itself out to be.

(Y/n) closed her eyes, pretending the scream didn’t happen for a few seconds of cheap bliss before breaking back into her mothering persona. She crept down the corridors, reminding herself to take down every painting on the wall, the eyes followed her. Eventually, she came into her younger son’s new room, leaning her body against the doorway.

The blond child was huddled in a box pressed against the right wall, his small body curled tightly into itself inside the cardboard. He looked to his mother, large blue eyes sprinkled in delight that she came. Pointing to his bed, he murmured, “I saw a rat.”

“What?” she muttered, the realtor said the rodents that only stuck to the yard, but of course, that was a lie, “Oh, sweetie, come here,” the boy stumbled out of the box and grabbed onto his mother’s extended hand, “I’ll take care of him, you go make sure Joey hasn’t lost in mind in the library, okay?”

“Thank you, Dylan,” she cooed, pressing a short kiss to his forehead before sending him off.

His pink lips, shaped nearly identically to his father’s, stretched into a large grin,

“Okay, Mama!”

As soon as her son was gone, the smile drooped and suddenly she felt the weight of her eye bags drawing on her face. (Y/n) carefully approached the bed before getting onto her hands and knees, pulling up one of the draping blankets to peek underneath. A squirming, round, fat little frame poked out in the darkness before it squealed and began scurrying away.

Her hand shot out and she squeezed the fatty body between her fingers, grimacing at the rat in her hand. She never hated the things, they just never piqued her interest in the best ways, either. It thrashed and scratched at her, a small hiss leaving the woman before she tossed one of the windows open and left the rat on the sill outside to crawl away. Shutting and locking the window once again, (Y/n) made another mental note to get rat traps. Unless there were already traps.

Exiting the room, (Y/n) huffed at every creak in the wooden planks of the floorboards. The manor was old, oh, so old, it only made sense that none of the wooden boards would be silent. Even so, it was annoying and she liked to think she had the right to complain.

Eyes drifting to paintings and peeling wallpaper, she tried to remind herself to be thankful. Divorce wasn’t easy, much less so when your ex was a greedy, manipulative joke that milked you for nearly all of your possessions - she was lucky to find the mansion. Especially at such an astoundingly low price - she doubted a typical house would be cheaper than what she got the place for. None of those houses came fully-furnished anyway. Admittedly creepy and strange, but you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you might not like what you see.

As (Y/n) scanned through cupboards and cabinets, a loud thud alerted her of a new presence in the kitchen. She shot up, banging her head on the interior of a cabinet, her hand settled on the tender curve of her skull, softly rubbing as she stood. At the counter was her elder son, black-dyed hair messy and glasses slipping down his nose.

“Hi, honey,” (Y/n) chuckled at his frazzled appearance, “just get done wrestling one of the stuffed bears?”

Joey rolled his eyes, thumping a thick, hard-cover book against the granite countertop, “No, actually, I was looking for my shoes. Where are they?”

The woman shrugged, “How am I supposed to know?”

“I left them by the door and they’re not there anymore,” the teenage boy scratched at the back of his head, “Dylan’s either lying or genuinely didn’t steal them so I came to you.”

“Did you check everywhere?” (Y/n) questioned, brows furrowing at the absurdity of the situation, “Shoes don’t just walk away on their own, you gotta have feet in them.”

“Yes, I checked everywhere,” the boy grumbled, no longer bumping the book on the hard surface, now content to flip through the pages and allow the smell of old parchment to fill their nostrils. What a lovely smell that was.

Shaking her head, the mother fumbled for an explanation to the whereabouts of her son’s shoes, “I don’t know what to tell you, you brought more pairs, right?”

Joey nodded slowly, eyes scanning through fragmented sentences before turning to the next page, “Yeah, I just really liked those ones.”

“Alright, well, I’m sure they’ll turn up eventually, don’t worry yourself over it,” she grasped her boy’s shoulder, rubbing her thumb into the flesh tenderly before letting go, “We have a rat problem, by the way, if you see any traps, let me know.”

“Oh fun,” he mumbled, forcing a wide smile onto his lips, “I think there’s some in the backyard if you haven’t been out there. They look like shit but they’ll probably get the job done.”

“Language, but thank you.”

“English and you’re welcome.”

Deciding it was better to just walk away at this point, (Y/n) headed for the back door. It was heavy to pull open and nearly slammed shut if she hadn’t pressed her foot into the thick wood, grunting at the responding pain. A trash bag was set out with a pair of gloves next to it on a quaint little side table with spider webs running between the beige wicker legs. As if somebody had put them out for a quick run but forgot they wouldn’t be using them after they left.

After that, what caught her eye was the glint of rusted metal in the thick, untamed bushes of the surrounding greenery. Upon closer inspection, she could see that grass had entangled with the metallic gate on a small wooden box, buzzing flies being the next eye-catcher. She crouched down, instantly picking up on the putrid smell of corroding flesh and dried blood, flies nibbling on the swiss cheesed corpse of a rat.

“Shit!” she gagged, backing away, rubbing her hands on her pants despite having not touched the cage at all.

Looking back up at the house, (Y/n) barely noticed the outline of a person in one of the second-floor windows. She blinked twice, shaking her head before squinting back up at the same window. Just a coat rack. Didn’t seem right - there were pants in the outline! - but then she realized how outlandish it seemed. If there was a secret person living in the house, surely it would’ve been mentioned by the realtor.

‘Forgotten’ rats were one thing, an entire person was another.

“Mom!” another soprano level scream ruptured her eardrums.

In turn, (Y/n) huffed, clenching her eyes shut before turning around and walking back towards the porch. What she first noticed was her seven-year-old, the second being the extremely off-putting, cracked porcelain doll in his arms.

It was half his size and looked to have been haphazardly put back together with some unnamed brand of superglue. Dark hair framed its head quite well with glassy, hazel eyes and pale, pretty pink lips. Grossly realistic and abandoned in a mansion, it seemed to be perfect fire material. Or it would be, if she hadn’t been told by the realtor, very explicitly, to not use the fireplace.

“Whole house could go up in flames,” Mindy had waved her hands about, “I’m not sure how that’d work, but just… don’t test it.”

Dylan held up the doll closer to his mother’s face, “Isn’t he cool?!”

“Yeah,” she lied through her teeth, carefully taking the doll, “Does he have a name?”

Leading his mother back inside, Dylan shrugged, but his loose limbs and lack of control made it appear as though he was trying to toss his shoulders off from his body, “Don’t know.”

“Hmm,” she quietly hummed, pulling back the tightly sewn collar of the doll to peek at a possible name tag, “I’m not seeing anything here, baby. You wanna name him yourself?”

There was another creak, easily dismissed as the manor’s old bones settling as the woman handed the fragile doll to her son. Dylan pressed his lips into a tight line, staring at the toy for a few moments before bursting out an answer, “I think he looks like a James!”

(Y/n) nodded to the boy’s antics, “I think that’s a great name for him.”

Before they could continue the conversation, a hard bang on the wall knocked a picture from its spot above the stove, toppling onto the rather shiny surface. Their heads turned, eyes wide and Dylan was suddenly shaking, grasping onto his mother’s shirt and huddling into her side. The woman settled a hand on her son’s shoulder, pressing her thumb into the tensing muscles before pulling away to inspect the wall. 

It was a wall, obviously. Flat, leveled, wall. Nothing particularly interesting about it aside from the wallpaper’s collection of grime and peels. Looking down, she took notice of the framed picture. Three figures stood in front of the home (Y/n) now found herself in possession of. Garden controlled and clean with no windows boarded, cracked, or dirtied. A young woman not much older than (Y/n) herself was holding a four-year-old brunette boy to her hip with, who one could assume was, her husband beside them.

Glancing between the picture and the doll, she frowned at how similar the toy looked to the little boy. Not to mention that haunting family portrait at the foot of the staircase. Turning the frame over in her hands, she opened up the back before pulling the picture out of its frame. (Y/n) searched for a scrawled title of the photograph, quickly finding an answer.

Mummy, Daddy, and Brahms!

She replaced the picture just as quickly as she got it out, debating between putting it back and tossing it out before deciding to leave it on the counter. (Y/n) took her son’s chubby cheeks between her hands, planting yet another kiss on his freckled forehead, “I think his name is Brahms, sweetie.”

“Brahms?” Dylan muttered, almost as though he was testing for another bump. When there was none, he nodded, “Brahms.”

Running away and back up the stairs, (Y/n) was ready to force herself into forgetting the whole thing happened when her older son’s voice was heard.

“It’s funny, you little brat!” followed by a loud wail.

“Give him back!” Dylan screamed.

(Y/n) rushed out of the kitchen to see Joey holding Brahms out of Dylan’s reach, the older boy was visibly angry, “Funny, I could say the same thing to you!”

“Joseph Lowy,” the woman muttered, snatching the doll from her son, and giving it back to her pouting little blond boy, “Here, go play with Brahms,” as he ran up the stairs, she called after him, “Don’t get too crazy up there, you two!”

Joey shook his head, rubbing at the bridge of his nose underneath his glasses, “Little asshole.”

“Hey!” (Y/n) looked over to the sixteen-year-old, “Don’t talk about your little brother like that.”

“He stole more of my shit,” the dark-haired boy tapped at the wall a few times with his knuckles, shaking his head, “Shoes I could deal with but now two of my shirts are missing.”

“Did you leave them at the house?” she tried to reason, leaning against the wall, “Dylan’s been with me for a while, maybe you’re losing it, sweetpea.”

Joey cringed at the pet name briefly before deciding to carry on with his point, “No, I didn’t leave my clothes at the house. I wouldn’t leave a single sock with that dick.”

“Don’t call my ex a dick,” (Y/n) breathed out, turning her son around and nudging him towards the den, “Only I can do that.”

“Unfair.”

“This isn’t a democracy, it’s a dictatorship,” (Y/n) waved off, standing there long enough just to watch the boy sit down on a leather chair and open the book in his hands. She’d have to go into town for rat traps, then.

She bit at her lip, turning towards the flight of stairs and beginning to go up the steps. Without the creeks flowing alongside her movement, the house seemed even more eerie - she didn’t bother to stop and figure out why there were no creeks. It didn’t matter to her at the time.

(Y/n) peeked into Dylan’s room, smiling softly at the sight of her little boy seated at a play table with plastic plates and cups and faux food set delicately on it. He was holding a small pink teacup with Brahms porcelain fingers using a hair tie to keep a similar purple one in his grasp. When the little boy noticed his mother in the doorway, he waved wildly, taking one of Brahms’ arms gently and copying the motion onto the doll.

Continuing down the hall, (Y/n) came upon her room, pushing it open and immediately seeing that her suitcases and bags had been peeled open. She was sure that she’d left them all zipped and sealed before leaving, but, of course, you can never be too certain. Going over to the luggage, she moved clothing around and peered through when she noticed how strewn about her things were.

The ‘fragile-minded’ female role after a heavy divorce was not something (Y/n) ever imagined herself as being. It was so played out and disgusting, she despised it with everything in her body. Yet, as she found that one of her dresses was missing, she suddenly felt as though it was depressingly truer than she’d hoped.

(Y/n) turned to another suitcase; her apple red-tinted skirt was gone. She dug deeper into the case, pulling out a few stray, tossed-around shirts in her endeavor to find her favorite skirt. She tossed a hand up, giving up on finding the articles of clothing for the time being. Not that she’d admit it, but worry was beginning to fester in the deepest crawlspaces of her gut.

Stepping over to a different suitcase, (Y/n) pulled out what probably wouldn’t make her look as though she just woke up and went over to the bathroom connected to her bedroom. 

Mindy had made it abundantly clear that the two previous owners drowned themselves while on a ‘two-month’ vacation after leaving the house to a nanny. Who the nanny was or why she left wasn’t made clear to either woman, just that the house wasn’t right. Cryptic language, always appreciated.

Taking into mind the deaths and sudden missing clothing combined with bumps from the kitchen, it may be time to call the kettle a kettle. The home may be haunted. Not that she wanted a literal haunted house, but what other choice was there at this point?

Not even apartments were renting as low as the manor was selling.

As she finished getting dressed, (Y/n) began her way out of the house, stopping at her younger son’s room, “I’m going out for some things. Want me to bring you back anything?”

Dylan looked over to the cracked doll, “Do you want new clothes, Brahms?”

The doll, of course, was completely silent. Unmoving. Watching. 

“I think Brahms wants new clothes, Mom,” Dylan beamed at the woman, holding up his plastic cup.

(Y/n) giggled, nodding as she pat the doorway, “Alright, honey, I’ll see what I can do for Brahms.”

“Thanks, Mom,” the bubbly little boy lowered his cup, settling his hand on the doll’s back, “Say thanks, Brahms.”

No words came from the toy, as one would be expected to expect. It sat still, not moving but still watching. Always watching. Unblinking, glassy, hazel eyes stuck on his flesh-and-blood blond friend.

“He says thanks.”

Nodding, the woman gave her boy a thumbs up, “I’m sure.”

The next son was still in the den, reading quietly to himself. Every now and again one’s ear would pick up on a small mumble of a word, small stutters slipping from the teenager’s lips. (Y/n) came up behind the boy, hands slamming onto the back of the chair loudly.

Joey jumped in his place, turning swiftly, “The hell, Mom?”

“I’m going out, bookworm,” (Y/n) teased, running a hand through the boy’s messy black hair, “Need me to pick something up?”

“Coffee grounds would be great,” he confirmed, “There’s none in this entire, literal, mansion.”

“Alright,” she gently brought her older son’s shoulders back so his head was laying against the chair, “Take a break sometime soon, okay? Stretch for a bit, make you and your brother some lunch.”

He hummed in acknowledgment but otherwise, there was no indication of him having even listened to his mother. 

~~

The next morning was just as drab and bland as the previous, and there was no doubt that the morning after this would be the same as always. (Y/n) huffed as she climbed out of bed, rubbing a hand over her droopy eyes. She stood, no longer remembering much of what had happened yesterday other than buying children’s clothes for a doll and coffee grounds for her son.

Not even the drill holes the previous owners must have never paid much mind to, which she noticed after dinner. They were strangely large for any typical drill she’d seen or owned.

(Y/n) managed to trudge into the kitchen during her dazed state, neither one of her boys was eating and so she correctly assumed both were still asleep. Scratching under her shirt at her stomach, the woman picked the coffee grounds from under the sink, laying the hefty tub on the counter next to the maker. Seemed a bit counterproductive to have a coffee maker and not a single crumb of grounds or even any beans to actually use. Not that she could say it to the owners’ faces.

“Oh, filters, right,” she mumbled to herself, immediately recalling the thin papers in the walk-in closet style storage compartment. 

Her hand scanned over a few shelves, one arm crossed over her chest and the other still running along canned goods and cereal boxes. She tilted her head to rest on the raised shoulder, beginning to hum quietly to herself. The air was pleasantly crisp, oddly crisp for the interior of a house let alone a pantry. It had the same feeling as being inside an attic, if that made any sort of sense it didn’t matter to her at the time. Not much about the house mattered to her at the moment.

A few creeks and Joey was walking into the kitchen, the poor house was only getting older and with his naturally heavy steps, Joey found himself making more noise than he’d like. So much noise. Too much noise. Why did he have to be so loose with his footfalls? He’d been walking for over forty years by now.

Forty years? Forty years.

He was a grown man, he should be able to walk quietly. Just because Greta left him, he suddenly can’t be a ghost anymore?

A scream clutched the air as the pantry door slammed shut. (Y/n) turned, not finding herself much a fan of the darkness. She took the doorknob into her grip, violently twisting and pushing on the knob, “Joseph?! Dylan?!”

The door refused to budge, like a weight was pressing down onto it. It creaked and rocked ever so slightly but there was no way of getting it open.

“Joseph fucking Lowy, open this God damn door!” she pounded on the busted wood, beginning to kick when her hits proved no help, “Dylan! One of you open this door, right now!”

Suddenly, the lock made a click, and all the invisible weight was gone, a sixteen-year-old boy staring quizzically at his mother, “Mom, what’s wrong with you? How did you lock the door from the outside?”

“What are you talking about?” (Y/n) shook her head, giving the pantry a glance over her shoulder, “You locked me in there.”

“You woke me up with all your yelling,” Joey instantly denied, “I’m surprised Dylan’s not up yet.”

“Joseph, I’m not playing with you right now,” she crossed both arms, “It’s not cute.”

“I’m serious!” he shouted in his own defense, neither of them taking notice in the seven-year-old cradling a porcelain doll with a cracked face to his chest, “I wouldn’t lock you in a pantry!”

“Mom…” the boy muttered.

(Y/n)’s jaw clenched, eyes slamming shut and body turning away from her older son to look at the disgusting wallpaper of her kitchen. She sniffed hard, rubbing under her nose before looking back to her younger son, “Yes, sweetie?”

“Brahms made a mess,” Dylan quietly replied, going up to his mother and grabbing her hand, “It wasn’t me, really. It was Brahms.”

“What do you mean it was Brahms?” she huffed, following after the child as he began leading her up to the second floor, “He’s a doll, baby, it was probably just the wind knocking something over.”

“No,” he shook his head, pushing his bedroom door open wider, “Brahms made a mess.”

A mess indeed. Clothes and toys had been absolutely hurricaned around the little boy’s room, some glass from pictures and abandoned dishes shattered across the floor. Dylan’s play table had been toppled over with all the plasticware left on the carpeted ground. Looking over to her son’s feet, (Y/n) felt herself puzzled at the lack of blood; glass was everywhere. How could his reckless little feet avoid all of it?”

“Baby, did you step in any glass?”

“There’s glass in there?” the boy peeked around his mother before looking down at Brahms, “How did you do that?”

(Y/n) turned back to the bedroom, poking her tongue into her cheek as her hands found their places on her hips. Confusion laced into her bones, trickling down the marrow and soaking into her shaking fingertips. Brows knit tightly downward in the midst of her conflict and head thumping for answers, no - no, that was a headache. She was getting a headache.

Taking her son’s shoulders, (Y/n) spun him around to face the way they just came down, “I’ll take care of that tonight, sweetpea, don’t go in here for a little bit, alright? I don’t want you cutting up your feet.”

“Okay, Mama,” Dylan grinned up at the woman, holding Brahms a little tighter in his grasp, “I don’t want Brahms to get hurt either.”

“That’s very nice of you,” she cooed, taking his cheek between thumb and forefinger and pinching gently, “What a good little boy I have.”

Beaming at the praise, the mother-son duo didn’t even notice the panel in the wall rolling back and it’s spidery tendons creeping around the curve of the wall’s edge. Instead, they giggled over nothing as (Y/n) took her son’s small, fragile hands into her own and puppeteered him down the stairs. Doll boy Brahms left to sit on the landing of the house’s flight until somebody, anybody, picked him up.

Passing the portrait of another family was easy enough despite how creepy it seemed. They’d have to take it down, feeling like a guest in one’s own home was never appreciated. Then again, neither were pests in your walls, especially when you didn’t know about them yet.

~~

“Sleep tight, sweetie,��� (Y/n) blew one final kiss to her son before closing the bedroom door to her own room.

“Wait,” Dylan whined, stopping his mother in the motion, “Brahms is still gone…”

The woman pursed her lips, “I know, I know. Just try to sleep without him for now, okay? We’ll probably find him tomorrow morning.”

Pouting, the boy kicked his legs out slightly before nodding solemnly, “Alright…”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she smiled tenderly at the child before shutting the bedroom door genuinely. Turning to her other son, (Y/n) forced a much faker smile onto her lips, “And thank you for your upcoming sacrifice.”

“I never said it was a sacrifice,” Joey grumbled, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, “You’re just dramatic.”

“Incorrect,” (Y/n) turned her boy around with a few small pats on the shoulder, descending the stairs as a pair until they reached the comically large portrait of a family that wasn’t their own.

Her hand settled against the groove of the curvy golden frame, the other resting against the painted surface as she and her son lifted the painting from the wall.

“Shit,” Joey hissed, assisting his mother in her lifting, “this thing’s heavy. Really heavy.”

“Probably wasn’t meant to be taken off the wall,” the woman reasoned with her son, muscles straining in their removal of the ridiculously big painting.

As the woman handled the painting, deciding to let it rest on the floor. Her backbones screamed as she slowly bent at the knee to lower the portrait of the wealthy family. Knuckles and joints beginning to ache as she did so.

“Mom…?” Joey muttered, voice much smaller and more fragile than she was accustomed to.

“Yeah?” she gruffed, finally letting the painting down completely. Her hands came to press on her tailbone ever so gently, practically already feeling next morning’s soreness, “Something wrong?”

“Only if you think a human-sized hole in the wall is a problem?” the boy chuckled dryly.

“A what?”

Turning swiftly, (Y/n) was quickly faced with exactly what her eldest son had just described to her. A human-sized hole in their wall. Large enough to fit a six-foot person, maybe they’d have to duck, but the fact remained. Her hands reached out for the edges of where the frame met the actual wall. She turned her head both ways, it was dark but when her eyes adjusted she could tell that there was a clear path running through the wall. Pulling her head back out, (Y/n) nodded towards the hole.

“I’ll go first, you follow.”

“Fine.”

Stepping into the hole, she noted how disgustingly crisp the air felt, it reminded her of being trapped in the pantry. It made her question what ways were waiting to be opened up by creeping little fingers inside that quiet, confined space. Her skin bumped and hairs raised at the thought of whoever had made these pathways still being inside the house. But that was insane, not a chance that somebody could live inside the walls of a manor without anybody finding out. There’d be too many creeks.

And suddenly she was remembering being locked in the pantry again, when those loud creeks were cracking into her ears and her sons had still been asleep. Her sons had still been asleep.

(Y/n) stopped, glad that her son’s eyes, though faltering, had adjusted to the dark well enough so he wouldn’t bump into her, “You’re sure you didn’t lock me in the pantry, right? There’s no way you were sleepwalking or anything?”

It was silent, so silent that there was a deafening buzz drumming into her ears.

“Joey?”

Again, all she was met with was the droning, consistent blare of buzzing in her ears.

“Joseph, I’m not playing with you.”

Once more, she was hit with buzzing.

“Joseph,” (Y/n) turned around, not meeting the eyes of her sixteen-year-old bookworm son, but instead with a stained, smelly, thin white shirt.

It hung low enough to expose the oddly shiny slick of sweat glistening over a hairy chest. Her breath grew rapid, fear racing through her body as she shook her head.

Looking up, her gut was wrenched at the dirtied prosthetic mask angled as if the person behind it was looking down upon her, as though she were a frightened rabbit. Now that she thought about it, she was a frightened, shaking little rabbit.

“Where’s my son?” when there was no response, she tossed herself into his body, attempting to push past him, “Joseph?! Dylan?!”

The arms of the secret man in her walls wrapped around her, squeezing tightly. One arm abandoned her waist, scrambling for something a little ways behind them, when he found it, the arm raised above her head.

“Joseph?!” she sobbed weakly, beginning to choke on her own nasty cocktail of tears and mucus, “Dylan?!”

A thwack left no more screaming to be heard, the tall man dropping his makeshift club in favor of picking the woman up as though she were his cute, delicate bride. 

Brahms turned, heading back for the largest panel of the walls with (Y/n) dangling limply in his arms.

~~

Finally coming to, (Y/n) sputtered in a soft muffle, eyesight unclear and spotting in the corners. The spots and blotches eventually leveled and began to mop themselves into one concise picture of the kitchen. She let out a soft hiss, wrists stinging when she suddenly realized that there were ropes binding her arms back and to her chair. 

Head toppling to the left, a snoring Joey was also tied down with his glasses already having slipped from his nose. Crashed onto the floor and shattered, it reminded her of her youngest son’s room; her youngest son.

She looked over to her right, spotting an empty wicker chair immediately beside her and Dylan after that. Dylan was leaning far back, head resting on his shoulder and mouth having fallen open to let out quiet whimpers and whines as though even in Dreamland, he was frightful. 

Finally, she looked forward, squinting at the collection of chairs in front of her. They were chairs, obviously, nothing too interesting about that but it’s what was in the chairs that alarmed her. Pillows conjoined together by stolen articles of clothing ranging from Joey’s shirt to her favorite dress and skirt and Dylan’s sweatshirt. Between her pillow copy and Dylan’s was the Brahms doll; staring ahead silently. Watching. Always watching.

A high-pitched, airy, childlike voice rang in her ear, it didn’t match the fully grown man standing behind Dylan. Brahms, the real Brahms, pat the boy’s blond hair before ruffling Joey’s untamed dark tresses, “Little brother… big brother…” he moved behind (Y/n), his hands settling on her shoulders before his mask moved to press it’s  cold, hard lips against the goosebumped, terrified skin of her neck, “Mommy…”

Sitting down in the empty chair, Brahms smiled beneath his mask, staring into the dead, glassy eyes of his doll before letting his voice take on the deeper octave more appropriate of an adult.

“Daddy…”

[dragonflymage]

I have various levels to my dreams and it depends on the level as to how often I have that type of dream. I’m not sure if overthinking causes them. But I do know having the dreams causes me to think more after I wake.

Here are my personal dream types:

💙 Normal dreams - 💙 This is a dream that revolves around one or two subjects or symbols. It’s a pretty simple dream. It may or may not make sense. I’ll most likely forget about it when I wake, or by the end of the day. These probably occur at least once a night, if not more.

💙 Weird dreams - 💙 These are similar to Normal dreams except they are truly strange. It’ll mix symbols that make no sense. I’ll wake up wondering what the hell I just dreamed about. These aren’t as common as the Normal dreams. Those that I remember may occur about once a week or two.

💙 Story dreams - 💙 These are dreams that are like I’m watching a movie. I’m either within the mind of the ‘main character’ or I’m an invisible watcher to the events. These can be ordinary stories or can also fall into the Nightmare category. I don’t have these sorts of dreams as often as I used to.

💙 Dreamwalker dreams - 💙 For me, a dreamwalker is someone who can travel in their dreams. I have at least 5 regular locations I visit while I sleep. These are places I know so well that if I ever found them while awake, I’d know exactly where to go to get around. These dreams occur maybe once or twice a month.

💙 Stress dreams - 💙 This is a dream where I wake feeling anxious. The themes usually involve being teased and emotionally tormented. As though I’ve been picked on all night. These dreams occur more often when I’m already feeling stressed about something while awake.

💙 Disaster dreams - 💙 These are dreams about some sort of natural disaster, post-apocalyptic events, or something that is supposed to end the world. Usually, they involve weather or geological events, bombs, or (haha) zombies. I’ve had these fairly regularly my whole life.

💙 Creepy AF dreams - 💙 Similar to a Story dream, but these dreams are one step above a full nightmare. They involve all the scary elements of a nightmare, but I’m not fully interacting with it, nor it with me. Like I’m walking through a created haunted house in someone else’s mind where nothing can touch me. It’s creepy, but overall, not dangerous. I don’t have these dreams very often, maybe once or twice a year, depending on waking situations.

💙 Nightmares - 💙 The worst. These are dreams that are realistic and frightening, leaving me feeling quite traumatized. They are usually a Story dream taken to the extreme. I’ve often wondered if I was trapped inside various random people’s bad memories. I am fully interacting and stuck in the scenario until it unfolds to the end. Though, I have learned how to wake myself up right before I (or the person in the dream) is supposed to die. I used to have Nightmares more often in the past. I rarely have these now.

Here are examples from my dream journal for each of the above types I listed.

💤 **Please know that some of the content below might be SCARY** 💤

⭐ Normal dream - ⭐ I was with a group of people. One of them I know was male. He was a priest or holy man. We were walking together on a dirt road and there were trees around us. There was a clearing where I could see through the trees and I saw mountains way off in the distance. I thought it was so pretty so I took my out camera and snapped pictures. Off to the left of the mountains, I saw a bay. On the bay was a huge bridge that reminded me of the golden gate but it was bigger. Something about the bridge scared me.

I took more pictures. Trees blocked my view so I moved around to try and find a clearer view. The holy man with me said, "you're seeing what you're meant to see. Let it become clear on its own". When I looked back at the bridge it was covered in fog and I couldn't see it anymore.

⭐ Weird dream - ⭐ I was in an old building. It looked like a stone temple. It was dusty. Someone was with me and he was trying to get a spell or a machine to work. There was a big egg-shaped container with a line going longways through it so it could open. It reminded me of a coffin except it was egg-shaped.

I went over to the egg coffin and opened it. Inside was a little boy. I was wondering what a little boy is doing inside the coffin? I touched him and he woke up and I was glad that he wasn't dead. I helped him out of the coffin and he followed me around. He said, "I'm supposed to visit you soon". I said, "but you're visiting me now". He shook his head and said, "no not like this". That's all I remember.

⭐ Story dream - ⭐ The dream went through an entire sequence of events in someone else’s life that spanned about a year. I lived alone in a house that had no lights. I was pregnant and nobody to talk with about it. Two or three older women came to my house to keep me company. They said that they would explain things to me and answer any questions I had. They answered basic questions because I was too afraid to ask what I was really thinking. They offered to stay with me but I told them that I would be fine, so they left. I spent a great deal of time alone and crying.

When I was in the hospital to have the baby, I felt detached from everything. I was pregnant, and then I had a baby. He was a boy and I named him Delancey. I brought him home and in my heart, I was happy he was here, yet there was a sadness in my heart. When it came time to introduce Delancey to other people I knew, I put him in a small stroller. I went to a workplace where I knew some people. They came out and fawned over the baby and were excited about him being there. Again I felt detached and put on a happy face.

There was an office or room inside the workplace that I went into. It was empty and I knew it was the room that belonged to my baby's father. My thoughts lingered on him and how he died before he knew I was even pregnant. I started crying, holding Delancey to my chest, trying to talk out loud to the baby's father that he had a son, and I was so sorry that he wasn't here to share in his life with me. My heart hurt so badly for this woman I shared life with in my dream.

⭐ Dreamwalker dream - ⭐ In this dream, I returned to a dream location I've been in before. The place always feels like India, yet it also feels other-worldly. In past dreams, I'm walking through a marketplace during different stages of prosperity. Sometimes the marketplace is active and thriving, and other times it's desolate with people sitting on the ground as if they're starving.

Last night the location felt desperate. In the dream, I remembered being here before, so I took a good look around to gather my sense of direction. I always entered the marketplace from a path in the near center, and the marketplace extended off to the right and left of me. The ground is not paved. It's covered with red-orange dirt. I always seem to know someone in this location and I went looking for them.

Near the marketplace stood a small hut with a blanket for a door. I stared at it for a long time, but I don't recall why I hesitated to go in. Outside of the hut, a small boy came over to me. His skin was deep brown and his hair was short and black. Indian or Arabic features. I recognized him as he asked, "do you want to buy some?" He had jewelry in his hand.

I looked in my hand and saw that I carried an amulet in the shape of the eye of Horus. It was new and shiny and felt out of place in my surroundings. The boy looked at it and said, "I can give you something better". I asked him, "why are you selling jewelry away from the marketplace?" He looked at me in silence, but his eyes looked very sad. He hurried away before I could say anything more.

I finally went inside the hut. Before I went inside, I knew that something was wrong. Several people were huddled together on the dirt floor. One person cradled the head of a child on his lap. I knew the child was sick, and possibly the others were too. I felt as though I had the capability to heal them but I think I knew I was too late to do any serious help. They pleaded to me to please try. It hurt to look at them, and I knew that my efforts wouldn't save them, but I knelt down and attempted to soothe their pain. The child weakly held my hand and such an overwhelming feeling of helplessness went through me that it pulled me right out of the dream.

⭐ Stress dream - ⭐ In my dream, I saw people outside. One man said to a woman there "I'll buy you ice cream with a cone". The woman looked happy about the ice cream at first. But then she was upset when he mentioned a cone. She walked away. The man didn't know what upset her.

Then I saw a memory inside the woman's thoughts. I shared space with her. The woman was a 5-year-old little girl. She sat in-between her parents on a bench. The girl had won a prize and her prize was an ice cream cone. Her father said he would test the ice cream to see if it was OK. He ate the ice cream and didn't give it back to the girl.

The girl kept saying "can I have some now?" But he wouldn't give it back. He said, "this tastes so good". The girl got upset and started to cry. She looked at her mother and said: "he won't give me my ice cream". Her mother made faces at the girl and repeated what the girl said, repeating it in a teasing voice. The girl cried and the father kept eating the cone until it was gone. The girl didn't get any of the ice cream that was her prize for winning something. I knew she felt very upset because she never had special ice cream like that before.

⭐ Disaster dream - ⭐ In this dream, I was at a beach. I walked in the water out pretty far because the water was shallow. I went out and the water was only at my waist. Then I noticed a disturbance in the water and a large whirlpool appeared. In a short amount of time, all the water in the ocean drained down through a large crack in the ocean floor. I knew that a larger disaster was coming, that an earthquake was going to happen. I went around the beach to all the people who were standing there staring at the empty ocean, trying to warn them that a big earthquake was coming, but no one seemed to hear me or care. I decided to leave the beach and hurried back home. I ran into the house to grab my pets. I had only one cat and two small dogs. I put them into my jeep and called my brother on a cell phone to warn him. He seemed too tired to care. I drove someplace safer.

⭐ Creepy AF dream - ⭐ I was inside a room that was supposed to be my bedroom. There was a man in my room, but I wasn't sure if he was there or not. He stood in the corner of the room watching me and said nothing. I had a creepy feeling so I went to the window. I was on the second floor. Looking down, I saw another man standing there. He wore white and stood very still. He looked right up at me and stared. He didn't move and kept staring at me. I was afraid so I left that window and looked out the other window. Another man wearing white stood very still and stared up at me.

I hurried away and turned to look at the man in my room. He said, "so you can see us, can you?" I wanted to get out of the room, but couldn't find the door. The man walked closer to me and said, "I was going to wait until later. But since you can see me I'm going to kill you now." He had something in his hand and he came closer to me. I sat on the floor and I pushed myself against the wall using my feet. He stood over me and stared at me for a long time. I was still sitting on the floor, but my dead body was laying on the floor in front of me. It scared me so much to see that. The man leaned over my body and talked.

A woman and another person came into the room. She saw my body on the floor and was angry. She picked the man up and took a dagger and stabbed him in the chest many times. Then she threw him on the floor. She looked right at me sitting on the floor and stepped over my body. She told me to follow her and she would find a safe place for me. I was very scared. But I followed her.

⭐ Nightmare - ⭐ I was inside someone's house. Other people were living in this house with me and they were my family. Another stranger lived in the house too. He was very dangerous, but I was the only one who could see him. He took each of my family one at a time and sliced their throats with a long razor. He forced me to watch him doing this. I could see this happening, but the other family members didn't seem to realize what was going on. I tried to tell them they needed to leave the house, but they didn't understand me. He grabbed another person and sliced them too. I saw the razor going into their skin and I saw blood everywhere. He kept doing this until they were all dead.

Then he said he was going to do the same to me. He grabbed me and showed me the razor knife and moved it over my skin. He wasn't cutting me at first. I tried to get away from him. He said he was very sorry and there was no one else left so I was next. Then the other person I shared the dream-thoughts with began talking to him. She was screaming and saying she didn't want to die. I think she was a she. I don't know for sure. I could still see through her eyes and I tried to close my eyes. But I couldn't because her eyes weren't closed. Then the telephone woke me up.

— Those are some of my dreams from over the years. It took me forever to go through them and pick these. I have so many that could’ve worked for each category.

And to answer the original question, there were times when I’ve had nightmares very often and times when they were rare. The frequency seems to depend on what’s taking place in my life. 💗

Thanks for the question. 😊

[theotpauthor]

Hi! This is my gift for @kbaycolt for the @tma-valentines-exchange this year! You requested JonSasha and I hope you like it! 

“Jon!” a voice called, making him startle. He put down the can of soup he had been looking at and glanced down the aisle.

“I didn’t know you went to this grocery store,” his boss, Sasha, said happily. She was tugging along one of those hand held baskets, packed with some fruits and veggies.

“It’s the closest to my apartment,” Jon replied, “so it’s convenient. I thought you lived further out though?”

“I do,” she admitted easily, “but the produce section in my normal grocers is complete garbage. Half of the time they’re only a couple days from rotting.”

“Unpleasant.”

“Indeed. Especially after that last batch of statements. But while you’re here—would you mind staying after hours tomorrow? I have a non-work related favor to ask, but it’ll take a bit of time to explain and we both look a bit busy at the moment.”

“Ah—” If it was anyone else Jon would have said no easily, or at least fumbled his way through an excuse, but this was his boss, and (though she hadn’t meant any cruelty by it) one of their first conversations had been her laying out, quite explicitly, his complete lack of credentials for his job. That was six months ago, and they had both grown closer as a unit in the archives, but he still felt an underlying need to prove that he was worthy of his job. He desperately wanted her to think he was competent, and refusing to help her was just another way of saying he wasn’t capable of doing so. “Of course.”

“Thank you!” Sasha said with a grin. “I know this is a little out of nowhere, but it’s nothing too bad, I promise. I’ve gotta run now, but I’ll see you on Monday!”

. . . o0o . . .

“You wanted to see me?” Jon said, peering into Sasha’s office. He tapped his fingers together at his side and hope she didn’t notice; he still wasn’t sure what the issue was and his nerves had steadily increased since their meeting at the supermarket.

“Ah, yes,” Sasha nodded. “Here, come in, sit down.” He did. “Well, easiest to tear the bandaid off quickly I suppose. Will you pretend to date me so Tim gives up on me?”

This was—not what Jon had been expecting. He hadn’t really had set expectations in the first place, besides something probably professional, and this was far from that.

“Has Tim been . . . making you uncomfortable?” Jon asked, eyebrows crinkled in confusion and a hint of worry, but Sasha was shaking her head before he got the chance to finish.

“Oh no, nothing like that. Tim is a good guy. He’s just . . . the type to hold out hope, you know? We had a brief fling and he keeps trying to make it more. And the only way to get him to move on genuinely instead of pretending is to convince him that there’s no use waiting for me to change my mind.”

“Huh,” Jon said speculatively. “He hadn’t struck me as particularly romantic. At least, not in that way.”

“So, will you do it?”

Jon hesitated. He remembered working with Tim before, and though Jon had acted as prickly as ever, it had never seemed to bother him. They hadn’t quite gotten to a level that Jon would call friends, but they had been getting there before Jon’s transfer to Archives.

“Won’t this hurt him? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you’re actually in a relationship?”

“Ideally, but I don’t want him to be pining over me for who knows how long before I find my person. He’s my friend, and I don’t want him to miss out on someone because he was too busy wanting something that will never happen.”

“. . . And as for hurting him?”

“A necessary evil.” Sasha pursed her lips. She had known Jon and Tim were friends, but she hadn’t been sure how deep the bond had been on Jon’s end. She still wasn’t sure if it would help or hurt her scheme. “Look, I don’t like it either. But he’s going to get hurt at some point, and I’d rather have it be short and—well, not sweet really—than long and drawn out. This’ll be better in the long run.” She stared at Jon, and wiped her hands nervously on her pants. “Will you do it? I know this might be a bit weird since I’m your boss but—”

“I—no, I’ll—I’ll do it. But we’re going to need to work out the logistics. I mean, Tim knows both of us. We can’t just be dating out of nowhere.”

Sasha grinned, relief flooding over her. Her teeth shone.

“I’ve already made a plan. You could come over my place so we could talk about it? Figured it’d be better to discuss it here than in a more public place.”

. . .

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” Jon said, blinking slightly. In front of him were various papers, all tacked up onto a corkscrew board, describing different versions of how they could have started dating, their various dates, and more. It might have been creepy, except for the fact that Sasha was a constant overplanner, and he was somewhat surprised she hadn’t simply told him a backstory she had created.

“I was trying to find something realistic that still wouldn’t hurt Tim too badly,” Sasha admitted, chewing on her lip as she glanced over the various papers. Jon noticed for the first time that her concealer had slipped, and she had bags under her eyes.

“Are his feelings that strong?”

“It’s not that they’re strong,” Sasha said slowly, trying to think of how to say it. “It’s that they’re constant. Tim acts flippant but once he cares about people, it’s very hard for him to stop.”

That hadn’t been the impression that Jon had gotten, but Jon had only known him for a couple months before his transfer, and Sasha had known him since university, so he was willing to assume she knew better in this case.

“That aside,” Sasha said, “I say we figure out the most awkward part first and get it out of the way. When did we first have sex?”

“We didn’t,” Jon said dryly. “I’m asexual, and not particularly prone to PDA either.”

Sasha paused for a moment, readjusting her plans with the new information.

“Well, we still need to act comfortable around each other. We don’t need to go making out in back corners of a club or anything, but couples usually have an ease around each other.” She smiled over at him, teasing. “Unless hand holding is too scandalous?”

“Haha,” Jon rolled his eyes. “No, that’s—fine. I know I’m agreeing to this, but I just didn’t want you to think that—er, that is, I—”

“Jon,” Sasha cut in gently. She thought of placing her hand on his knee before thinking better of it. “Even if we were dating, no string attached, I would never make you do something you didn’t want to. Sure, I like hooking up with people, but in the list of things I couldn’t live without, sex doesn’t even reach the top twenty.”

“Oh.” Jon’s face went pink. He coughed. “Ah, well, right then. Glad that’s sorted.”

“Yes, though we definitely need to discuss more about how we started dating . . . “

. . .

Jon looked at the address Sasha had texted him again, checking for the countless time that it was right. Tim was throwing a small house party, and he was Sasha’s date. He had offered to pick her up, but Sasha hadn’t even given the idea a thought before saying no.

“It’s quicker for both of us if we just meet there,” she had said over the phone. Jon wasn’t much of a talker, but Sasha had insisted on using phones rather than texts that anyone could read later. “and I would that to anyone I was dating too. Actually caused some issues in the past, but I never got what the difference between ten minutes was.”

So Jon was in front of Tim’s house by himself, and trying to convince himself that walking up to the door and knocking was not nearly as hard as it felt. It was only when he started considering waiting for Sasha outside that he pushed himself out of it and forced his legs to move.

“Hey Jo—woah,” Tim said as he opened the door, face going slack in surprise before his grin was back, “I’ve never seen you in casual clothes. Feels like I’m breaking the law.”

“Haha,” Jon said, rolling his eyes. He glanced down at his clothes—he had the foresight to stay away from his old college clothes, but honestly his outfit wasn’t much. Just an old t-shirt from a band he used to follow and a pair of jeans. Sasha had warned him not to be too formal, and he had tried to follow that advice. “I do, actually, have a life outside of work.”

He didn’t, really, but Tim didn’t need to know that.

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Tim said. “Casual looks good on you. Come in.”

After a couple minutes of small talk and being introduced to Tim’s friends, he found himself sitting on the couch next to Tim.

“So you and Sasha, huh?”

Jon felt his cheeks warm and was glad his darker skin made it hard for people to tell. If he didn’t know better, he wouldn’t have known Tim had feelings for her at all.

“If you’re going to interrogate him, you could at least wait until I’m here,” Sasha cut in, and Jon felt himself relax. He wasn’t good at lying, and her easy grin made the whole farce seem more believable.

“What’s the fun in that?” Tim shot back, laughing. “And did you pick the lock? I don’t remember you knocking.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Sasha grinned.

“Hellion,” Tim said. “A complete and utter hellion.” He turned to Jon, whispering in a way that was meant to be heard. “Run away before you have to change all your locks.”

“Leave my boyfriend alone,” Sasha rolled her eyes.

“. . . I don’t see how changing locks would do anything if she can pick them?” Jon replied honestly, trying to wrap his head around the logistics of it. His blunt, honest tone made the other two laugh, which hadn’t been his intention, but was workable.

“So you two are official then? I have to say that I am betrayed that neither of you told me earlier.” His words were overly dramatic, as was the way he threw his hand over his heart, but Jon had a feeling there was a kernel of truth in them.

“We didn’t want to tell anyone. I’m his boss, and his transfer was so sudden that we didn’t want people to think the wrong thing.”

Sasha and Tim talked a bit longer, with Jon occasionally chiming in. It was obvious that the two had known each other for a long time; there was an ease in their teasing and back and forth that was almost enviable. It was easy to see why Tim’s feelings hadn’t faded before.

Eventually Tim was called away by a different one of his friends, leaving Sasha and Jon alone.

Sasha’s shoulders relaxed, and suddenly Jon felt guilty for not doing more in their little ruse. He should have put more effort in—but he couldn’t exactly apologize with people still around, so he pushed it down and made a note to apologize later.

“God,” Sasha muttered, “this would be so much easier if he realized how Martin looked at him.”

“Martin?” Jon asked, and she startled.

“Yes,” she said recovering, “the poor bastard is completely besotted, but turned Tim down for a hookup, and in Tim’s mind that means he could never be interested in a date either.”

“Ah,” Jon said, seemingly confused.

“Martin is romantic,” Sasha explained, “but Tim has never been in a relationship that hasn’t started off as purely sexual. But if they got past that hurdle I think they’d actually be a cute couple.”

“If Tim is a fan of constantly having stray animals in his house, then that’s his taste I suppose. Don’t get it myself.”

Sasha snorted.

“Martin apologized how many times about letting that dog in?”

“Not enough.”

“You know, he’s not that bad of a person. You might like him if you gave him a chance.”

“Doubtful,” Jon said dryly. “But we aren’t in the same department, so small mercies I suppose.”

“Ah yes, god forbid you have to work with anything less than complete competence.”

“Well, you’ve set the bar rather high,” Jon responded, the complete honesty in his voice making her blink, pleased. She was more used to teasing back and forth, but there was something nice about not feeling like she was in a competition.

Other people milled about, and they had various conversations with people that Jon immediately had forgotten the names of. At one point, drawing came up, and Jon went into a tirade about the evolution of crayons and other drawing materials as if he had a degree in it. There was a slight crinkle in between his brows, and his hands moved as he talked—different from the usual stiff, purposefully scowling persona he carried at work. Sasha stared, surprised.

Then she smiled, not thinking about it as she reached out and held his hand. He paused, seemingly only half aware of it. He glace at their hands, eyes lighting up slightly, before continuing, this time only gesturing with one hand, though she felt the other twitch in her hands at times.

. . .

The next Monday at work, the atmosphere was not awkward the way Jon had feared. It was incredibly easy to go back into the familiar patterns of researching statements that were patently fake. He had yet to find a single one that was true. Sasha felt the same way but said that this was as good a job as any other, and he agreed.

Once they both clocked out, Sasha asked Jon if they could talk.

“Did Tim believe it?” Jon asked. She nodded.

“You might not believe it, but he doesn’t normally drink quite that much. But I saw Martin watching over him and making sure he was alright, so I think he’ll be okay.”

“That’s good,” Jon said. There was a pause. “I know that you said it would just be one date, but I was thinking—” He stopped, knowing what he wanted to say but unsure of how to.

“Ah, well,” Sasha hadn’t expected to say this, had thought it would be a one and done sort of deal, but before she can think her words through, she adds, “It might be suspicious if we’re only together once. Tim might think that it’s just—just a fling.”

“Of course,” Jon said just a second too quickly. “Tim isn’t dumb, if we go back to acting as friends, he’ll realize something was up.”

“We’ll have to continue,” Sasha said in relief. “So he believes it.”

“So he believes it,” Jon echoed, and they shared a happy smile.

“He invited me to drinks this weekend with some friends if—”

“I’ll be there.” Jon stopped, flushing slightly as he backtracked. “Ah, sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

“Don’t worry about it. So it’s a date?”

“It’s a date.”

[calleo-bricriu]

1996-ish.

((Chatting with @absintheabsence earlier today, we thought it’d be amusing to make Grindelwald listen to 110 or so year old Calleo describe @tmvoldemort in the most over the top, dramatic way possible so...but also, I absolutely love the way Voldemort was described in the books and will always be salty that the movies made him into a weirdly buff, blue eyed, not all that frightening guy with a very low, sultry voice instead of the skeletal, red eyed, no lipped, sharp teeth filled fucking creepy thing with a high pitched nasally voice. ))

"Officially a new administration," so much for hello. So much for not just shifting back at the window and tossing a copy of the evening Prophet onto that rickety desk.

"Again, I mean, we've had--this is third this decade alone. Put the former head of Magical Law Enforcement in as Minister, maybe to make it look legitimate but probably because he was always a slimy little," Calleo cleared his throat and ended that phrase with, "man."

"And he was always easy to influence; with the way he's been talking in those press conferences, he's either got a wand at his neck or he's being otherwise controlled, just not enough to make it immediately obvious." He hadn't really looked to Grindelwald for a reaction to any of that, as a reaction wouldn't have made any difference and the most likely reaction would have been one similar to his own: A combination of entertained and annoyed.

"Whatever." Calleo flopped back down on the always changing thing he kept Transfiguring into different shapes good for sitting or laying in positions not easily allowed by things like traditional furniture. This time it left him half sitting, half laying, with one leg over something that vaguely resembled a chair arm and the other propped up on the back of it so he could tap one of his shoes against the stone wall.

"The only part of it that's interesting is the Dark Lord," he wiggled his fingers menacingly at Grindelwald, "has been making quiet rounds to department directors in departments that apparently warrant his direct interest instead of just sending some low level sycophant. So, you know, obviously, I got a visit. About damn time too, but, realistically, the lift was 'broken' for several months and Maintenance couldn't seem to get it fixed and there's only one other way in that he doesn't know."

"Have you ever seen photographs of the dead things Muggles drag up from those abyss areas of the ocean? The things that are all translucent skin stretched over bone and are made of mostly teeth? Imagine one of those in ratty black robes and with an aversion to wearing shoes."

"Actually don't, I can describe him more properly!" Calleo grinned in that sharp sort of way that might have sliced through part of the stone walls as though they were made of wet paper.

"I'm not the best judge of height because mine changes so often based on the shoes I'm wearing, but he's not nearly as tall as I thought he'd be. I don't know if he's got other robes or not, but the ones he was wearing look like they came directly out of someone else's coffin. His toenails are long. Not, like, in that sort of way you get if you're just a bit nasty and don't clip them, it looks almost as though he's specifically grown them long to file them into points."

"Might be why he doesn't wear shoes," Calleo shrugged and laughed, "Matching nails on his hands, which is perfectly fine. He's almost see-through he's so pale, though. Not pale like you're pale or I’m pale, pale like a sheet of bleached white paper, you can see a great deal of his circulatory system; I'm almost convinced if I were to peek inside his robes under good lighting I'd be able to see whatever it is he's got for internal organs!"

"It looks...damp, as well, his skin. Very, very smooth but there's this sheen to it that makes it look damp and I don't think it is. Not too keen on touching him to find out as if he is damp, it's going to be the worst possible sensation. Rail thin, skeletal really, I'm not sure how it is he moves apart from just hand-waving it with ‘a Wizard did it’, because he really is THAT thin!"

Calleo shifted in the--thing he was sitting on and was nearly upside down now, with both feet up against the wall, grinning at the cell's other occupant upside down, "But his FACE though, you should see it, it's ghastly and fascinating at the same time! I had my guesses some time ago about what he'd done and how he'd seemingly been smacked right in the face with a killing curse and survived, but I can't ask him about that because I'm sure he thinks it's a secret despite knowing what my job is and where my expertise lies."

He reached back--or down, depending on one's perspective and started removing Merlin knew how many hairpins from his hair, with the bits that slowly came undone ending up pooling on the floor as he still hadn't sat back up. "Anyway, I don't know how many he'd made or has left but whatever he used to get himself a body again must've been about the size of one of these," one hairpin was flicked across the room at Grindelwald, "because he looks barely human. He's just sort of human-ish shaped and speaks at least one human language."

"Anyway," a laugh, entirely inappropriate given the topic, "apart from the tightly stretched, nearly see-through, damp and smooth looking skin, he's got these bright red eyes with cat pupil slits and that might be unsettling on its own but I keep the lights low in the Archives so they can't stay little slits if he wants to see, and they do the same thing as cat eyes! They go ROUND! But, still, I don't mean red eyes in the sense that he's not had any sleep in a few weeks, they're just bright, almost glowing red. Black pupils, everything else red. I've heard of that happening--well, read about it, I've only ever known people who've knocked themselves into two pieces, never more than that, and they just sort of get that 'I'm not high, what are you talking about?' sort of eye redness that's easy to hide."

"Then he's got this nose that's, I mean, it's there, he's got holes in his face for breathing and all, but the area is flat and just has slits, like you'd expect to find on a Muggle burn victim or something. He's got to have lips of some sort, maybe just very small ones, but whatever they are they don't cover even a third of his teeth, which are sharp, if you were at all curious. Like one of those awful looking things dredged up from the ocean floor. He might also have a forked tongue; human looking otherwise, just split, but I'm not sure, I figured staring at his mouth for too long would give the wrong impression."

Calleo shifted again, but it was only to roll a bit so he was laying on his stomach with his head turned toward Grindelwald, "But the part that would've likely got me killed if I weren't so good at knowing how to NOT react to things with anything but Basic Ministry Neutrality was his voice. Part of it's the nose, I think, then the weird mouth--at least he doesn't also lisp--and maybe he's got some completely fucked up internal throat structure, but his VOICE! I can't--"

This time he had to pause to collect himself after a not insignificant amount of near giggling, "It's so high pitched and nasally! And that's his normal speaking voice!" Of course, Calleo simply had to pinch his own nose shut and raise his voice a couple of octaves, "Can you just imagine how much it goes up if he gets his wand in a knot over something? Because," mercifully, he didn't keep the imitation of Voldemort's voice going for more than a few words, "most peoples' voices go up a bit if they're angry or really excited about something and imagine what I just did there, only even higher pitched in that sort of situation."

"I would love to study him as a specimen, as I've never met anyone who's dragged themselves back with only a sliver of a soul but that's another thing where I think it might give off the wrong impression; I'd hate for him to think I'm interested in him rather than interested in him."

Evidently, laying (or sitting) still wasn't a thing Calleo was willing to do just yet, and he was now on his back, gathering his hair around to one side of him to start braiding it. "The thing is, I know who he is--or was. Albus ( @everyheartbesure ) kept bouncing back and forth between calling him Voldemort and Tom back when we first talked about it in 1981 and I remembered a student with the same name that he'd mentioned to me a few times, who was also the same person that worked at Borgin & Burke's for a few years. I only remember him because he wasn't a Borgin or a Burke and, by default, significantly more pleasant to deal with. Well-spoken, intelligent, seemingly well educated on everything in the shop, decent looking; dark eyes, dark hair, not translucent, spoke a little strangely now and again but who doesn't if they're working with the Dark Arts?"

"Knowing that in hindsight made it a little more clear as to how he was able to charm his way into a following; I do recall him being very polite and charming and coupling that with the way he looked, it likely wasn't very difficult to convince nearly anyone to go along with whatever he was telling them."

"He's going to have to really ramp up the charm to compensate for the lack of looks, I can tell you that much, unless he's planning to drop the 'charm' aspect altogether and go with, 'You can do what I say or I'll make you sit across from me while I try and make human facial expressions while looking like this.'"

"Shame, really." Calleo finished with the braid and curled up on his side, still facing Grindelwald; it would be rude to face the wall, after all, since that wasn't who he was talking to. "Interesting, but still a pity he ended up like that. On the plus side, he seems to want to try and run the Ministry so that's going to guarantee he ends up having everything pulled in so many ridiculous directions at once that he'll likely be in and out within five or so years maximum!"

"Anyone who decides they want to try and run the Ministry deserves what they get. I'm not sure he has the ability to tolerate the level of nonsense you have to be able to tolerate to even work there long term, let alone try and control it."

[benisasoftboi]

Unorganised thoughts on Silver Snow:

When I finished Golden Deer, I said that it had felt like a more traditional Fire Emblem story than Blue Lions. Silver Snow is that but even more so (though GD is still the most trad-FE cast, IMO)

Having already played those two routes, it felt very much like a whirlwind tour of them both, plus another battle thrown in at the end - a battle that probably should have been harder, but I (completely accidentally) built the bulkiest Byleth imaginable, especially resistance wise, plus high magic - and so, by pairing high defensive stats with Nosferatu, I tanked every attack that came my way 

Gaming, for me, is just doing whatever the hell I feel like, stumbling into good results, and then pretending that I did it on purpose

I spent the whole battle with the Dragon Tales theme song stuck in my head. Kind of killed the mood

I really enjoyed that after wrapping up both the Edelgard and TWSITD plots, they basically Persona 4 you by trying to convince you that the whole game’s done now and all that’s left is to chat with everyone - though unlike in P4, there’s very obviously something left to do because they give you a whole month of prep time, rather than just one day

I felt the same way about this on Golden Deer - none of the characters are appropriately shocked by Rhea’s highly questionable actions 

Also - she says she’s going to explain the whole truth! And she doesn’t! Only the Byleth creation stuff! The other revelations from Golden Deer are missing! Rhea! Why! Are! You! Like! This!

This is actually a problem I have with this game as a whole - they want to keep certain lore and secrets exclusive to certain routes, but it results in every story feeling in some way incomplete. Like, Fates gets a lot of crap, but at least you did get a full story from your half (third? never played Revelation) a game for the price of a whole one. Blue Lions gets the worst of it, I think 

Plus, when you know some of said secrets, it makes characters who refuse to share them in other routes seem weirdly (and sometimes, contrivedly) cagey about things they really do not need to be cagey about. See: Claude refusing to tell Dimitri and Byleth in Azure Moon that he wants to End Racism, and instead vagueing about ‘achieving his dream’. This is not Edelgard wanting to conquer Fodlan and dismantle the entire social structure, Claude, your ideals really are not so controversial that you need to be this coy. Dimitri and I are cool, we getcha 

My one sentence review of the whole game is basically: Great characters, great world building, great gameplay - but really, really frustrating plot structure

I’m also really upset that Seteth does not have a dragon form

Speaking of Seteth, I married him this time around. I mostly decided to do it for laughs, but while Byleth/Dedue is still my number one Byleth pairing, I came to really, genuinely like them together. Seteth is one of my favs, now more than ever

It helps that romancing Seteth feels a lot less... creepy than romancing most of the students. I like Linhardt, but romancing him felt very weird to me because I couldn’t get over Byleth having first known him as a 16 year old under their care. Dedue, for the record, doesn’t elicit this response  because he doesn’t really feel as much like a student to me? Role-wise he feels a lot closer to the knights, and it’s just that he's been enrolled as a student for convenience’s sake, which makes him and Byleth feel more equal than they do with most of the other kids. Helps that he’s also on the older end

Anyway, Seteth and Byleth would be the nerdiest couple ever, is the impression I got from their ending. The confession scene made me laugh in how ‘oh we’ve got a lot of work to do - btw wanna get married? - sweet, now let’s get back to work’ it was. Mark Whitten is a gem

It’s also the the first time I felt like the game was actually shipping me with a main lord (Seteth taking that role in the absence of the box lords on this route). Haven’t done Crimson Flower yet, so no opinion on the Edelgard/Byleth relationship yet, but regarding Claude and Dimitri my (pretty damn controversial, possibly a bad idea to put out there) opinions on them with Byleth are that

Claude and Byleth are platonic bros, regardless of Byleth’s gender. I just don’t get any feeling of romance from their relationship at all, and so pairing them off feels weird (to me, personally - I don’t hate the ship or anything, though)

Meanwhile Dimitri 100% had a crush on his teacher at school, but after more than five years of enduring trauma after trauma, and then half a year of beginning to heal (whilst fighting a war culminating in the execution of his step-sister), Dimitri is nowhere near ready for a romantic relationship. And when he is, I wouldn’t want him with any of the main cast, Dimitri x Village Girl OTP. I guess if it has to be anyone, I’d be okay with Mercedes, maybe Marianne - hell, maybe even Claude - but really, I just want him to get a fresh start. I think that’s the healthiest option for him, in the end

I do think it’s a pairing that could work in an AU where Dimitri doesn’t have any of the experiences he has in canon, though 

And again, this is just my personal reading

I’ll also admit that I may be influenced by the fact that his two most popular pairings are with Byleth and Dedue, who I greatly prefer with each other. Mostly because I love Dedue with all my soul and his ending with Byleth is by far his happiest, in my eyes at least. It’s the only one where he puts some distance between himself and Dimitri and evens out the power balance in their relationship, which makes me happy because oh boy, the Dimitri/Dedue relationship is super interesting and compelling, but also (again, by my reading) all kinds of unhealthy as it’s presented for most of the game - power balance issues like I say, the fact that they tend to indulge, even encourage, each other’s worst instincts and behaviours, mutual guilt complexes - like I say, it’s fascinating, but damn screwed up. IMO, they’re one of the best examples I’ve seen of how unhealthy relationships aren’t always the result of one bad person, and how two good people can end up being very bad for each other

Though it is, again, a pairing I can see working (and actually being incredibly cute) in an AU where they’ve lived less horrible lives

And it’s not like I don’t want them to be friends, I just want them to also develop healthier boundaries and equal levels of respect

oh my god none of this has anything to do with silver snow what am I doing

But hey, speaking of Dimitri - I flip flopped on whether I thought his death was handled better or worse here than Golden Deer. It was given, I felt, more appropriate gravitas, but again suffered from ‘Dimitri’s dead! No, Dimitri’s alive! Oh wait, now he’s dead again’ in like, three successive scenes. And then you see his... ghost? I guess?

Dimitri really seems to get the short end of the stick on routes outside his own. Claude’s non-Deer roles were, in both cases I’ve played, much stronger and more fitting, and Edelgard is Edelgard

Maybe he’ll be good in Crimson Flower. Please. I miss Dimitri mattering. He’s probably my favourite of the three

There’s a point - obviously I don’t fully know Edelgard yet, but from what I got from the White Clouds section, above anything else she strikes me as an incredibly realistic depiction of a slightly edgy, extremely idealistic, but also highly naive and short-sighted teenager

Her whole goal, it seems, is meritocracy. She hates the crest system and the nobility, and she wants to create a system of equal opportunity. I can get behind that, but I really hope she’s prepared to accept the fact that true equal opportunity is basically impossible without recreating The Giver, as inequality is always more complex than one single factor being to blame for everything. Has Edelgard considered other limitations that make true meritocracy difficult to achieve? Has she been working on, say, a comprehensive benefits system? Or is she more of a libertarian type, and so primarily all about negative freedom and removing direct oppression? I hope Crimson Flower goes into detail on this, I’d be genuinely interested to know

I also find it interesting that she gets very angry about the fact that people hurt her and her family as a means to their own ends, so she decides that her own ends are to eliminate the system that lead to that happening - and she doesn’t care who she has to hurt in the process

This isn’t a CinemaSins *ding* plot hole observation, I genuinely think it’s interesting, and not actually that unrealistic

I also suppose her goal is no less naive than End All Racism By Being Nice To People, but Claude isn’t killing and persecuting people in attempt to achieve that, so it invites less scrutiny

I do wonder if I would have felt more strongly positively about her if she’d been my first playthrough. I do believe she’s a person that sincerely means well, and she’s certainly sympathetic, but - hmm. I’ll make my mind up when I finish CF

Anyway, paired endings. A few that I got include Raphael and Bernadetta (by far my favourite Bernie ending so far, seriously, what is that Caspar ending), Shamir and Leonie, which was cute and goofy (as Leonie’s endings tend to be, I notice, I do like that girl), Felix and Dorothea (not my favourite for either, but cute), Sylvain and Mercedes (the same but even cuter), Cyril and Petra (which felt wrong, partly because I love Cysithea a hell of a lot, and also because despite knowing there’s only about a year between them, Petra looks so much older pre-time skip), Ferdie and Marianne (super wholesome and sweet), and Linhardt and Caspar (my boyyyyssss that I refuse to ever separate again)

Not sure what I’m going to aim for on CF aside from keeping those boys together and also Ferdie/Hubert, as I’ve Heard Things

Flayn and Manuela have an A support so I figured they had a paired ending and it turns out they do not, which means Manuela was alone forever and Flayn ran away because apparently she hated having Byleth for a step mother I guess, rude

My Byleth (Myleth?) was prepared to be the best step mother in the history of the world, so offended

I realised ‘Javelins of Light’ is one of my absolute favourite tracks in the whole game. Mostly because it sounds like something out of Danganronpa, which made me nostalgic

I also like ‘Guardian of Starlight’ for somehow managing to sound like a Danganronpa/PMD: Explorers crossover track

I love how out of nowhere the Immaculate One fight is. It really does just feel like they needed something to distinguish the route from Verdant Wind outside of Claude not being around, so they just had a map that was less cool in every way except for the dragon

Is there an explanation for why Nemesis doesn’t show up on this route?

Also - I didn’t mention this in Golden Deer thoughts but I also found that final battle way, way easier than it was probably meant to be because I’d made everyone into a flier and so the floor damage hazard was meaningless

Which I totally did on purpose and not so I could make a stupid joke post about my all-wyvern team 

Anyway, in conclusion, Silver Snow was a good route, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would (I’d kind of thought it was just going to be GD without Claude, which isn’t... totally wrong, but it’s got some other stuff going on too), I liked Seteth getting to have a bigger role, I thought it had the best final boss (if not the best final boss map), and I liked that I got some more Dragon Lore (never a bad thing)

please don’t yell at me for my controversial shipping opinions 

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #253

hope everyone is staying safe through this quarantine. wash your hands.

Which band do you have more music of than anyone else on your computer? Ozzy. Who’s your favorite philosopher? *shrugs* I don't know any's ideals well. How old were you when you learned how to read? I'm not sure, but I know I was exceptionally young. What’s the coolest Halloween costume you’ve ever worn? I don't think I've ever worn something rather cool. Who’s your favorite painter/artist? If we're talking about well-known, "popular" artists, I'm not sure. Maybe DaVinci. What’s your favorite song lyric- ever? ARE YOU??????????? FOR REAL?????????? Holy FUCK I get goosebumps from lyrics SO easily, this is like impossible. Probably an Otep lyric, though. I really don't like her personally, but goddamn can she write. What’s your dream tattoo if you don’t have it already? I've linked it before, so I'll just remind it's "Denialism" by deviantART's NukeRooster on my entire, upper left arm. I've already gotten her permission (I don't like just... stealing artwork to put on my body), now just comes the day I can pay for it by a top-tier pro. What’s the coolest screen name you’ve ever had? I don't think any have been necessarily "cool." Who do you think was the most badass serial killer? (Real life.) I'm not well-versed in serial killers honestly, but I can say Charles Manson was a C A S E. I think we can all admit he was... interesting. Just the epitome of weird. Most badass fictional serial killer? ig Jason; again, I don't know a lot off the top of my head, but I like him. How many bank accounts do you have? I don't have one. Have you ever been falsely accused of starting drama? Yep. Have you ever found a song that describes your whole life? Parts of it, sure. What kind of car do you drive? I don't drive a car, but Mom's is a... Honda? Kia? Idk. I'm bad with car brands. What kind of car would you like to have? Average size, pretty simple. Burnt orange or red. I know I want one of those screens you look into to see what's behind you when backing up. Have you ever been to Dairy Queen? If so, what’s your favorite thing to eat from there? mmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. So unhealthy, but I will destroy and Oreo Cupfection. Try. That. Stuff. Their milkshakes are also great. Which website do you email from? Outlook. Do you enjoy receiving souvenirs? Sure, it's nice. Have you ever had the flu? No. What about strep throat? Maybe once? Do you normally have a lot of homework, if you’re still in school? Kinda, yeah. Did you ever enjoy gym class? Fuck no. Even when I was healthy. What is your biggest insecurity? My body. Have you ever painted a room alone? No. How many huge secrets do you have? Huge? Uhhh, none, I think. Have you ever painted something and been impressed by it? Yes. Would you rather go out to eat or stay in? I prefer eating out because yummy food, but considering I'm working on losing weight, I avoid it. Do you have any younger siblings? One. Have you ever considered bleaching your hair? To the point of being snow white. Considering my hair is super healthy and bleaching so heavily would destroy it, I'll be avoiding that. I DO want to bleach my hair to do other colors, though. Brown hair sucks. Do you drink vitamin water? No. Are there any old movies you absolutely love? Oh sure, a good handful. The Outsiders probably tops it. Have you ever had a Big Mac before? No, doesn't appeal to me. I don't like veggies on my burgers... despite eating veggie burgers when I was vegetarian lmao. Do you think you attract the opposite sex at a reasonable rate? I doubt that. Have you ever filed a lawsuit on someone? No. Do you enjoy reading often? I'm finally back into it!! Lately all I've been wanting to do is READ READ READ. Have you ever had a deadly illness? Well, I consider depression (among other mental illnesses) to be very deadly, but on a literal level, no. I mean I have dormant MRSA, which can kill if active, but it never has been. Most people carry that dormantly anyway, if I remember correctly. Ever had food-poisoning before? No, thankfully. Where did you last eat dinner at? Mom bought Nicole and me Sonic. Have you ever had someone pick you up off the ground & carried you? When I fainted, yes. Are you a flirty person? Not really. A name you hate with a passion? Edward, to name one. Erwin. A lot of old names. What is your favorite type of water (ex. arrowhead)? Essentia mmmmmmmmmmmmm,, Have you ever been to Warped Tour? I WISH. :( Do you know anyone who wears fur? I fucking hope not, because I wouldn't associate with them anymore. When was the last time you were on myspace.com? Damn yo, millennia ago. How often do you cuss? Too much. I mean, I don't even believe "profanity" is a thing by our definition of "that word is magically bad," but still, it's like when people say "like" too much. Have you ever cussed out a teacher? No. What did you think of the movie Juno? I never watched it. How often do you eat meat? Sigh, more than I wish. What grade did you meet your best friend in? We didn't meet in school. Last time you cleaned your room? Couple days back. I'm honestly bad at dusting regularly in here, but that's gotta change with Mom having chemo now. Her immune system will be compromised so this house needs to be as pristine as it can. When you were little, would you have rather watched Cartoon Network or Disney Channel? Disney Channel. We weren't really Cartoon Network kids, actually. It was Disney or Nickelodeon. Do you shave your arms? No. Are you a big fan of the Harry Potter series? Never read a book, never watched any movies; the first one was playing in my presence once, but I paid no attention. How often would say you pulled all-nighters, if you ever do? Shit man, never, nowadays. I don't think I've had one for two years now. My youth is escaping. Has a friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend ever had a problem with you for any reason? I don't think so. How many times a day do you find yourself cracking your joints, if at all? Maybe not even once a day. Only my big toes and upper back can pop. Is there a particular sport you follow on a regular basis? No. Are you 100% over the last person you kissed? No. Do you put ketchup on top of your french fries or on the side? On the side. Who was the last person you talked to in person? Mom. Do you have a dog? Not anymore, thank fuck. Do you like orange juice? Yes. Are you one of those people who obsesses over Hollister? I never liked it. They're not inclusive at all towards fucking NORMAL bodies, nevermind plus size. Apparently even their rules on looks for workers are absolutely horrible. Ashley liked them though, so sometimes I just had to go in with her. If money was no object, would you change your wardrobe? My goth could finally  E S C A P E. How do you/did you get to school? My mom drives me. Have you ever had to have a pet put down? Four times that I remember off the top of my head. What candy cane flavor is your favorite? MMMMMMMMMM get the pink Starburst kind. Do you get angry when fast food restaurants mess up your order? It's annoying, yes. Angering when you've already driven away, especially when you really wanted something. What was your favorite elective class in high school? Art. Did you ever wish you could be homeschooled? Yes. I was homebound for a little while. Have you ever had a dream so realistic you could’ve sworn it happened? Yes. Do you have any mental disorders? I'm a walking mental disorder, lmao. Y'all know the biggies, and now ADD and especially DPD (dependent personality disorder) are being considered. Do you feel comfortable talking about these disorders, if you have them? Yeah, I really don't care. Where did you go on your last field trip? I want to say to a band competition in high school. Are you able to agree to disagree? Or do you have to have the last word? Yeah, pretty easily. Is there a cover song you like better than the original version? A whole lot, actually. Do you have a hard time talking about sex with the opposite gender? I have a hard time with anyone. Have you ever had major surgery? Major, no. Is there any food you don’t like that a lot of others do? Here in the South, everyone is most surprised when they hear I hate fried chicken. What was the last thing you bragged about? Hm. I'm not sure, actually. I don't make a habit out of doing that. Can you do a backflip? Hell no. Are you listening to anything right now? I have a video up of relaxing tracks from Silent Hill 2 + 3. Great shit. Has anyone ever tried to tell you you were adopted? No. How many doors are in the room you’re in? Two, but one's just the closet door. Have you ever been engaged and broke it off? No. Has anyone ever drawn a picture of you? Yes. Do any of your friends have children? Yep. Is there anything you’re craving right now? Not really. Who got married at the last wedding you attended? A family friend. It was the second wedding I shot. Is happiness something to be achieved and sought after or is it something to be retained and held onto always, no matter what happens? The former. You can't just stay happy when, like, your grandma dies. What gives you a peaceful feeling? Nature. Hearing water and birdsong, specifically. Are you a Toys-R-Us kid? Hell yeah I was. My sisters and I would go crazy if we had the chance to go there. We were SOOOO upset when it closed down. If you believe in Heaven, are there separate heavens for different animals (kittie heaven. dog heaven, bird heaven, etc)? I don't know if I believe in a "heaven," but some sort of peace after death, yes. I believe it's one, unified "heaven." When you sleep next to someone do they fall asleep first usually or do you? They always do considering it takes me ten years to fall asleep. If they do, do you watch them sleep? I have. Not in a creepy way, but rather a "wow I love this person" sorta way. What is your usual breakfast? Usually apple and cinnamon oatmeal What do your salt and pepper shakers look like? They're nothing special. The salt is a blue ceramic, and the pepper one is just what you get from the store. Have you ever had your car towed? I've never had my own car. What band or singer do you believe started rock and roll? I'm pretty sure Elvis is given that credit. Whose voice irritates you like fingernails on a blackboard? The female singer of Mother Mother's voice. Mom and I can't stand her singing. All I songs we enjoy feature almost solely the main singer. I can *tolerate* it in some songs, but. What do you contribute to society? Ha. Do you take naps? Almost daily. Do you have any cavities? Not to my knowledge. Do you believe that there has been a man on the moon? Yes, though I do believe the "first" landing was faked in competition with Russia. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm so serious, look into the theory - there's incredible evidence. Would you ever go into a sex shop? I'd be too self-conscious to. I'd just order online. Let’s just say your school team is on a winning streak. One of the cheerleaders cheers both for your team and the other team during games. Does it make you angry? I don't care enough about sports to even consider how I'd feel. Do you prefer carnivals, festivals, circuses, parades or faires? To be real, I only know the difference between parades and circuses. What even distinguishes the other three from each other. Do you believe in psychic ability or is it a sham? I lean towards no. What is your favorite classic rock song? You CANNOT ask me this question. Classic rock is some of the best music there is.

[signify-nothing]

Ranking All 61 Movies I’ve Watched So Far This Year From Worst to Best

So this would work better as a countdown but I’m too lazy so 1 is the worst and 61 is the best.

1.       Tomorrow is Forever

It is a testament to my love for my grandmother that I even finished this godawful excuse of a movie.

2.       Flower

If there’s one thing I love it’s stories about teenage girls who are characterized by their quirky desire to give blow jobs to gross men for fun... said no one ever.

3.       Savage Grace

Even Hugh Dancy couldn’t save this dry, stale train wreck of unsexiness.

4.       Hellraiser

There’s a thin line between classic and stale and this movie treads right over it.

5.       The Devil’s Candy

Forgettable.

6.       Night of the Living Dead (Remake)

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

7.       Eighth Grade

I wanted to love this movie but it seemed too devoted to being realistic to actually tell a satisfying story.

8.       American Psycho

One of those movies you feel like you’ve already seen even if you haven’t.

9.       Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I wanted to like it. I really did. But it had all the charm of a wet sweaty sock.

10.   Thelma

Great premise but it just felt kind of mediocre in execution. Maybe I was just too tired when I watched it.

11.   Lady Bird

I HATED THIS MOVIE. It was so bad that I honestly can’t even rate it as the worst because it was so actively terrible I almost enjoyed it in retrospect. I love Greta but honestly it was such a mediocre piece of basic white girl shit I can’t even review it properly.

12.   To Have or To Have Not

It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t particularly good.

13.   Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman

I wanted to love it. Who wouldn’t? But it was just weird and unsexy and creepy.

14.   The Big Sick

Actively lacked charm.

15.   Dracula (the one with Winona)

I mean, it was creative enough to almost save itself from its own stale take on the novel.

16.   White Zombie

The film itself wasn’t interesting but I watched it for a class and the criticism was really eye-opening.

17.   The Unknown

Joan Crawford plays this woman who falls in love with a supposedly armless Lon Chaney in a sideshow because he can’t touch her with his dirty hands, not knowing that he’s lying about being armless to hide from the law. The novelty of the plot alone makes it worth a shot.

18.   Possessed

Joan Crawford plays a crazy woman. Somehow this is surprising to no one.

19.   Saw

It just felt dirty and not in a fun way.

20.   Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Another movie I watched with my grandmother. I’d seen it before which made it lose its bite.

21.   Stepford Wives

I found the book more enjoyable.

22.   A Quiet Place

There’s something cringe-y and self-indulgent about watching John Krasinski direct himself as the self-sacrificing macho-male hero in a movie he literally starts in with his wife. Pass.

23.   Babysitter

I have a crush on Samara Weaving, ok?

24.   The First Time

I honestly don’t even know why I watched this movie but it filled a teen comedy shaped whole in my watch list so I’m not about to complain.

25.   Rosemary’s Baby

I liked it more than I thought I would.

26.   Ingrid Goes West

I thought it would rank higher honestly.

27.   Apostasy

Jesus. This is a tough, ugly movie on every level, and all its characters feel totally un-redeemable. With that being said, it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of Jehovah’s Witness life.

28.   Disobedience

Sexy light.

29.   Killing of a Sacred Deer

I just didn’t feel it the way I felt The Lobster.

30.   Equals

It had Kristen Stewart, ok??

31.   Princess Cyd

Cute.

32.   The Importance of Being Earnest

Cute again.

33.   Hour of the Wolf

A bit disturbing but well done, I think? I don’t know, I was tired as hell when I watched this.

34.   Gaslight

Wasn’t as great the second time around but still ok.

35.   The Exorcist

Much better than I thought it would be.

35.5 A Star Is Born

Good music but fucked up plot.

36.   Into the Wild

Note to self: this is not a good movie to watch during your first nine-to-five job.

37.   Cleo from 5 to 7

The aesthetic is strong with this one.

38.   Phantom of the Opera

Rewatched it for the first time in ten years. Realized the phantom was a fucking creep.

39.   The Greatest Showman

I liked it so much more than I thought I would?

40.   Mamma Mia 2

Judge me all you want. I watched this movie with my mother and grandmother in the theater at the end of summer. It was a good memory.

41.   Crazy Rich Asians

I just liked it.

42.   Obvious Child

Similar to The Big Sick but just felt like a few steps up.

43.   Ritual

Fun and very creepy.

44.   Assassination Nation

I honestly don’t even know what the fuck to mentally do with this movie. It defies categorization and is undeniably bad but in a can’t-look-away-from-the-car-crash way you have to almost admire.

45.   What. Bo Burnham

I love Bo.

46.   Kid Gorgeous John Mulaney

I also love Mulaney.

47.   La Pianist

I like sadomasochism occasionally in my feature films, ok?

47.5 (Sorry, I forgot this one in the original count) The Miseducation of Cameron Post

I was admittedly in an altered state watching this. If I wasn’t, it might’ve ranked higher.

48.   Hereditary

It made it this far on the strength of a single scene which was my favorite of the year. The movie as a whole wasn’t the strongest, though.

49.   The Purge

Enjoyable horror.

50.   Nanette – Hannah Gadsby

I’m a simple girl. I like long walks on the beach, pina coladas, and comedy that makes me ugly cry.

51.   Frances Ha

I actually watched it twice this year and loved it both times. Greta is perfect.

52.   Thoroughbreds

Stylish and just ultimately well done and enjoyable. Flirts with Sapphic content which is an added bonus.

53.   The Shape of Water

I have a crush on this movie. It’s basically like that kid in class who is a little bizarre and probably not that intelligent but attractive enough to make up for that deficit.

54.   Phone Call From a Stranger

I fucking loved this little old black and white soap opera.

55.   God’s Own Country

Almost Brokeback.

56.   Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party

I’m a sucker for gay Christians and uncomfortable comedy.

57.   Creep 2

SO. MUCH. FUN. It’s like gazing through the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist times 100.

58.   Cam

Madeline Brewer invented acting in this movie.

59.   Creep

This movie restored my faith in horror.

60.   Make Happy - Bo Burnham

This “comedy” show gave me an existential fucking crisis and ruined my life forever. 10/10 would recommend.

61.   Call Me By Your Name

This movie melted my ice-queen heart and reminded me what it once felt like to fall in love. I can’t even stand how much I love love love everything about it.

[destiny-smasher]

So! Episode 2 of Before the Storm! It was very good! If you haven't read my thoughts on Episode 1, here those are.

If you want an audio discussion about either episode, I've recorded podcasts with my girlfriend, @mollifiable, as well as musicians Riley Hawke and Koethe. Here’s what we discussed on Ep1, and here’s the podcast on Ep2. BEAR IN MIND I will be discussing a number of things from EPISODE 2, so you probably shouldn’t read this if you haven’t experienced it yet. There are some inherent problems I still have with this projects conception (which I got into in that first post back in September), but Epsiode 2 has gone a long way toward giving me faith in why this story is being made. Or, at the least, that it's being made with a lot of thought and care. I've played a LOT of story-focused, episode games, and honestly, I think this episode is one of the best I've ever experienced, overall. I still struggle with some elements of the story (ex. I just don't like Rachel as much as I think I'm 'meant to,' BUT I think that ties into what the overall story may be about), and I still feel frustrated that your team is being limited by the nature of the setup (why is this all happening over three days when it could’ve been over three years, for example), but Episode 2 just has so much good going for it and I felt like it really showed what can be done with a project like this. Like last time, I want to address this to Madeleine, Felice, and the entire team at Deck Nine directly – and point out how much it means to us that you guys actually reach back and communicate with us, even encouraging criticism. I'm proud of what your team has been able to accomplish with this episode and think it stands out in the genre in a lot of ways.

Let’s get to it.

That being said, I do want to offer my criticisms, so let's just get those out of the way first. First off, Samuel – yeesh. Sorry, I just really didn't like the scene with Samuel. Part of it is his new voice actor just sounding more...creepy? I guess I'd say? But also, his manner of speech and the things he said felt out of place. Not just for his character but with the story in general. In LiS1, Samuel comes across as mentally different than those around him, almost like a sort of sage in a way, engaging with the world in a different way than those around him (there's a similar character in Supergiant's brilliant Pyre who comes to mind). But here, Samuel felt like a cross between a psychiatrist and a guy taking too many drugs? That's perhaps harsh, but especially given that his character model/rigging didn't seem to carry over properly, I was just rubbed the wrong way by his presence in this episode in a way that hasn't happened with any other recurring characters. I appreciate the intent I picked up from his scene – to remind us that there's more going on than just what we can see on the surface – but I felt like it missed the mark of who Samuel was as a character without really establishing why he would be different in this way three years in the past. On a related subject – the adult characters in this episode, or at least some of them, felt weird. MOST of them felt more like caricatures than actual characters. Wells felt fine, and I actually kind of PREFER this take on Wells because he feels LESS like a caricature and more like an actual principle. I can even kind of see a headcanon link between this interpretation of him and the version of him three years having just kind of shed away his decorum from the stress of managing a school undergoing so many changes and financial problems. I really felt for Joyce, and I felt that David's character was finally presented in a way that lacked the cliché “military” skew that LiS1 forced too hard while simultaneously giving the audience an understanding of precisely why his presence in the household would push Chloe so far away (though I still find much of the Joyce/David stuff odd here because we already know where this all leads and nothing here really seems to build anything new from that). Characters like Rachel's dad, the theater teacher, Samuel, Skip, Damon, and Sean Prescott all felt...a bit too cartoony in ways. Damon maybe least of all due to the intensity of that scene and the nice subtext we can pick up (after all, money is a realistic and pragmatic motive to drive one to aggression) In general, the adults felt flatter and more cartoony than I think works for this setting. Not to say they should NEVER be funny or anything, just that I was repeatedly taken out of the story by how jarringly one-dimensional a line was, or how flat a voice delivery was, etc. Fortunately, this problem doesn't really carry over to the teens, who are, of course, the focus of the narrative. I also noticed more moments in this episode where characters' eyes were uncanny, staring straight ahead in unnatural ways – or mouth movements being weird (Samuel being the biggest example, to the point that it jarred me out of the story and distracted from his dialogue). Minor complaint, all things considered, but worth pointing out as I didn't really notice this happen in episode 1, which makes me worry that maybe things got rushed a bit too much? (you guys did release this episode weeks earlier than expected) On the upside, though, this problem did NOT exist when it mattered the most, so at least that detail was put into the important moments. All right, last nitpick – I found the whole “drugging” thing re: the pre-play scene to be in bad taste. On the one hand, I LIKE the premise, and how it really does a fascinating thing with developing/contrasting/comparing Rachel and Victoria (in a way that requires knowledge of alternate events, something only a video game could do), but on the other hand...ya'll made drugging teen girls in an active, malicious way this...joke. While I do love that BtS has more comedy in its tone, I found turning Victoria's drug-induced passing out into a JOKE to be kind of offensive, especially given that she can get drugged and murdered in LiS1 (and Rachel AND Chloe both get drugged and/or murdered?), and just...yea. All in all, I think the concept of this scene works, it's the execution that makes it feel insensitive and kind of worrying. (ex. Victoria passes out and fucking NO ONE calls a doctor or tries to help her, the camera fucking PANS on her unconscious body like it's this joke and the way the whole thing is framed just invites laughter on something that kinda sorta shouldn't be funny given the full context of this story) Anyway, it's kind of like the wine scene in the first episode, but worse in terms of implications, I guess? I'm not THAT torn up over it since it's brief, and everyone's OK in the end, I presume, but it just feels a bit tone deaf when SO MUCH of this episode is SO GOOD. It really took me out of the experience – but the layered nature of it (how Rachel gets her way no matter what, how Rachel AND Victoria are both willing to drug each other, how Vic can be manipulated while Rachel can't) makes it really intriguing. I think the concept here was intriguing, but the execution on stuff like this could be handled more thoughtfully. I could get into pacing issues, I suppose, but honestly, I've already critiqued enough, and I think this episode was really good, so I don't want to get too down on the details when I'm sure others will get into this topic. (like the canon inconsistencies, they’re there, but aren’t really detracting from the good stuff)

OK! With all of that out of the way, let me get into what I loved about this episode, which was most of it. Episode 1 was unclear and uncertain in what it was trying to convey, which makes more sense now that we have Episode 2, which dives right into what this story seems to be about – passion, and the good and bad that comes from it. Passion, to be clear, being different from love. Love is steady, consistent, like a stream of water, while passion is fast and bright and sudden, like fire. I could get into the elemental symbolism you could correlate between wind, water, fire and Chloe, Max, and Rachel, but I'm sure folks have done this already. I do think it's still worth pointing out just how great a job you've done so far using fire as a metaphor for Rachel and Chloe's relationship, both within the story presented here and overarching into LiS as a whole. You managed to work it into the actual plot, as well, in a way that doesn't feel forced or thoughtless – an entire episode later and there are still consequences from it. Having just experienced the CA wildfires a half hour away from my home, I can appreciate a certain level of fear and awe at how much can be affected by fire, even the air itself, and just how quickly it can spread and how much damage it can do in a short time. The fact that the title screen itself it an analogy about passion makes me super excited at the potential for episode 3. Absolutely love that the title screen doubles as atmosphere AND symbolism. Specifically, I have to call out the dream sequence here as being quite awesome. From the moment I saw the burning car with a shadowed figure, I already knew what the visual reveal at the end of the scene was going to be, and was still thoroughly satisfied. I absolutely love LOVE the metaphor William presents about comparing/contrasting light and dark in terms of how both can cause us to lose ourselves, lose our ways, and be blinded. The way this correlates to Chloe's loss of William, Max, and Rachel (darkness) to how she can be blinded by light (passion for Rachel, even excitement about Max's power later on) is all encapsulated in a single bit of dialogue that communicates such an underexplored theme in the medium, and one that makes telling this story from a teenage perspective suddenly feel 100% sensible instead of just a coincidence. Telling a story diving into the theme of passion just wouldn't work the same from a character too young or too old, because it's this part of the human condition that we experience passion the deepest and the hottest. Which brings us to the fantastic play aspect, which is one of my favorite moments in all of LiS at this point. The layers of meaning at work here were genius. First off, it's all a play – an act. And Chloe is trying to keep up, while Rachel is clearly experienced with this. Secondly, the connections between relationships in The Tempest to the protagonists is great use of intertextual storytelling. Thirdly, highlighting a Shakespearean play, which highlights passion from teenage youths, yet another layer. Fourth, they go off script, which itself has really interesting connotations in terms of this game itself existing in the first place as an “off script” piece of the story, as well as how the content of their moment carries an unrealistic, impractical hopefulness to it that is inspiring, but still an act in a play, involving magic and fantasy. Fifth, concluding the scene with the way the play ends adds this really awesome extra layer of meta expression – Rachel as a character gets to be expressed and represented in a way she originally was not, with the help of fans of the LiS developing this prequel, but also fans of LiS breathing life into Rachel before this prequel existed; PLUS the prequel itself is a performance that you, the development team, are putting on for us, the audience. There's just so much going on here, and the musical choices helped seal the moment's emotional impact. Even as myself, coming from the perspective of not trusting Rachel's judgment/actions, I felt as if I finally had a 'moment' where I truly understood why Chloe was so swiftly enamored with Rachel. It reminded me of moments I've experienced in my own past, though nothing as 'magical' as this. It also just highlighted how Rachel's character has power and influence over those around her despite being so young. All in all, bravo. This scene came together fantastically, and I think it's one of the most thoughtfully put together scripted scenes I've ever seen in a video game. This was the moment I fell in love with this story – not because of AmberPrice but because it was so well put together by everyone involved. I think this will probably go down as the highlight of this game when all is said and done. To back things up a bit, I did enjoy the premise of the junkyard stuff. I really liked giving Chloe's character a bit of breathing room on her own – the kinds of things she thinks to herself while exploring the environment showed a bit of Max's influence on her still being present even as she's trying to forget Max. I liked that we could pick different objects to help decorate/fix the van, as well, but the flow of the scene would work better if we could do it all in one trip rather than taking two trips – I found myself disoriented after placing the battery into the car, and by that point had lost track of where specific objects were, whereas it would've been more fitting to maybe have Chloe make note of the items first, or even gather them all up into a pile and let the player choose from there. I predicted and felt satisfied by how the truck was utilized as an analogy for Chloe as a person – broken, banged up, abandoned, lost, but if given enough attention and care, could be back up and running. The therapy session Rachel and Chloe have was also nice at building their relationship further.

Something that wasn't as apparent in episode 1 because it simply needed time to grow was the whole way that Rachel is presented as someone who is flawed. Because the story is from Chloe's perspective, there's maybe too many limits on how this can be developed, though we'll see how the finale handles things, but I really liked that all of the flaws we already know about her character from stuff in LiS1 felt contextualized in this episode. She can be manipulative, short-sighted, impulsive, and even self-absorbed, but it's not malicious or even intentional all of the time. Rachel herself is in a similar position as Chloe – they're teenagers – she is still figuring herself out, what she really wants, who she really wants to be, and how she can achieve those things. All of my doubts, concerns, and fears about this relationship between them all feel validated by their dynamics, by the theming and foreshadowing, and yet it simultaneously makes sense why and how they'd end up together – out of teenage passion, and a shared sense of longing to feel both needed by someone else and taken care of by someone else. The scene after the play, in the street, had a great sense of aesthetic to it, which felt like it was from a teen romance film from the 80's or something. The imagery of the scene highlights the nature of this whole story – a splash of light along a dark road that is Chloe's teenage years. The multiple ways this scene can play out depending on previous choices was neat, too. I was especially intrigued by the possibility of making the “Friendship” choice in Ep1, then asking for a kiss here in this scene – there's this amazing bit of animation in Rachel's face that really shows her thought processes clicking together in an ambiguous way that really fits her character. I'm also super curious as to what will come of the bracelet bit, since Rachel surprisingly gives it to Chloe if you ask for it, despite the fact that we know she ultimately gives it to Frank. There's multiple possibilities of what that could entail, and I'm really interested in seeing how that plays out. This actually reminds me of how much I liked the way decisions from episode 1 have branched out here. Rather than decisions having a single static meaning later on, you have aspects from Episode 1 lead to different branching possibilities of how scenes play out. The outcomes are usually the same, but still, it makes the story feel more dynamic, and I like how these aren't always super obvious. There's a lot of examples of this, from telling Rachel that Chloe feels romantically or not, to stealing the money, to what you do WITH the money, and some other smaller things, too. Great work with this stuff, it helps us see different angles to the characters when we have these options, and highlights what LiS was originally about re: characters – perspective is everything. And yet, Rachel seems almost immune to things in a sense, which is appropriate given how her character works and how she influences those around her. I liked the scene with Frank in the RV and the way it contrasts and compares his future self to his past self. Which reminds me, this episode had a bit more interesting 'character development through environment,' which was a highlight of LiS1 that felt missing from Ep1 of Before the Storm. Whether it was Frank's RV, Elliot's dorm room, the Amber household, or, most poignantly, Drew's dorm room, you guys did a great job letting us learn more about the characters through the environments. While you could argue that it doesn't quite match Chloe's character the way it does Max (and I'd argue that the whole nature of trying to socialize and make friends itself already is kind of against Chloe's character in Ep1), I think it works well enough and just makes sense from a game design standpoint. I liked that we got more opportunities for graffiti in ways that weren't just straight up wall graffiti (ex. Crossword, drawing on the newspaper photo). I glossed over this last time, but part of what I've been frustrated by with Before the Storm is the way Chloe at 16 years old...already feels like Chloe at 19, but slightly more awkward. Episode 2 helped resolve some of this by putting her outside of her comfort zone more and highlighting her vulnerability, cynicism, and uncertainty (whereas Chloe at 19 kind of doesn't give a shit and dives head first into everything and doesn't care what anyone thinks). I also really love the multiple ways you've referenced that Chloe was originally a “nerd” like Max, and has gradually been straying away from that – and yet, it's still part of who she is (and ends up showing itself later on in LiS1, like how she seems to know more about time travel theory than Warren does). In particular, I loved how she pulls up different characters' web search histories – something that doesn't specifically take much effort, but that most people wouldn't think to do. This in and of itself was a really clever way of adding more to character development for those involved. (“why won't puppy eat steak” is hilarious to me and I can't get over it for some reason) The entire scene with Mikey, Drew, and Damon was wonderful. I loved the multiple outcomes and how none of them are specifically good, and any of them can feel in character for Chloe. I think Damon's character feels a little one dimensional here, BUT the context makes sense – he wants his fucking money. He's collecting debts after suffering a huge monetary loss. Of course he's going to be single-minded. As a side note, I loved the small but significant bit re: Damon's e-mail to Frank. Props to whoever came up with that. What a brilliantly subtle way of telling us so much about Damon's true character and his relationship with Frank. Going back to the conflict at the dorm, I loved that you took a bully character who appeared simple and effortlessly fleshed him out enough to feel legitimately believable with real motives. I loved how I was able to figure out the passcode to his lock organically given everything I had seen, and how I then used that knowledge to express what I felt would be in his best interests in the conflict – even though, as my girlfriend pointed out, it might not have been the best long-term outcome. I wish we'd seen more of Mikey and Steph, but what was there was still good. Steph's brief convo with Chloe I saw coming in a good way, and I really liked how you presented it. I liked the bits we got with Samantha and Skip, as well, thought I'm wondering where you're going with Samantha and Nathan. I was actually really frustrated with the Backtalk sequence with Skip, but then, I think that was the whole point. Speaking of, I really didn't like Backtalk in Ep1, but it was overall much better here. In Ep1, Backtalk was like some weird 'Be an Asshole' thing, and it felt weird how the game inherently encouraged you to do this. In Ep2, there were multiple times where I felt unsure if Backtalk was 'the best' way to go, and even then, most of its uses felt much more organic. It wasn't just about being a jerk to make someone feel bad, there was often some organic purpose to it – talking Victoria out of being in the play in a way that made her feel like it was her own decision; trying to get info out of Frank; trying to get into a dorm you weren't supposed to be in; trying to stick up for Rachel in the face of discipline, or trying to help her confront her father. In every case, there was an interpersonal motivation – Chloe wasn't doing it for something she specifically wanted, or just to make someone feel bad, but to try and do something for someone else. Also, they felt more like arguments, or ways of manipulating someone, rather than straight up insults. In some ways, it reminded me of things in TellTale's The Walking Dead Season 2, using more manipulative dialogue to resolve a situation rather than just brute-forcing things. This also contributes toward the theme of 'influence' regarding Chloe being influenced by Rachel so quickly and easily that she's even picking up some of Rachel's tactics (which, one could argue, she uses later on when she's older). This being said, I'm hoping that in Episode 3 we're given a more high-stakes situation that can be resolved using those more manipulative mannerisms, which gives the Backtalk mechanic a “climax” of sorts.

I like the way that you've been able to build this sense of supernatural occurrences without actually showing anything supernatural. The All-Seeing-Eye, the recurring Raven imagery, the weird shit going on with Chloe and others seeming to be having mysterious, prophetic dreams (even Elliot and Frank seem to be having them), the way the ash fall at the end of the episode foils the snowfall at the end of Ep1 of Life is Strange. This builds to a fascinating moment at the end of the episode where, for the first time, perspective SHIFTS from Chloe to Rachel, only for a few seconds, but in a really neat way that leads you to FEEL like something supernatural is about to happen, only for it not to. In a way, this feels like what your overall story could be about in a sense, though it'd be downright odd at this point to have NO answers or resolution regarding what I described above. One of the original game's biggest flaws was how it drummed up mystery only to leave things unexplained or unresolved in ways that damaged the actual plot. Dream sequences don't necessarily do this, but with how much emphasis you've put on them and the Raven/Eye imagery, I feel like there must be a purpose you have here – especially if members of your staff are getting ravens tattooed on their bodies. Naturally, Rachel's mom seems tied to all of this, if not the origin point of it. And I can't help but wonder if we'll even get a perspective shift near the end of the story from Rachel's point of view, if only to help imply or insinuate some things that tie into unanswered elements of Max's story. Speaking of Max, I was much more happy with the 'letters' in this episode, as they spend very little time needlessly bashing a character who wasn't even present, and more time on Chloe quickly becoming obsessed with Rachel – which all makes sense with the arc you seem to be going for. I liked the extra allusions to Chloe's future with Max, such as the maze and William's remark about a “beauty” to come in the future. It's such a complicated thing to tackle – and trust me, I've spent two years and hundreds of thousands of words trying to tackle it myself with these same characters – but I finally have come to a place where I can appreciate the balance you've managed to find between supporting the good elements Chloe and Rachel had going for them, while also implying the bad elements and the reasons why Chloe would develop feelings for Max later on. On a personal level, I relate with Chloe a lot in regards to her relationships (I relate with Max in a lot of ways, too, but that's a separate matter). I have lived through both long term and short term experiences of passion, romantically and platonically. And I have been romantically involved with people who remind me of Rachel. And I think that's part of why I just...don't like her, personally. BUT I am at a place now, after this episode, where I like her as a CHARACTER, even if I don't like her as a fictional person. I never can fully let my guard down around her, but can totally understand why Chloe would (and did), and have been there. And now that I have the context of this episode, I can finally start to see what 'the point' of this story seems to be, which makes me very curious to see how it is resolved. Lastly, again, great job using mocap and facial animation to heighten realism for a lot of scenes. While I noticed more “flat” moments than before, it never detracted from the important moments having that level of detail to make them bring out an extra layer of inevitability. From Chloe knocking at a dartboard to finger-gun gestures, to subtle but complex expressions, just a lot of great expressive details going on here. On that note, I noticed a real improvement in Rhianna’s performance. She felt like she wasn’t trying to mimic Ashly Burch or Ellen Page and was instead just finding her own interpretation of the role, and it works MUCH better. In a way, I still feel a constant sense of ‘this isn’t exactly Chloe’ but not in a bad way, just a...different way. Instead of feeling distracted by her actress being different, I felt instead like I was being more absorbed into this alternate interpretation of the character. Both Hannah and Ashly needed some time to fill into their roles before ‘the good stuff’ really came out in their performances, so I’m really looking forward to what Rhianna might pull off in Episode 3, and what she can do in the future after this role, when she isn’t burdened by the complexities of this kind of situation. I could go on, but I've ranted stream-of-conscious style long enough. I still have some more broad strokes issues with this game’s narrative, but then again, I have issues with the original game’s, as well -- and this story isn’t done yet, so I want to wait until I have the full context before I comment on those broad-scope design elements. I hope at least some of what I've written here is helpful to your team, and that my critical comments highlight just how good a job you guys did with this second entry. Regardless of how I end up feeling about Episode 3 of Before the Storm, I am really happy for your team and what they've pulled off here, and am very supportive of what you seem to be trying to do, as delicate a balancing act as it surely is.

[cameoamalthea]

Why is NSFW 18 +

This post is focused on U.S. law, policy and culture. This post does not constitute legal advice. This blog does not offer legal advice. And a lot of this is my own personal opinion. 

Let’s get something straight, America was founded by puritans and if conservative lawmakers could outright ban porn, they would.

However, the 1st amendment gives U.S. citizen a right to free speech and freedom of speech and expression is another important American value.

The Supreme Court has ruled that laws cannot “reduce the adult population...to reading only what is fit for children.” (source). Because adults have a right to freedom of speech.

However, minors do not have the same rights as adults.  “The Government may, however, regulate the content of constitutionally protected speech in order to promote a compelling interest if it chooses the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest. We have recognized that there is a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors. This interest extends to shielding minors from the influence of literature that is not obscene by adult standards. Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 639 -640 (1968); New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 756 -757 (1982). (source).

That’s why the government can restrict what you’re allowed to look at until you turn 18. You just don’t have as many rights as adults. Your parents, and the government can decide what’s best for you.

Of course, the age of consent varies and is 16 in most states. Which begs the question if an individual can consent to sex then why aren’t minors allowed to view pornography?

Simply viewing a video of other people having sex carries none of these that having sex does, so if you can have sex, why can’t you watch porn?

(I suggest using the xkit read more on dash function or reading on mobile)

First, age of consent is different than age of majority. Until you’re 18 you aren’t legally an adult and you have less rights than an adult. The U.S. is one of the few countries that hasn’t ratified the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. Instead, the U.S. believes parents have a fundamental right to control how their children are raised and the Government can also have a say (such as mandating public Education until a certain age).The Government has an interest in controlling what minors are allowed to do, and in theory makes laws to protect minors.

Second, it’s important to understand that in the U.S. Age of Consent is, unfortunately, is not always about protecting minors or serving their best interests. It’s about controlling them or protecting them making poor choices, rather than empowering them to make good choices and protecting them from exploitation.

In the U.S. minors are often treated as their parents property. This contributes to the sexual exploitation of minors (which I condemn in this post, and needs to be wildly unequivocally condemned) because our society doesn’t always think of protecting minors as vulnerable people rather than malleable objects and culturally too many people seem to not understand why minors are vulnerable to exploitation and why exploiting them is wrong. The unfortunate prevalence of child marriage in some parts of the US (also discussed in the post I linked) is a symptom of this.

In the U.S. there are some States where a minor can’t get an abortion without parental consent or court order (and that’s dangerous as there are parents who might punish a teenager for getting pregnant or force them into marriage). Even in more liberal states, like California the age of consent is 18 and it is criminal for teens to have sex. Sex between two teens (like two 16 year olds) or teens and young adults with three year apart in age (a 17 year old and a 20 year year old) is a misdemeanor. If a 15 year old is dating a 17 year old and the 17 year old turns 18, then that would be a felony. Teenagers can be punished for having sex other teenagers, with classmates and peers, even teens their own age (though less severely). The rationale behind the law isn’t protecting teenagers, it’s discouraging teenage pregnancy by punishing boys who have sex with girls.

Often, age of consent laws and statutory rape laws in the U.S. are about preventing a girl from doing something that would bring shame on her family. So at once you have teens punished for having consensual sex with other teens and parents pushing a pregnant 11 year old girls to marry her adult rapist so she won’t have a baby out of wedlock (both these things happened in Florida, age of consent has an exception for marriage with parental consent - it’s sickening).

In theory age of consent laws are supposed to be about when, in the State’s view, a person is old enough to want and desire sex and be capable of knowingly consent to it. In practice, age of consent laws are the age where the state figures teens are going to have sex and the state should let them (or at least not punish them).

Side Note: Personally, I’d support a system more like Germany’s where teenagers are allowed to consent to sex instead of being characterized as children (because teens are having sex whether they should be or not, abstinence preaching isn’t effective and teens should have a right to their own bodies and relationships), but exploitation and abuse of teenagers is illegal. Teens are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Focus laws on protecting them from predators, not controlling their behavior. Put the power in their own hands, and extend protection until age 21 to prevent older predators from targeting barely legal teens (whether they’re legal at 16 or 18, protect them).

Ok, so why not let teens have porn? Teens wouldn’t get pregnant by watching porn. And in some states teens can have sex at 16, but not have porn until they’re 18. Porn is safer than sex.

American culture is puritanical and not in favor of sex out of wedlock. Even in states where lawmakers acknowledge that teens have sex at 16 (on average, most people have sex by 17) and decided not to criminalize their relationships, it’s not that they want teens to have sex, it’s just they don’t want to use police power to stop them.  

There’s a fear porn will encourage sex. While media doesn’t change behavior (violent video games don’t make you violent, porn doesn’t change how you view women), the fear is if we don’t treat sex like a forbidden sin only for married people the culture might change to accept sex outside of wedlock. (I mean, look at California, giving teens free contraceptives would prevent teen pregnancy as effectively, if not more so, than arresting teens for sleeping together, but the law goes with deterring sex. Studies show abstinence only education doesn’t work, but in many states it’s pushed).

“Sex is dirty and wrong.” It’s part of sex negative puritan culture. Sure, at the same time traditional values links masculinity with men being able get women and encourages women to be ‘sexy’ and do things boys will like, the fact remains sex outside of marriage is taboo. Women are supposed to be pure. A man who is a player has managed to steal a precious guarded resource. A woman who  is a slut has lost her worth because she didn’t guard herself. These are the sexist heterosexist norms, and they don’t really frame sex as a consensual thing that people choose to do.

Since our culture isn’t in favor of sex or porn, the government sees it as harmful, just like alcohol and cigarettes. As an adult, you’re free to make your own choices, even bad choices like smoking. That’s freedom. As a minor, you aren’t free yet.

The fact is, especially with the internet, plenty of minors start watching porn as young as 12 because that’s when they hit puberty and want to look at it. Just like plenty of teens experiment with underage drinking. Although a 12 year old boy looking at boobies isn’t as harmful as drinking and a 16 year old watching porn instead of having sex would certainly be safer, it’s still something the government can restrict.

And really, it is safer to wait until you’re over 18 because venturing into 18+ spaces. Because again, minors are at risk vulnerable and at risk for sexual exploitation. Especially for girls and women, venturing into adult spaces means risk of sexual harassment and potentially falling victims to predators who would seek to prey on the inexperienced.

This can still happen once you’re over 18, as I found out when I started exploring things at 18 (the only place I found safe was y!gal - a yaoi website - because anywhere that had content straight guys could enjoy was full of really creepy straight guys). But at 18, you also have more support. You have access to sex education and can freely talk about things with other adults. Adults can’t really talk to minors about sex or sexuality because there’s too much risk that predators would use that as an opportunity to target and manipulate minors. At 18, especially if you’re in college, you can learn about sex and question porn and sexual morality.

If society and the law let minors access porn and go to sex shops or workshops in places where minors can legally have sex at 16, it would probably be seen encouraging minors to have sex, which moral authorities would see as corrupting the youth. The general culture says you shouldn’t be having sex, so even in states that don’t criminally discourage it, they don’t encourage it.

Furthermore, media is made by adults. Porn is made by adults for other adults (at least officially, I’m pretty sure plenty of bad porn fics is written by 13 year olds). So if you’re watching porn, you’re not watching media that’s meant for your understanding or maturity level. 

You don’t really have the opportunity to learn about sex outside of watching porn (other than by doing it, but that doesn’t teach you what sex is supposed to be) or to talk about it. Porn isn’t realistic, and the thought is minors are less equipped than adults to be able to tell if something is a good idea or not. And how can you know what’s realistic or healthy if no one can talk to you about sex because all you get is ‘sex is bad, don’t do it until you’re married and then it will be good, somehow’.

In the U.S. the drinking age is 21. That’s one of the highest drinking ages in the world. Underage drinking happens, especially at Universities where you have a mixed peer group of under drinking age and of drinking age students. While the risks of alcohol don’t change between 20 and 21, it’s safer to drink legally because you’re allowed to drink in restaurants and with your parents and with other people who have experience drinking and can help you learn how to drink safely, as opposed to chugging beer illegally at 18 because you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t do it openly.

The fact people under 18 can’t view porn or go into sex shop shops or go into NSFW spaces online or IRL makes doing it illegally more dangerous.

At the same time, I don’t know if I’d support lowering the age you can view porn. Your body is your own and plenty of teens want sex and choose to have sex. I don’t think we should punish a 16 or even a 14 or 15  year old who wants to have sex (it happens) instead we should protect them from abuse and exploitation and help them make safe choices. The right to control over your own body, what you do with it, who you love and want to be with seems fundamental. The right to watch a video...not so much. Especially when allowing 16 year olds into NSFW spaces might put them at greater risk of mingling with much older people who might be predatory.

Then again, in Europe, plenty of countries let people under 18 have porn, but they also have better sex education. Before America changes law and policy about  whether or not minors can view porn, we need to make more basic changes like having decent sex education and banning child marriage for the love of God.

@tadpoledancer - And I know that at 16, being 18 seems like forever and waiting to go one websites or read fics might seem unfair. However, it’s really not that long to wait. Once you’re 18, you can do whatever you want, and hopefully you’ll go to college or university and find so much to discover about yourself. Stay safe. Maybe stick to pg 13 or R rated things or what you can find on Netflix or the library? (the dirtiest thing I watched in High School was probably HBO’s Queer as Folk censored for reruns on Logo, but it was still fun).

@daenon - thoughts? 

[scripttorture]

Hi, so my MC was born and raised for seven years in a huge underground complex with roughly 200 other girls, some of them had been kidnapped as babies or toddlers, some were born there as well. The group that raised them trained them to be assassins, so they were brought up with intense training in martial arts, mostly. The children were not allowed to talk to each other or really interact with each other, but they learned to read and talk in class. [1/4]

They also were made to watch some "arena fights" of older girls, that ended deadly. They were taught that they had to be strong and that was mostly defined by cruelty and being emotionless. If they misbehaved they were put in a small, soundproof, pitch black room for days at a time with only some water and bread and no sanitation. Other than that, they shared a bedroom with ~50 girls, so solitary confinement was meant as absolute punishment, not the norm. [2/4]How problematic would the reintegration be? My MC is 18 now and struggles with depression and anxiety and the generall feeling that she's not strong enough (=messed up view on what "strong" even is) and that she's not normal and doesn't fit in, etc. But what would her childhood be like? She and another girl she always protected were adopted by one of the soldiers that saved them and they were provided professional help all their lives, and are still in therapy. [3/4]I know that she'd struggle massivley with the hugeness of the world (though they've been taught a lot about the outside world, though mostly that it's bad) and the masses of other people, but what kind of behavior could I expect of her growing up? Thanks in advance ^^ [4/4] 

I think you need tore-think this scenario if you want your character to be able to act like asocialised, neurotypical human being and an assassin of any ability.

 Children brought upwithout people speaking to them, without interaction with other children (or byimplication people) and without much interaction with adults speaking to them, may not learn to speak.

 Trying to restrictnormal human interaction in such young children like this would be profoundlydamaging to their development. And it would be damaging in ways that wouldundermine their effectiveness as assassins. They would not be able to ‘pass’ asa normal person in any society. They would not be able to communicate withothers.

 I lived communally as achild, and also it strikes me as something that would be impossible to enforceif they’re living communally as you suggest.

 Essentially the wayyou’re describing the character at 18 sounds far too well-adjusted for the childhood you describe. I thinkthat leaves two options: either change the character at 18 or change herchildhood.

 If you want to changethe character at 18 I suggest looking up ‘Genie’ and other feral children.That’s the closest thing I can think of to the experience you’re describing.And it means none of these girlswould be able to fight effectively or function as assassins so you would alsohave to deal with why the adults involved chose to continue the ‘training’program when the result is no effective assassins.

 I think changing thecharacter’s childhood would mean less rewrites and a less drastic change toyour story.

 A lot of the abuse andneglect you describe is not only unnecessary but likely to undermine thecharacter’s effectiveness as an assassin hugely. If the point is to raise thesegirls to be effective killers then the lesstorture they go through the better the results will be.

 Using solitaryconfinement for long periods of time on young children- that is going to beintensely damaging to their physical and mental health. It will destroy theirmemories, their ability to learn, their ability to interact with adults andchildren, damage their eyesight and probably make them more susceptible todisease. That’s not a complete list and Ihave more information on solitary confinement in adults here. All currentresearch suggests the effects on children are much much worse.

 And what you describeisn’t solitary confinement, it’s closer to sensory deprivation. A form called‘Baldwin’s Box’ to be exact. Adultvolunteers generally can’t stay in these things longer than 24 hours. It isprofoundly almost uniquely damaging causing hallucinations, massive memory lossand (in extreme cases in adults)victims can lose the ability to recognise faces and ordinary objects.

 It also hugelyincreases the risk of these children dying because left inside for days they’relikely to self harm and an open wound in a box with no sanitation means aserious infection.

 These children would beunable to learn to read or fight if they were treated in this way. They wouldprobably be unable to look after themselves and would need carers.

 I do have a solution toall this and it’s kindness.

 Instead of abuse andsilence make the adults in her childhood loving,caring people. Have these girls raised being showered with gifts andaffection and praise. Have them unconditionally love the teachers and carers raising them. Have those teachersspeaking to their charges and playing with them.

 Have these loving, kindteachers, the people who have told all of these girls how wonderful and specialand beautiful they are, teach their charges that the world outside is awful. Have them grow up learning thatthe teachers and girls around them are the onlypeople they can expect kindness from.

 The people above ground?They’re animals. They’re cruel andhorrid and stupid and just so much lesser than all the beautiful girls downhere. They can’t be trusted. They’re child abusers and rapists and torturersand hundreds of other disgusting degenerate things. They all, each and everyone, deserve to die.

 All these special,beautiful, wonderful girls? They’ve all been rescued from a terrible place. Andreally, since they owe their teachers and each other so much, it’s only rightthat they do their duty. It’s only right that they help defend and supporttheir home. They’ve been saved andreally the teachers don’t ask for very much, they just want everyone to workhard and do their best.

 That is a regime I could see producingextremely effective assassins indeed.

 There’s a strong bondto the adults they’d work for, a strong bond to each other and a lot ofpositive reinforcement for learning the skills they’d need to be effective. Theyprobably wouldn’t suffer from any illnesses that would impair theirassassination abilities. The death rate would be low and the success rate high.

 These girls would‘graduate’ willing and able to do anything the teachers asked of them. Notthrough trying to suppress natural emotions and behaviours but by using them.

 This is how people arecontrolled and manipulated into doing horrible things. By creating a societyfor them, full of people they love and then telling them if they don’t obey they’ll lose everything.

 I think this wouldproduce someone a lot more like the character as you describe her at 18. She’sbeen ‘rescued’ young and found out everything she was taught was wrong. Herbeloved teachers were the monsters, not the people outside. And she’d strugglebecause she’d probably still love them.

 I can see a set up likethat leading to depression and anxiety and someone feeling generally out ofsynch with the world.

 She’d probably fallback on the training she had to blend in, mimicking behaviours and peoplearound her, interacting on a surface level because that’s what you’re ‘supposed’to do. She’d probably have a lot of trouble connecting with other people andwould be extremely socially isolated. But she might not initially appear thatway if she’s mimicking ‘normal’ 18 year old women’s behaviour, interacting witha lot of people but forming no real connections.

 I think she’s probablyat risk of falling into addiction and her training would probably make her verycapable of obtaining and hiding drugs or alcohol.

 Another thing I thinkshe might struggle with is feeling like a monster, like she’s fundamentallyunlovable and could never hope to find any real connection with anyone. Becauseif the people who raised her are actually monsters then where does that leaveher? They said no one outside could ever love her and what if they’re right?What if she’s damaged?

 All of this is likelyto feed into thoughts about self harm and suicide, though whether she’d act onthose thoughts or not is a different matter.

 It’s a prettyfundamental re-write, and as always you are under no obligation to make thechanges I suggest. It is your story.

 But I think changingher childhood in this way would make the story more realistic, both in terms ofher assassin-based skills and the behaviour you describe in her at 18. I thinkit would also make the story a lotmore creepy and give it a bigger emotional impact.

 I hope that helps,should you chose to keep the characters childhood as is I’m working on asensory deprivation Masterpost you’ll probably find that helpful.

 And good luck with yourstory. :)

Disclaimer

[themanofonebook]

I find that this is often missed when people talk about Javert: he is naive, and he is withdrawn. Yes, he is quite forward when it comes to his upholding of the law; he is confident in his abilities… when it comes to his duty as an officer. Aside from that, Javert acknowledges the fact that he is apart from society, and it shows. Javert sees the world in a different way than the average person; he does not seem to comprehend societal norms, or even basic human quirks — for example, he has no idea why Fantine would not be overjoyed to learn the truth of who Madeleine really is, because truth is his language; he lives for stripping away false covers, he breathes sincerity. Hugo may describe him as a spy, but examine the way that he does so:

Javert’s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel.

What the passage is saying, in short, is that Javert is very private until the law is involved, at which point he becomes passionate and bold. I direct all to one of the descriptions of Jehan Prouvaire, which I believe to be fitting:

Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.

Javert is not “laughing and lyric”, no — well, maybe laughing, but in a more severe manner. But look above, and take away the symbolism that Hugo is trying to get across; read it on a realistic level. When Javert is walking, he has his hat pulled down low, his chin tucked into his cravat (which would require some bowing of the head), his sleeves pulled over his hands, and even his accessory is carried under his coat. Javert is quiet; Javert does not want to be seen. Here:

Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.

Beforehand, Javert was very, very vocal, but once Madeleine stepped inside and made a basic explanation of misdeeds and punishment into a conversation, once Fantine actually, physically touched Javert, and in a familiar way, the inspector immediately dropped back into himself. Even beforehand, instead of speaking to Fantine while she was shaking in the corner of the station house, he was content to quietly work in the corner. To converse never even crosses his mind. “He wrote in silence.”

I could write a great deal concerning his behavior when apologizing to Madeleine, especially the fiddling with the wood powder which is meant to dry ink. He has his eyes cast down, his shoulders slumped, and his hands down by his sides… when he isn’t taking pinches of the powder and shifting it around, which is decidedly odd. It describes the action as “mechanical”, which indicates habit — Javert isn’t really concentrating on what he is doing, or he would probably not do it; he is shown to be practical, Spartan; fiddling with bits of powder doesn’t suit him, therefore we are left to deduce that the action is a nervous one, and that he has done it before.

When he is explaining the situation with Champmathieu, he goes on for at least a full page, but when he is not, his speech rarely exceeds a single line.

Now, he goes through a huge transition and is a different man in Paris… or is he? Marius comes to speak with him, and, again, he is short; businesslike, yes, but he could be asking Marius a million questions, and he chooses to listen and deduce what he can by himself, instead, in complete silence. When he is tied in the Corinthe and notices Valjean staring:

While they were binding Javert, a man standing on the threshold was surveying him with singular attention. The shadow cast by this man made Javert turn his head. He raised his eyes, and recognized Jean Valjean. He did not even start, but dropped his lids proudly and confined himself to the remark: “It is perfectly simple.”

Again, take it in the literal sense: upon seeing Jean Valjean, the man whom Javert has lost sleep over, his first response is to… drop his eyelids, cast his gaze down; he goes so far as to mutter to himself, but he does not engage Valjean, even though it is clear that Javert hardly cares for the rebels around them; he is brash when communicating with them, so why not call out to Valjean, even if the call was a taunting one? He is fine with prattling on about Valjean using a knife, but out of his element, he says nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It’s not that Javert’s shyness is meant to be charming; at least, I don’t think so. In a man of fifty-two, it’s a bit off-putting, a tad creepy. It shows the extent of Javert’s opinion of himself, how far he is willing to go to accent that distance between himself and “normal people”; not for any purposes of his own, but almost to make them comfortable. He’s quiet, he’s withdrawn, he’s fidgety and doesn’t really know what to do with himself. Oh, as an inspector, sure, he’s loud and he’s proud and he’s overconfident; but as a man (and even I don’t have a tendency to read Javert as a man so much as a symbol, at least, not until his death), taken out of the context of the law, he’s reserved, not quite timid, but nearly sheepish.

Amendment to the Above; Re: Javert as Ignorant Rather than Naïve

I continue to use the word “naïve” to describe Javert, but that’s far too pretty. What I’m looking for is “ignorant”. Javert is incredibly ignorant about so many things; it’s sad, and it’s shameful, and it tells you a lot about the time period that he lived it. From what we know, Javert had a limited education — he reads to remain literate, a trait that would not be seen in an active student, or a formerly active student. He writes often, yes, and he writes carefully, because he never once crosses a word out. He’s taking his time with his reports so as not to make a mistake. A confident graduate probably wouldn’t do this. You can call it Javert being “anal”, and yes, admittedly, he’s something of a perfectionist (which is outright odd because he can be so ridiculously lazy), but it’s not just that.

Javert knows the law. He concentrates on legality. That is his area of expertise, and his knowledge is fearsome, yes, but both in that he could very well destroy anybody who contested his understanding of the civil code, and that he is aware of little else.

I feel like when I read Javert as “shy”, it gives the impression that he’s a withdrawn blushing delicate flower, when really, he’s an awkward recluse who has warped his mind into thinking that, because of his birth, he will never be able to connect with people of regular or even peasant status, therefore he puts next to no effort in creating any relationships other than those of a strictly professional level. This is behavior in a fifty-two year old man. It is not charming. It is frightening, because this is the person we see in the story who wields the most power on a physical level (see Myriel/Valjean for spiritual, Enjolras for political, Marius/Cosette for emotional, etc.).

[fangirlingabout]

Entertaining to the MAX

As someone with an... approximate knowledge of the DC universe and more specifically the BatFamily (most of which being from littlenightwing), and as someone who just enjoys really funny comedies and great animation, I pretty much was doomed to love this movie. 

But hell, even without all that “””bias””” what makes this movie so especially bitchin’ is how it succeeds at pretty much everything it sets out to do. Make a good follow-up to the Lego Movie? Check. Strike a great balance as a kids movie? Check Two. 

Bring the BatFamily to the big screen again (FINALLY) in a way that can make general audiences fall in love with them? All checks. All of them, those checks are yours now. 

Be a good spoof movie---a genre so dead it needed to be revived with little tiny lego defibrillators? A THUNDERSTORM OF CHECKS RAINING DOWN FROM THE HEAVANS.

Doing a Comic Book Movie

Adapting anything to film is magic trick and a half, but adapting comic books---90 years of them, for that matter---is a whole magic show. It’s no small feat to capture the heart of the characters and world and what makes it so beloved.

Add that on top of the magic you need to perform to make a good spoof movie, which takes that deep understanding and builds off it (ayyyy) in exaggerated, hilarious ways. Plus, like I said, the entire spoof genre has been left in the hands of the people who made the Scary Movie franchise, which has fallen so far from... well, I don’t want to say grace, but you get my point. There’s only been bad parody movies coming out in the mainstream for years now.

But if I’d trust anyone to manage both kinds miracles, I guess I’d have to give it to Phil Lord and Chris Miller! Even if you don’t know their names, you’ve probably laughed at their work (well, with their work): Clone High, Cloudy a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, (A few episodes of) How I Met Your Mother, (the pilot of) Brooklyn 99, and, obviously, the Lego Movie itself.

Basically, these are two writer/directors best bros who I’ve loved ever since I was young with Clone High because that’s exactly my sense of humour---and they’re still killing it to this day.

And thank god, they manage to nail this movie on so many levels. 

What really rocks is how thoroughly they understand Batman’s corner of the DC universe---not just for the amazing, nerd-level-100 references from all sorts of Batman media, but because in order for the comedy to really work, they have to make a super-fan love for all things Batman infectious.

And it works. So, so well!

And the parody aspects of this movie work for the same reason. It’s like the old saying goes “it’s funny because it’s true.” Sure, it’s exaggerated for a punchline, but if it didn’t come from a genuine place to begin with that exaggeration wouldn’t be able to carry the movie.

The BatFam and Rogues Gallery 

AND THIS IS THE BEST PART.

See, the BatFamily hasn’t come to the big screen aside from the mostly-straight-to-DVD-but-if-they’re-in-theaters-they’re-limited-release animated movies, which leaves legions of starving BatFam fans waiting for their favourite characters to even get a slight mention or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it background reference.

The Arkham games (and of course the comics themselves) are enough to keep them alive, but the fact that 1997′s Batman and Robin killed all possible BatFamily movies for basically 20 years means it’s been rough.

So, now we have the first real inclusion on the BatFamily! It’s a parody of them, but at least since it’s a good parody that does demonstrate some understanding of the characters and how meaningful their relationships are, it’s enough! At least, for now. My hope is that having a popular, awesome movie with some BatFamily members in it will open the door to even more BatFam to come!

Because look, I have to take this character by character for a second to really show why this could hopefully be the building blocks (AYYYYY) for something even greater down the line (or, great in a different way, I should say).

Let’s start with Dick Grayson as Robin. This Dick Grayson is mostly a parody of the original TV boy wonder, Burt Ward. Which works, even though it’s not an accurate portrayal of more modern incarnations of his character. Michel Cera somehow managed to really make this character endearing when he could’ve been pretty annoying, as high energy as he is.

The best comparison I can make for animation fans is, well, Wander, from Wander Over Yonder, but without the country accent. There’s an adorable beating heart always on display that makes him lovable---he’s even got some quieter moments thrown in there---and the way the lines are delivered never crosses that line into annoying-sidekick territory. 

So, this Dick is a good Dick. He still serves the role even modern Dick Grayson did as Robin, to be the hopeful light in the dark knight’s world. 

And see, if they took inspiration from lego Dick Grayson at all when adapting modern Dick, I hope they keep that idea intact---because no matter what incarnation of Dick we’re going for, his humour and kind lightheartedness even in the face of a dark world and immeasurable pain---that’s what makes him a wonderful son character for Batman. 

Well, that and how much they love each other, obviously, but thankfully, that’s another thing this movie doesn’t skimp out on. Since its a comedy, the writers get away with Dick using the words “dad” or “padre” (dad) or even “batfamily” a glorious amount of times. So even if there’s since going to be a wait before we get to see a serious portrayal of their father-son relationship, it’s honestly enough to know some people in Hollywood actually know.

Barbara/Batgirl gets a great role as well. Not necessarily all points are stellar (the recent Killing Joke movie aside, I’ve been told Barbara and Batman don’t have a relationship that’s sexual in nature most of the time, so it’s just kinda... creepy; thank god they didn’t make them end up together in this movie), but it’s small in comparison to the awesomeness of lego Barbara.

Granted, I know much more about Dick Grayson than I do about Barbara (you know who to thank for that), but at the very least, I appreciate that her role in this movie is competent, well-accomplished straight-man and not damsel in distress, which even I know is so not Barbara (The Killing Joke is hard story to adapt without, y’know, using her as a plot device in kinda awful ways, so I’m just glad to see her not be used that way).

That’s the kind of thing I hope they’ll carry over when it’s time for a more serious Barbara story. In this movie, she feels a bit too much like Wild-Style from the first Lego Movie, and I would’ve loved to see even more of Barbara’s character and what makes her unique (again, this is something I need to learn), but yeah, definitely a step in the right direction.

Alfred’s had some great adaptions over the years in terms of movies, but I will say I don’t think it’s been acknowledged before what a father figure (and in turn grandpa figure) he is in the BatFamily. Good to see him get his due.

And I mean overall, there’s this whole other side to Batman, BatDad, that has been sorely missing from cinema. We’ve seen the brooding loner Batman done well, but there’s so many stories to tell when you bring in his surrogate family, and you can see that in this movie!

Oh, and the Joker?

Absolutely adorable. Which... isn’t something I’d normally advocate saying, but they really have fun with his and Batman’s relationship in such a great way. Protect this clown child please (again specifically this version).

And that’s not even counting the dozens of other rogues that get a hilarious cameo in this movie. It’s all so fantastic, I need to rewatch it just to get all the jokes involved with them because I was laughing so hard I missed some.

So it works as a (spoofed) BatFamily story, a comedy and a parody movie, and even just a really well done animated kids movie in general.

This is definitely what I would call a hyper-active movie---the jokes come hard and fast and don’t really stop---but it can also take it’s time for the characters (and hell, even for the comedy; long, quieter jokes that just keep going are always a risk, but like the sloth scene in Zootopia, the times they make that gamble it pays off).

Even just as an animated movie, look at this shit:

The photo-realistic Lego-based animation from the first movie combined with a neon colour scheme that ends up being so fitting for Lego Gotham... is bootiful. It’s some beautiful animation (and the comedic timing just makes it better)!

And the score? The score is always hilariously timed---every song choice is there for a specific purpose. That’s probably the best way to look at this movie: not a moment goes to waste.

Really, it’s a family of excellent elements all working together to make one hell of a whole.

[arthurtristankingsmen]

@phantoms-lair replied:

Go for it. Headcannons are always fun to play with and everyone can have their own interpretation. You’re not anniying anyone, you’re drawing us in

(Oookay as long as you’re sure-!

This will be in relating to this post here:

Well, I really like the idea. Like, it makes perfect sense given those rope things (stanchions! the more you know!), and the way things are developed in the cave. I always kinda thought the skulls were symbolic of the three: one on the top, two on the bottom; one next to a spike, and another turned away so it ‘doesn’t see’.

And then one at the top still, and the one that can’t see, still there, but the third is gone.

  The whole idea could explain why the others were relatively curious but at ease.

I think my biggest issue with the idea that might need altering is based on their reactions. Like...showing it in that way makes it seem as if Arthur really is a scaredy-cat, if they went into the situation knowing it was meant to look haunted, which kinda sucks because i liked how i did him that he’s a realist but not cowardly. And if he’s going into a place that’s like a tourist trap....nine times out of ten those are cheesy or only slightly creepy, so his level of freaking out just seems over the top for someone who isn’t scared of their own shadow.

Like how he reacts in the bifurcation above, and earlier when he’s clinging to Lewis’s shoulders and even when it does the big pan-out where you can see him nervous near Lewis and the cliff.

My other issue is that if they are just checking out an old tourist place, then I don’t like how the others are treating Arthur. Because if this his normal reaction to something that is a little creepy, then you have friends who dragged him along to these creepy places even though it’s obvious that he doesn’t like them and they scare him, and it’s kind of like taking a kid through a haunted house where you know it’ll upset them but you want to have fun so they have to go, or they don’t care that it’s obvious he doesn’t want to but he goes in for them which is kinda sucky.

And if it’s not his regular reaction (which i hope it isn’t), then he is obviously reacting to something about the place (which i dig for my medium!arthur headcanon), but then....they don’t seem to care nor mind. Only Mystery seems to pick up something is wrong. 

And considering both, it feels sad to me not to see Vivi and Lewis being better friends. 

Of course, it’s not that hard a fix. But to make it work, I think I’d go for something like....the place got shut down under mysterious circumstances and the rumor was it’s haunted, so the gang did go in looking for a ghost. Maybe they’d run into spirits before, so Arthur picking up on something and getting nervous wasn’t out of the blue, but they’d never run into anything malevolent so they never could have expected what happened. Arthur might’ve been a little more freaked out than normal because he can kinda feel that bad juju or whatever, but they’re young adults and Lewis and Vivi are probably pretty overconfident in the ‘bad stuff never happens to me’ kind of way. Which i like, because them being sure something wouldn’t happen because they were there and could help Arthur if he needed it, but they’re there to help the spirit too, feels like they’re better friends. Mystery is pretty old and probably more sensitive to the paranormal given his lineage, so he might’ve felt the same thing Arthur did to a greater degree and knew they were dealing with something malevolent.

If they’re amateurs they probably don’t have lots of protections, and I like it for Vivi angst in that she knows she was too overconfident and that got arthur hurt at least. so she’s more careful and studies more and prepares extra for anything after, because she doesn’t want a repeat. And if it was just a rumor that it was haunted, it could’ve slipped Lewis’s mind after when he’s in angry-mode. And it would fit in with Arthur being nervous without confirming him as a fraidy-cat, and without making it seem like the others cared more about exploring some abandoned place than they did how he felt.

But honestly i’m leaning into that headcanon, with the minor adjustments. like the sign outside probably really was a warning. But the gang had only heard rumors and while Arthur took that actual warning at face value, Lewis and Vivi just assumed it was part of the attraction. And the one outside would make sense. Because it was a paper nailed over a wooden sign, so maybe it was the original sign advertising it, and then the paper covers it with the skull to signify actual danger, but the gang except for Arthur took it as part of the attraction. Because once they went inside, there was no warnings. just the signs with question marks and the skulls that might not have been real as decor.

And THEN I like it doubly for this reason!! in the part of freaking out when Shiromori goes to the cave, you see a door, on the right side. It could have easily been an employee only place given the sign. if it was an attraction I’m sure they had a place for them.

[therandomwatcher]

Sherlock Season 4 Review

There will be spoilers. You have been warned. There are some really in-depth reviews out there. This one won’t quite be that, but I will touch on some things that stood out to me. First off I would like to address Johnlock. I know there is a very dedicated section of the fandom that ships it like FedEx. That’s cool. I respect all ships even though I’m not a shipper of anything myself. That being said, it’s really not fair to the writers to accuse them of queerbaiting if John literally yells out “I’m not gay!” in more than one episode, and later turns out not to be gay. One of the redeeming features of this season I think is how many scenes are available as Johnlock fodder now. That’s some serious fan service and didn’t have to be there. If you are a Johnlocker, break out the fanfic and deviant art and go nuts! But don’t blame the writers for not doing what they said they wouldn’t do, that’s not really fair. Now that several readers have probably left in irritation, let’s get on to the episodes. If there was a theme to sum up season 4, I think it would be “No matter how smart you are, you always should study the night before the test.” Steven and Mark are very talented writers who have given us some absolutely outstanding episodes. But they were not at their best in season 4. The Six Thatchers

This episode I would say was the strongest of the 3. It was a straightforward case, with a few attached to the side for interest and wrapped up some interesting points about Mary’s past. But there were a few glaring issues. -John text-cheating with the Woman from the Bus There was zero development for it. You can’t write a character who fails spectacularly with the ladies for all of Season 1 *and* 2, and then try to turn him into 3 Continents Watson. It just doesn’t work. 

-The Aquarium Scene Boy, where to start with this one. Vivian has shown up and clearly has a gun in her purse. She has already had several people killed on her orders so it’s not a leap to believe she brought it here because she thought she would need to use it and is capable of doing so. The episode tries to pin the blame on Sherlock for “winding her up”. Except it comes across more like Sherlock is trying to distract her into shooting him instead of Mary since she’s got the gun on both of them. Perhaps Mary will be able to use her assassin skills to take Vivian out while she is busy shooting Sherlock. It’s not a great plan, true. But it’s about the only way left for him to keep his vow of trying to keep her safe in this situation. The London police are apparently worthless. Their idea of dealing with someone threatening two people with a semi-auto handgun that holds an entire magazine worth of bullets, is to stand and wait until they actually shoot the victims and then move in to arrest them...even though there are still several bullets left in the gun and they aren’t any safer for having waited (to say nothing of the victim). What the actual fark was that? 

The big one of course, is Mary being literally faster than a speeding bullet. I quite honestly laughed here. It was so ridiculously fake. We’re talking 1950′s serial tv show fake. Even if i were to believe that it is reasonable to expect someone to move faster than a bullet traveling at over 1,200mph, the fact that Mary, being closer, was able to jump in front, but Sherlock wouldn’t be able to jump out of the way, is not playing honestly with your own movie physics. There are quite a few completely understandable conspiracy theories out there now thanks to this scene.

The fabulous acting during the actual death scene was the only redeeming point of this entire scene. Shout out to Amanda especially!

Beyond that, we have the death of a character who they spent nearly all of season 3 developing, and then they just shuffle her off with the excuse that it needs to be about “the boys”. Except John has a baby now, and as anyone with a baby will tell you, you have zero free time to be running around with your best friend solving crimes. Mary could have easily filled the “I’m finally enjoying a normal life you need to go out and get some excitement” hole here, with perhaps the occasional professional opinion thrown in for fun. But no, they managed to make John’s situation actually *worse* in terms of being able to spend time with Sherlock.

The Lying Detective

-Sherlock being high the entire episode did it no favors. It got annoying after a while trying to figure out what was “real” and what was not. Nobody is watching Sherlock because they want to question reality. They watch for brilliant deductions of small minutia. This is literally the opposite of that.

-John in explicably blames Sherlock for Mary’s death. Sherlock inexplicably agrees. Regardless of whether you think Sherlock “wound up” Vivian, Mary leaping in front of the bullet pretty much absolves Sherlock of his vow to keep her safe. Neither of them are apparently capable of respecting her individual choice.

-Smith is a creepy farker. Props to the actor for that. It was a relief to see the listening device in the cane, some glimmer of “Sherlock” is actually showing here.

The Final Problem

I’m sorry, but this entire episode was teh suck.

We had an episode that was 2 X-Files episodes and a healthy dose of Firefly. I love both shows, don’t get me wrong! But when I order steak, I’m not happy to get pizza...regardless of how much I like pizza. I’m here for Sherlock...not X-Files or Firefly. The age gap is also a problem. The entire series runs without a “viewer discretion is advised” except for this episode. So anyone who might not be into darker shows has to decide if they will watch and find out what happens after years of waiting...or risk seeing an episode that will have a potentially very negative effect on them. That is profoundly not cool and I was very disappointed in the production staff about this. Evil River Tam is apparently Sherlock’s secret sister. Who is insanely smart, and was shipped off to a government facility after she killed his best friend when they were little. But she’s too useful figuring out terrorist attacks and such so they give her “treats” in exchange for her cooperation. Sherlock, utterly traumatized, has since blocked her out, and concocted a family dog in place of his friend. It got “put down” in the mind palace of His Last Vow, and now has drowned. This makes no sense without playing the ‘nothing is what it seems card’ to the point where you literally are telling the audience that nothing they saw up to this point is really part of the plot. “Things aren’t what they seem” as a plot device is a solid option, but don’t go full “Lost”. It is a serious disservice to the viewers who spend their time watching the show, to tell them that they have wasted a large chunk of it on something utterly meaningless.

While it wasn’t quite as bad as Mary leaping in front of a speeding bullet, we have John and Sherlock leaping out of glass windows and falling 2 stories onto pavement without any injury during an explosion. Such a far far cry from Molly coldly explaining how a bullet doesn’t hit with a spurt of blood and drama. (Oh wait, it did for Mary didn’t it?), it was disappointing to see them dive so far into movie physics after making the effort to *not* do that in other episodes.

We then get a tour de force of the “Pusher” X-Files episode where talking to someone makes you do what they say. And “Beyond the Sea”, with an unrepentant psychopath murderer that our hero wants to talk to for some unknown reason. Pity we didn’t have an equally awesome scene with Sherlock threatening that if John dies, to throw the switch and gas her out of this life.

Instead we get a hug, and that miraculously cures her of wanting to kill John. Who then uses a rope to climb out after gnawing off his own foot to free it of the chains....or something. The chains are gone somehow, we’re not told how even though there isn’t really enough time with the water level for John to unlock them easily. (Sorry, I really had to bite my tongue during much of the episode or MST3K/Rifftrax would’ve come out. My internal monologue had me chuckling a time or two though.) I won’t even touch on Mr and Mrs Holmes being absolutely unrealistically written characters now after learning that so much family trauma happened. It’s a minor detail that most people (except those who have been unfortunate enough to be somewhat familiar with) would not understand and so pales compared to the other errors in the episode. It’s still annoying though. Again, quality acting from two great actors though.

There are good points to the episode, Mycroft’s guilty pleasure watching old film noir detective movies is funny and potentially telling. The sword/gun umbrella is pure fan service and absolutely awesome. There is plenty of Johnlock, Adlock, Mystrade, and Sherlolly sprinkled about for the various ships. Now I know a lot of people are upset by how those turned out, but given the production schedule Sherlock isn’t likely to make any of them cannon. So the best option shippers have is a bit of everything to provide the fandom with countless gifs, drawings, and fanfic stills. There are also some great quotes in here, and solid dialog exchanges. The end of the episode wrap up was nice, but emotional whiplash after the darkness of the show. It did show us what BBC Sherlock *can* be, and we can only hope they will return to form if we get a season 5. Realistically, the absolutely superb acting held up what was a convoluted mess of a plot, that unfortunately crossed the line from complicated interwoven aspects, to throwing stuff together and changing our minds halfway through about what is actually going on. Steven and Mark are capable of taking this plot and doing it well enough not to need a “viewer discretion” or making it into the convoluted mess it ended up being. It would be tough and some of the other seasons still would’ve had some pretty big plot holes, but they are talented enough to do it justice at least. Unfortunately they weren’t at their best this time around and it’s a bit of a tough one for the fandom after all these years of waiting. You guys are still brilliant, but please study before the final next time, okay?  

[anxiousheart4]

Love is Scary...

I know it’s been a while. I’ve been seeing a therapist (well talking to one because of COVID), and I think talking about my feelings with them, just makes me want to escape them the rest of the week. Who am I kidding, I’ve always tried to escape my feelings. I started this blog to help me  stop doing that. But when faced with another option (and the fact that cause of COVID, my life is the same day by day), I seemed to back away from this one. But I am trying to work on that, cause it’s good to put my thoughts out there so they don’t fester. Nothing much has changed in my life, still dealing with my grandma everyday, although now the state is paying me to take care of her, so that’s good. I’ve been playing a lot of video games lately; mostly LEGO Harry Potter and LEGO Star Wars, it’s just so nice to go through each level and destroy everything, it’s therapeutic. It’s been keeping me relatively sane. My best friend moved to Florida a couple weeks ago. I am so happy for her, she’s wanted to move there for so long, and she got a new job, and her and her husband bought their first house, and celebrated their first wedding anniversary. It’s all happening for her, and I am so proud of her and happy for her. But I miss her, we didn’t get to see each other very often before she moved, and honestly I’ve only seen her like twice this year because of COVID, but knowing she’s thousands of miles away, and we won’t be able to hang out and have wine nights and talk about our lives. It just makes me sad. I have 3 best friends; who are also like the only real friends I have; and now one is in Florida, one is in California, and one is in the same state as me but about an hour away (and I’ve also only seen her twice this year), so not the easiest to hang out with cause she works a lot and I’m taking care of my grandma, and since there’s an hour between us, we can’t just hang for an hour after work or anything. It is absolutely amazing when we hang out, we have so much fun! I just wish we lived a little closer and could hang out more. Anyways... What I really want to write about right now is love. Love is scary, but if also seems like the most amazing feeling in the world! I would love to fall in love and lose myself in someone else. Everyone tells me to put myself out there, get on a dating site. But it’s not that simple for me. Meeting someone offline seriously heightens my anxiety. For sooo many reasons (some stupid, like what if he’s a serial killer? Lol I watch too many crime shows), but the main one is my self esteem. I have VERY low self esteem; growing up with everyone telling me how I can be better, can do that to a girl, but also, I’m 30 years old, and have never actually been asked out on a date, and the only guys that hit on me at bars are creepy 60 year olds and creepy drunk guys who think I’m like almost twice my age (like he thought I was 40, when I was 22). No one who actually is dateable ever hits on me at bars. And then on top of that, when I actually get up the nerves to tell a crush how I feel, they like blow me off or start talking about how they like this other girl! How am I supposed to not have low self esteem?! I read all these romance novels and while I’m reading them, I just fall in love with their story, the romance, the joy, them fighting their feelings but ultimately meant to be together. I’ve always wanted something like that. And I know believing in a fairy tale isn’t realistic, and I know it’ll never happen for me. But as I’m reading the stories I can’t help but imagine me being the girl who falls in love in the story and gets her happy ending. But then I finish the book, and they got their happy ending, and the story is over. I’m left with this gnawing feeling, this depression, that I’ll never have that, and all I want to do is cry myself to sleep. That’s why I’m writing this at 4am instead of sleeping, cause I just finished a book, and now I want to cry myself to sleep (plus I’ve been having trouble sleeping the past couple weeks). I tell everyone that I don’t want a boyfriend right now cause how can I ask someone else to love me when I don’t love me? And it’s solid logic, and very true; the reasonable part of me knows that’s what I should be doing. But the truth is I want to fall in love so badly! I want to feel the love, and have a guy who only has eyes for me, and lifts me up when I’m down. I want a guy that I always want to be around, and gives me butterflies when he looks in my eyes and kisses me. I want all of that. And then I look at myself in the mirror. Who could ever love me? I’m fat and fluffy, I’m out of shape, I’m a picky eater and pretty much only eat junk food, chicken, rice, and pasta. I’m stubborn and have a terrible memory, I have trouble opening up to people and trusting people. I can be rude and lazy, hate to work, don’t know what I want to do with my life, I’m broke and have no ambition. I’m very shy and have social anxiety, I always say the wrong things and/or say it in a way that comes out terrible even though I don’t mean it that way, so I’m always afraid to talk; and honestly I think people forget I’m there half the time, even my own family. I like to think I’m not, but I can be very materialistic (not in an bad obsessive way though), and selfish, and care too much about looks and what other people think.  I’m a loner, I’m a weirdo, I’m not beautiful, I don’t even know if I want to have kids, lately I’m leaning towards no, I don’t even know how to really kiss a guy anyways, and that and everything else scares the shit out of me, cause it’s just more stuff I’d be disappointing in. I have an obsessive personality, and although I’d like to think I wouldn’t be clingy, needy, or jealous; I actually have no idea what I’d be like in a relationship, so I possibly would be all those. Especially since I have trouble making and keeping friends and am always alone even when I don’t want to be, and when I’m not alone, I feel alone anyways, cause no one pays attention to me, I’m just like a fly on a wall. So I’d probably be clingy or needy cause I don’t want to be alone, and I’d probably be jealous, cause I wouldn’t trust anyone not to want more then me cause everyone deserves better then me. My grammar is the worst, and I don’t know a lot of big words or how to spell them, I’m not smart. I have no faith in my ability to do anything and I usually think everyone would be better off without me, but I’m too scared to actually kill myself, though I do imagine accidents happening. I say I would take a bullet for the ones that I love, but honestly if that moment ever came around I would be too scared to even move, I’m a fucking coward. And that is way too long a list of all my flaws, and I could probably keep going on and on and on. I AM A MESS! And who could ever fucking love this mess of a bitch? So as much as I want the happy ending, the love story, the fairy tale, or just a fucking boyfriend. It’s just not in the cards for me. At least not right now, and probably not ever. I was born alone, I’ll live alone, and I’ll die alone. Forever and always.