#seasonal depression is kicking our ass and I am not fucking dealing well with it [pictured above hiii] but we deal

[six-six-cicada]

Kintsugi and paper mache will fix it.

[lovelyhan]

unsolicited life update lol

i'm so exhausted,,,,,, this week was Hell actually and i'll compartmentalize my ranting into two categories: when will god kill me with lightning nd pretty ok AJDJDJJE

when will god kill me with lightning:

i JUST took an exam that i was complaining about for weeks both here and to my irl and discord friends last tuesday but i need to start studying for another one that'll kick my ass next wednesday

it's graduation season and i work part time in my university's admin office and we've been asked to take up a lot of extra hours of overtime bc of how understaffed they are with the preparations for the rites

some internal relations in the academic organization i'm leading are FUCKED and the actual person in charge of those matters is a little mia so i have to deal with it in his place on top of school and work

the weather has been craaaaaaazy lately. one minute it's raining like the universe wants to wipe my campus off the map then the next the sun is burning through the streets like it's summer all over again

I am just so physically nd mentally nd spiritually exhausted bc my day kinda looks like: PE at 8-11am, work at 11-3pm, a major class at 3-5pm, overtime at 5-8pm, studying at 8-whatever time i feel like sleeping AHDJFJJW

pretty ok:

i got the highest score in the exam that i was dreading for WEEKS but it's kinda depressing bc out of everyone taking the course, only three of us passed 😔

my seniors who just graduated are actual sweethearts and they treated everyone to karaoke and drinks until morning <3

went swimming with some classmates bc our PE professor rented the university pool area for us to use freely !!

my summer term ends next week, i really just have to get that last exam over with

well that's pretty much it LOL if you actually read all this nonesense i literally love you but i hope this explains why i'll have to put writing on hold (even tho i've alr been doing that for a while now)

[shatteredatthealtarofwinchester]

Castiel’s death S12 vs S15: An Analysis

I’m not a fan of being talked into something, that’s why I always analyze everything on my own. I want to be neutral while analyzing, I want to understand situations and emotions by myself, I want to see it with my own eyes and draw my own conclusions. Let’s go through some moments together, shall we? Got your tissues? All right.  

We start in Season 12 at the moment Cas pushes Dean and Sam aside and walks towards Lucifer, ready to attack him. Dean is screaming for Cas several times and Sam has to pull Dean back while Dean wants to follow Cas. In my opinion this is a massive parallel to Season 1 when Dean pulled Sam out of the burning room while Sam was screaming for Jess the whole time.

Cas is stabbed in front of Deans eyes. Dean isn't realizing anything, he's numb, paralyzed. He just stares at Cas and sinks down on his knees next to Cas’ dead body.

A little later Sam and Dean are sitting in the Impala. Sam is saying: "Can we just talk about what happened back there?" and Dean answers stone-cold: "Sure. Which part? Let’s see. Crowley’s dead, Kelly’s dead, Cas is —." He can't even say it. He interrupts in the middle of the sentence; he can't even admit it, because the pain kicks in so hard.

Now it’s getting interesting:

Dean changes massively. He drinks, he is highly depressive, suicidal. He lost his will to believe in anything, he gave up on everyone. But even more: He gave up on himself. I have never seen Dean like that ever before.

You can say here: “But Dean lost his mother, too” Yes, that’s true. When I look at Marys and Deans arc together, it isn’t a profound one. It doesn’t contain healthy bonds or deep love, not even trust. Mary is a part of Deans abusive childhood. She made the deal with Azazel which spurred John into becoming a hunter to kill Azazel in revenge and raising their sons as hunters as well. Furthermore she makes it worse in the very short time she’s back in Deans life. She came back and left again. She lied, she ignored the boys, she didn’t care. She teamed up with the BMoL behind Deans and Sams back while knowing the BMoL tortured her sons excruciatingly. Deans and Marys bond was not deep or loving, trusting or healthy, it was just sorrowful. One Episode before Cas dies, Dean confronts Mary. You know the speech. It ends with “I hate you.” Yes, Dean lost his mother, too. But if you compare Marys relationship and Cas relationship with Dean, it’s like comparing the desert to the sea. I’ll come to that point later, again.

Dean prays to Chuck. Yes, Dean Winchester prays to God. "We've lost everything. And now you're gonna bring 'em back. You're gonna bring back Cas, you're gonna bring back Mom, you're gonna bring 'em all back. 'Cause after everything that you've done, you owe us, you son of a bitch! So you get your ass down here, and you make this right! Right here, right now!" With every word he presses through his lips, he gets more aggressive and desperate. He mentioned Cas before his mother, so Cas' name popped into his head first. When he opens his eyes, they are teary. He looks around and sees that nothing’s happened. His head sinks down on his chest, he's hopeless. The pain kicks in and he snaps, he can't bear it. He wrecks the door of the building until he’s bleeding and tears up even more. The next thing I saw I couldn't believe: He starts begging. He looks up, tears in his eyes, and Dean fucking Winchester starts begging to Chuck. "Please... Please... Help us..."

Later Dean actually kills himself. When he dies (temporary) he meets Death. It was not planned, but the moment Dean sees Billie, he's okay. He immediately accepts his fate, it's like a weight is lifted from his shoulders. Billie says something very important here: "Maybe you're not that guy anymore, the guy who saves the world, the guy who always thinks he'll win no matter what. You have changed. And you tell people it's not a big deal. You tell people you'll work through it, but you know you won't, you can't, and that scares the hell out of you." And Death adds surprised: "You wanna die."

So Billie points out Dean isn't able to fight on. He isn't able to work through it like he always did before. Something has changed, something so immense that he isn't able to live on. Billie continues:

"Dean, every notebook on this particular shelf tells a version of how you die. You specifically -- heart attack, burned by a red-haired witch, stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard, and on and on. But which one's right? That depends on you, on the choices you make."

And Dean simply answeres: “Well, I guess I made my choice.” Dean is accepting his death here. For the first time in 13 years, he’s not just having suicidal thoughts, he wants to accomplish them. He wants it to end. Here and now.

Coming back to Mary. You know what makes me sure Deans total collapse was about Cas in the first place? Look what happened the moment Cas returned. You may skip to 4:45.

undefined

So I am asking myself while looking ONLY at Castiels death in Season 12 and Deans reaction and nothing else: Is it love?

And my conclusion is: Yes, it is. Does Dean realize it yet? Probably not.

Why am I thinking this? Well… I was like Dean. Or Dean was like me.

When my husband died after 8 years of our relationship, I was exactly like Dean. I was numb, cold. I was depressive at first, later suicidal. I gave up on everything, everyone. I had no hope, didn’t believed in anything. I wanted my life to end. That’s why it was extremely painful to see Dean like that, this kind of pain rips your heart out of your chest every single moment of every single day in a way you could never imagine if you haven’t felt it yourself. It leaves you wrecking your whole life, crying, screaming in pain, begging for it to stop, begging for mercy, no matter in what way.

This is exactly why 15x20 was a… joke? A prank? I haven’t figured out what happened yet, but 15x20 is not real. Let’s take a look at Deans reaction to Cas’ last death. Knowing that their bond got massively stronger and their feelings got even more intense, Deans reaction was:

“Sam. Hey, umm. Cas is dead. Can we get pie?”

[quinntamsin]

"Quinn." "Yes, Aurora," she asked the AI. An image of a cyan woman appeared in her HUD, dressed in a glowing pulsating knee length dress. "There are signs of Banished in the area, we are currently being tracked." The Spartan sighed at the words, and reached for her sniper rifle. "I hate Brutes."

Sorry, this took so long, depression is a real bitch. But’s discuss the POVs and my reactions to them from Halo Season 1 - Episode 5 “Reckoning”

---

Cold Open: Years ago, on Eridanus the Monster Haley visits the Reach for Life project. And we can see her zoning in on John as special. We can already see the almost stepford-like glance she gives her husband. Yup, he knows she's gonna be stealing kids! Dr. Keyes: We switch to Keyes, her father has taken command over the Eridanus defense. Kai and Keyes appear on friendlier base as she exits. Again getting ignored by momma, because neglect is still abuse. Keyes is gushing over the new discovery, and finds out she's off the project. But, she's obviously, figures out her dad has a big stake with Halsey. You can see her thinking as well as dealing with her emotions. Haley: Sing with me, HALEY IS A MONSTER BITCH! This entire thing, just keeps getting better and better. Looks like Adun, her assistant, is a out to get everyone killed because they didn't think to do further research on the fucking material. John-117 Master Chief is back to his stoic HELMET wearing self. (Seriously, people we don't need to see his face).  John having seeing trauma and worse from his past, is quiet. Cortana seems to be unable to reach him, and he's actively disassembling in front of Haley. Chief reunites with Kai, and she gives her the reality of her new feelings. He grounds her, and she questions it, and Cortana pushes Chief since he's being a moody helmetless asshole. John confronts Captain Keyes about Haley, and you can see it in his eyes. He's haunted, maybe John will pick up on it. God, I hope he does. John should kick Adun right now, but he's too busy staring at the larger part of the keystone. Our boy knows he's been fucked with, and he goes to the machine to learn even further. He jumps at Halsey, which she fucking deserves, and is then shut down Data style by Cortana. Ha Kwan: Rebel Girl is off in the middle of the desert on Madrigal, only alive from our assassin because Soren is a total bad ass. I think she's starting to realize, hopefully, that she's not as combat capable. And, yup, she's left behind because now she owes Soren. Seriously girl, you need to learn proper combat training and how to actually deliver. Kwan, girl, you seriously are living in a fantasy world. Sigh, like, I get it that she's almost dead, and her family was killed before her. But, again, I said she's delusional. Kwan, just doesn't grasp the level of consequence, and how life can just smack you. Hopefully, she learns something, she needs to get it through her head, that you have to make retreats to make gains in the future. And she runs' off, never mind. Soren returns, and there's no Kwan, the man is outright irritated. HOpefully he can track Rebel Princess, and doesn't kill her. At least, she's wait, nope she is. Holy shit, she got the drop on a Spartan. Now if only she could use that fucking knowledge, and stop getting OTHER people killed.  This fith was fucking amazing, and honestly, WE can see why they gave the Spartan's their pellets. Kai-125: Silver Team is prepping for the upcoming defense and further exploration of the ruins. Kai asks questions and receives a pretty blunt military level rebuke from Vannak. I do like how our girl is questioning the military indoctrination she's been put under. Kai is a little unhinged, she's questioning shit, and while I disagree with Chief punishing her, I am curious if this will provided another Kaiyes moment! Makee: The blessed one appears back on madrigal, and is leading her Elite cadre to search for what the UNSC already knows. The Elite seems to question her, but is far more respectful than one might think. Ah, time for more infiltration, and hopefully Chief doesn't fall for it. Conclusion:

WE finally got some action! I get, we were sepnding time setting it all up, but finally seing Jackals and Grunts in action! I have some more ideas for a Kaiyes, scene, and wow, if you haven’t read it, check out my Drabbles on my second favorite Halo OTP here!

[inspirehellfire]

Y'all....

I'm so stressed out I don't even know how to put it all into words or where to start or how to even begin to translate the internal screaming of my existence into English.

We need to move in 2 months and my boyfriend hasn't been able to find a legitimate job yet, and to be honest, he's not even trying to find one and its stressing me out. And we can't push back the move at all. Where we're staying has become incredibly unsafe. On top of the typical nonsense of our roommates throwing parties filled with drugs and strangers, and getting randomly black out on pills/booze and trashing the place, we had someone break in the middle of the day, which no one else will take seriously. They're still even leaving the fucking door unlocked. Plus, we learned that one of them has been stealing money from us in the form of over charging for utilities... staying really isn't an option.

On top of not being able to find a steady job, my boyfriend had a gun pulled on him doing side work the other day, and the dude who did it still owes him 300 dollars and he doesn't feel comfortable enough to try and collect. Partially due to that and partially just due to the scarcity of work, he's out of any way to make money until March at least, leaving my shitty service industry job the only thing to pay our bills and get us ready to move.

And I really can't take this job anymore. The turn around on shifts is awful, leaving me 4 hours to sleep most nights lately, and one of the supervisors I have to work directly with (as a peer, not an underling, thank god) has been sexually harrassing and assaulted one of our employees and even though a report has been made NOTHING has been done about it. It's so stressful and uncomfortable and I just can't take the environment anymore. I've been here almost 6 years and the company just keeps on getting worse and worse and the job harder and more draining... but what am I supposed to do? I don't have a degree or any other experience... I technically don't even have a high school diploma. And I need work, and while this job doesn't pay well, it pays better than entry level anywhere else.

Seasonal depression and normal depression and all my physical illnesses and the weather/stress/ no sleep combo are kicking my ass. I don't feel like I'm working towards anything anymore or making any progress towards a better life. I'm just stuck in a whirlpool of stress and work and cleaning and feeling like shit. I can't enjoy anything anymore....hobbies, tv, reading. It all just feels like more stress.

I know February is a hard month for me. Seasonal depression and my dad's death day and birthday falling in the same week and the worst of the weather for where I live... but DAMN. My aunt has also been in the hospital for the last 3 weeks facing organ rejection from her liver transplant and having to face that at the same time as my father's death... I feel estranged from my family and my heratige and utterly alone and disconnected from the world. I just want to cry all the time.

I've gained 10 pounds on top of the weight I've been trying to lose. I've had to shell out so much of my savings trying to fix my car and deal with one of the roommate's breaking lease... I feel helpless and trapped and awful.

And I have no one to talk about it to, hence the godawful tumblr rant. My boyfriend is under enough stress already and while I know I shouldn't, I feel as if I need to keep as much of this off his shoulders as I can. He's having such a rough time too and keeping it away from his the only thing I can do to help.

And the older I get the more I realize I lack deep friendships. Part of that I know is the whole 'raised in a cult and having to learn how to socialize with real human beings as an adult instead of as a child like a normal person' thing, but part of me wonders if I'm just not a good person, or if I'm broken in some indiscernible way and its too late for me to make normal, healthy human connections.

It just sucks, my dudes. And that's all I really have to say about it. -shrugs-

[svartalfhild]

2018, I Won’t Miss You

A.k.a. I call out this year for all the ways it fucked me over and reflect on a few good experiences.

This year was the first year I’ve ever had a smart phone, which ended up being pretty damn useful, even essential at some points.  However, the counterbalance was that I had to go through finding out how to live in a post-school existence, and that was not pretty, because it put me at all new levels of social isolation and uncertainty.  I stressed super hard about finding a new job.  I ultimately didn’t get one and lost hours at my current job because I thought I was going to be transitioning to a better job at a toy store, but they laid me off only a few weeks after hiring me to replace me with someone with better availability.  They said I could stay on as a “seasonal worker” but it’s past Christmas and I haven’t been asked to fill a single shift since they benched me in September, so saying I still work there is kind of a joke at this point.

The good news is, despite the stress of failing to get a better job, I’ve added art as an occasional source of extra income, starting with doing the cover illustration for a short story my mother published earlier this year and later with opening commissions to the online community.

My mental health didn’t have a super great year, though, especially in the first half.  On top of the job bullshit and the dealing with not knowing how to live life without school, I was feeling intensely bleak about my existence.  I was in an excruciating amount of emotional pain because of things I couldn’t control, and it festered because I had the free time to ruminate about how lonely and dejected I felt.  I hadn’t felt quite that bad in several years, actually.  It’s hard to compete with the shit I was going through in middle school, but this came alarmingly close. 

I think my biggest mistake was trying to force myself to be fine again as soon as possible when it took me a couple years to get past the shit that plagued me when I was 12.  I honestly think, though, that there was a little while there from about July to late September when I was coping pretty well.  I don’t know what happened in late spring to make that happen, but I was in a state of higher functioning for a bit in the summer.

The sad thing is that here at the end of the year, I am once again struggling with the same shit; I’m just a whole lot better with how that affects my behaviour towards other people now.  I do feel like I’ve learned how to better interact with people and shield those I love from the worst of my mental health nonsense.  In turn, I think that has greatly improved my relationships and made me less prone to beating myself up over the things I say.  Progress.

And hey!  I did manage to do some pretty rad things this year, despite all the crap my physical and mental health were hefting onto me.  I got on a plane for the first time and traveled by myself to Oregon to be with some of my closest friends, who I’d only ever known through the internet before.  We went to a convention together and had a really awesome time getting our asses kicked at AtlA themed dodgeball dressed as our DnD characters.  I went through a haunted house for the first time and found out that I’m too rational to be scared by a lot of that sort of stuff (but it was still fun).  I got to go to huge bookstore and see a first American edition of Fellowship of the Ring.  I think the best part of that whole trip, though, was just living with friends and getting a taste of what life without my family’s control could be like.  For once in my life, I trusted that everyone and everything was going to be okay, and for a few days, I was really happy.  Because of that, though, I spent a lot of the day that I left crying or trying not to cry.  Having so much of what you want and then having to leave it is...really upsetting, as it turns out.

But anyway.  I also managed to complete an application to grad school, so even though my whole Find A Good Job plan didn’t work, I still took a step towards some kind of life goal and I don’t have to have a total existential crisis just yet.  I don’t have high expectations about being accepted, but I do have some hopes and that’s something I can hold onto going into next year.

A lot changed with my family this past year.  Dealing with the wake of my grandfather’s sudden death was a major issue all year that seemed almost handled until my grandmother died just a couple months ago, which threw everything back into chaos and despair.  Death and loss have been an awful theme for me this year in general.  On top of my grandparents’ deaths, my dad’s best friend committed suicide, and a friend of mine, who I know to have been suicidal in the past, completely disappeared from the internet when I wasn’t looking, and I was unable to track her down to find out if she was okay.  Other friends lost people who were dear to them as well.  The world was ravaged by increasingly terrible disasters on top of that.  Needless to say, my empathy circuits are fucking fried.

Thankfully, life handed me some pretty great distractions from its bullshit, like an awesome DnD campaign and lots of time with assorted other TTRPGs, or numerous video games like Pillars of Eternity II: Deadire, Fallout 4, and Overwatch.  Netflix brought me countless hours of enjoyment, and my brother got me to watch all of Stargate SG1 with him, which I wasn’t super into at first, but it grew on me.  I started knitting again for the first time in years, because I love knitting scarves for people.  I did a lot of fic writing, but it wasn’t really fanfiction so much as additional content for my tabletop games.  Same goes for art. 

It’s been over a year now since I’ve posted any proper fanfic or fanart, which feels weird, but I think I’ve become so exhausted with the politics of being a fan content creator that I haven’t had the motivation for it.  It’s much easier to keep your passion for something going when you don’t hope to attract the attention of thousands of people, and instead you’re making things for a story you made up with your closest friends.  The only people whose attention you need to care about then are a handful of people who are already inherently invested.

Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t get sad about my work sometimes anyway, regardless of what I’m creating and for whom.  Depression is and has been a real dick this year, and it made me procrastinate on my grad app manuscript to the point where I had to stress years off my life cramming the creation of a 10k word original short story into a single month just before the deadline.  I managed it, though, and that’s the important thing.

I don’t know what to expect from 2019 except more nonsense, because there’s always copious amounts of nonsense.  Having high expectations, given what the past few years have been like, seems rather silly at this point.  I suppose what the new year shapes up to be will largely hinge on whether I get accepted to grad school in March or not.  If I do, then it’ll be a year of big change in my life, going away to live on my own in a different state.  If I don’t, then it’ll just be More Of Same, still living with my parents, working part-time at a shit food service job, looking for a new job, and tearing my hair out trying to get everything together for more grad school applications. 

One way or the other, though, I intend to try to finally get treatment for my mental illness.  I am tired of being like this and I’m tired of having my memory and focus abilities steadily destroyed by this shit.  If anything goes right next year, let it be that.

[mittensmorgul]

I'm shook. Dean actually admitted that Chuck doesn't care, that Chuck just left and ignored all of his responsibilities. I thought Dean was pro-Chuck, I mean, he called Chuck a bestie, didn't he? I'm not sure if he really resents Chuck or he was just too depressed to think straight. I'm still shook though. (Oh, and if you're feeling unwell I hope you recover. I wish you luck. May October be kind to you.)

Aahhh, thank you. :P And yeah, I’ve been sick since Walker-Stalker Philly a few weeks ago, stupid con crud that turned into bronchitis because I am a weakling with no immune system. :D

I’ve also been debating whether I should write tonight (fic, which I have a deadline of december 2 on and I’m not even close to finished on), or if I should write a long meta on Fathers, or if I should just go to sleep and try again tomorrow. But this bit about Chuck, and how Dean feels about Chuck as an absent father figure, would factor into that meta.

I mean Dean’s always held a grudge against God since… ever probably, but at least in text as far back as 5.02 when Cas set out in search of God to help stop the apocalypse. Chuck never really grew into anything Dean could really respect any more than that, you know? Even the burden Chuck laid on him at the end of s11 wasn’t what Dean wanted. Dean had his ENTIRE LIFE ruined because of Chuck’s inability to clean up his own mess, and then suddenly Dean fixes it FOR him, and Chuck just sashays off into the sunset with Amara and again lays the entire burden for taking care of EVERYTHING at Dean’s feet… but Dean’s still just a guy doing a job. He doesn’t have Cosmic God Powers to just fix stuff when it goes wrong. How the hell is he meant to take care of the entire world?

He does try, though. Oh, how he tries. Until it crushes and breaks him.

(and whoopsie this is actually shaping up to BE that meta on fathers I’ve been thinking about, so guess how I’m gonna spend the next hour! WHEEE! *tosses fic writing plans out the window*)

I’ll start with the easiest one: Dean referring to Chuck as his bestie. In 12.04:

Gail: Do you know God, gentlemen?Dean: Oh yeah. Yeah, we’re- we’re besties.

Said with about 9 tons of sarcasm. I’d find a gif to demonstrate just how done Dean was in that scene, but he was pretty much done with EVERYTHING in 12.04. I think that nicely sums up his attitude going into that conversation.

But yes, I 100% do feel like Dean resents Chuck– for laying this burden on him and not giving him ANYTHING else. He laid this out to Chuck’s face in 11.21:

Dean: Here’s the thing, um…Chuck… And I mean no disrespect. Um… I’m guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that’s great. That’s, you know – It’s fantastic. Um, but you’ve been gone a – a… long, long time. And there’s so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don’t know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?Chuck: I was aware, Dean.Dean: But you did nothing. And, again, I-I’m not trying to piss you off. You know, I don’t want to turn into a pillar of salt.Chuck: I actually… didn’t do that.Dean: Okay. People – People pray to you. People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing.Chuck: You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on – Real hands-on for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created… would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. [Sighs] It’s enabling.Dean: But it didn’t get better.Chuck: Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.Dean: Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

And that’s it, really. The crux of Dean’s feelings toward Chuck. And that never really changed. Dean still had to take the burden of sacrifice on HIMSELF (carrying the Soul Bomb to Amara) because Chuck didn’t or couldn’t or just wouldn’t. It wasn’t Chuck that saved the world there, it was Dean using his words with Amara, dragging Chuck kicking and screaming into the conversation.

Okay, not kicking and screaming, more like whimpering and huddling… whatever… :P

But Chuck told Dean not to confuse him with John, and mistake his own “complicated upbringing” for Chuck’s “parenting” of the entire universe. And yet… as above, so below. And Chuck himself “chose” Dean as his mirror.

Then we have Dean’s own complicated Father Issues, from how John raised him, to how he was forced to raise Sam. As he said in 12.22 to Mary, he was forced to not only be a father to Sam, but a mother as well. And it wasn’t fair to Dean, and he hated Mary for her deal that put him in that position in the first place. What was unsaid there, but plain as day anyway, was that he hated John for it, too.

Lizbob and I were talking earlier about how Jack was describing the fact that he WAS his mother for a while before he was born, and how the very act of his birth sucked the life out of Kelly, and how that was a horrifying metaphor for motherhood, but Dean has said it himself, of Sam. Back in 10.03, when Sam was curing him of being a demon:

DEAN: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you! Maybe I was just … tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire since … [Dean laughs.] Forever. Or maybe … Maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn’t for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life!SAM: This isn’t my brother talking.DEAN: You never had a brother! Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what: I quit.SAM: No. No, you don’t. You don’t get to quit. We don’t get to quit in this family! This family is all we have ever had!DEAN: Well, then, we got nothin’.SAM: Would you say that to Dad?DEAN: Dad? Oh, there’s a prize. There’s a man who brainwashed us into wasting our lives fighting his losing battle!

Sam’s “very existence sucked the life” out of Dean’s life, just like Jack literally did to his mother, just TWO EPISODES AFTER Dean broke through to Mary with his confession about the horrors of his life, and his anger over having to be both mother and father to Sam.

And this was about the point I hit my EUREKA! moment over why the idea of Dean being forced to be a parent to Jack just pushed every NOPE NOPE NOPE button in my entire body. Because he’s JUST NOW finally letting go of feeling like his entire life had been one long forced obligation to be a parent to Sam, and now here’s this new pseudo-manbaby with frightening and potentially Dangerous Magical Abilities who needs parenting and looking after that was foisted on him against his will AGAIN.

I mean, it’s like the ultimate in Cosmically Un-Fucking-Fair.

And even the notion that Cas should be responsible for “parenting” the giant nougat-loving nuke in lost-and-found clothes just… sits so wrong with me for the exact same reason. How long has Cas been a guardian to Dean? How big was the whole “You aren’t our babysitter” theme last season? That Cas never really had time to internalize before Jack hijacked Cas’s “babysitter” instincts for his own purposes?

Yes, it’s sweet and I can see that the parallels between Jack and Cas are being written really well so far, but the cutesy Cas-as-Jack’s-Daddy stuff just physically sickens me (which is saying something considering how physically sick I am as a baseline here…). I don’t think it’s “cute.” And I’m saying this as someone who LOVES Jack as a character.

Kelly (who was literally already “dead” at the point she met Cas, and was technically– according to Jack himself– already “Jack” at that point) had sized up Cas and decided that he would make a good guardian for Jack, and that Dagon would make a bad guardian for him, and took matters into her own hands in order to make that happen. Literally took Cas’s hand without his permission, after he’d declined to touch her stomach, and then forced his hand again after literally hijacking Baby and driving Cas to the scene of her “vision.” Then literally taking Cas’s hand again to force events to unfold as they had in the vision, without regard to any of the other horrors that played out as a result– such as Joshua having been killed by Dagon, the Colt being destroyed, Sam and Dean being hurt, Cas nearly getting killed, and then zapping enough power through Cas to kill Dagon, a being of a type we’ve only ever seen harmed by the Colt and the Lance of Michael. It was clear early on that Jack had Serious Power and yet we see he has practically NO CONTROL over it.

I am soooo tempted to apply a little bit of Miriam’s description of Becky to Jack… 

He sees something he wants and just takes it without a thought for who it might hurt. He took candy from the vending machine in 13.01, but… he kinda did that to Cas, too. Even before he was born, he saw the sort of devotion Cas had to the people he cared about and even if he didn’t understand WHY, he understood through Kelly that this was something he would need for himself. So he took it, even if it might hurt other people.

Just like he flung his power out at the sheriff when she touched him while he was being assaulted by angel radio. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but he was already in pain and frightened and that’s just how his power works for him right now… as if it’s “him but not him.” Almost like it’s an independent entity that’s in Extreme Self-Protection Mode.

That’s how Miriam described Dean, as someone who takes things and breaks things no matter who it hurts. But really… that’s not Dean, and that’s not Jack either– or at least not what Jack would CHOOSE to be. But from the outside, it kinda looks that way.

So, yeah, I LOVE the idea that Sam is finally getting a turn at forced parenthood from the other side of the equation. It fits beautifully with his own arc toward self-forgiveness and acceptance of his own powers and feelings of whether or not he was inherently evil because of what had been done to him as a baby. I LOVE the idea that Sam will get to experience being a father and mother to someone going through much the same things he did all his life (albeit as an adult, which was not a luxury Dean had when he was forced into a parental role at the age of almost five).

But for Dean? I’m horrified that this has been forced on him again. And for Cas? The fact it’s not something he chose of his own free will, nor gave informed consent to before he was sock-puppeted into becoming Jack’s babysitter… yeah, I find it moderately to seriously disturbing…

And for the sake little baby Jesus, I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS EVIL. I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS NOT “GOOD.” Good and evil are entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

But Jack’s power did something to Kelly. And it did something to Cas. It wasn’t done with malicious intent, but IT WAS DONE TO THEM. And it’s something that severely limited their free will. We’ve seen how Jack’s power works, without his active CHOICE to make stuff happen. He’s on a fight or flight sort of level with it right now, and it just happens to be set to overkill, you know? I’m sure he’ll get a better handle on it eventually, but I think it’s also going to be a vulnerability that others may try to exploit (enter Asmodeus, or potentially AU Michael, and possibly eventually Lucifer… this isn’t going to be an easy journey for Jack).

Anyway I think I’ve wandered so far off topic of your original question, but congrats, you won the Which Question Will Result In Actual Meta award this week! :P

I think it’s been more than an hour. *checks clock* *what even is time anymore* It’s definitely been more than an hour.

[bolbianddolanhouse]

BNHA self insert AU [Book 3]

New? Read here! Then here!

Chapter 10: Hey Can I Have a Sip of Your Water?...

It’s Wednesday my dudes and I made my decision to go with Sir Nighteye’s agency. Like what kind of idiot won’t take up that offer?

-Wednesday night, dorms-

I video call my mom after a few days of not hearing from home. Hanaka and Tensei are bad at communicating with anybody, so all my texts get unanswered for days.

“Hola? Ma?” I say as the image of my parents sitting on the couch pulls up.

“Te oigo Iwata” she responds “Como estas mijo?”

“I’m fine, I just finished eating dinner”

“Are you sleeping well son?” asked dad with a chop “It’s internship season isn’t it? Hate to have you get sick before you could go.”

“I have been sleeping well, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about” I took a deep breath “I made my decision and submitted it today.”

“Oh?! Who did you choose?” Mom asked with excitement.

“I choose the Sir Nighteye agency” I said with confidence but was short lived when my parents made this confused and concerned face “Whats with that face?!”

“It’s just that...I thought that man retired already” Mom broke the silence “Did you see the reason why they choose you?”

“It said ‘The order of Sir Nighteye’ and it called out to me that I shouldn’t ignore it” 

“HE PERSONALLY REQUESTED FOR YOU?!” Mom screamed “Mijo that concerns me a little.”

“Why?” Dad and I asked in unison.

“Well, that’s a code blue in the field, a personal request to a particular agent” Mom got in her pondering pose “What got me a little fucked up is that, he doesn’t know you or of you! He knows me but I haven’t worked with him since the incident. That was like, what, nearly 18 years ago?”

“Wait, he doesn’t know you have children?!” I was trying to make sense of things.

“Nope, I have all my kids under the same type of protected citizen status as me” she explained “If anyone tries to pry information about me or your dad, it will show that I don’t exist nor if we have kids. That’s why I have to do all the legal paperwork in person at your schools, I have to confirm that you exist and not a random kid without papers.”

“I guess that makes sense” I sort of understood what that meant “But did I make a bad move?”

“Oh no! He’s to be trusted, among with everyone at that agency. I’m just confused on that personal invite” She changed her body language “Well, maybe I’m thinking into it too much! He might’ve predicted something where you do something to benefit them if you chose them. Either way, I’m proud of you mijo.”

“Sir Nigheye is a very well accomplished hero! I am very proud of you to get their attention” Dad added.

“Thanks...don’t tell uncle Tensei that I didn’t choose his over Sir Nighteye” I begged them.

“What did Manual put on your offer part?” sighed Dad stressfully.

I sighed with the same energy “For being my favorite nephew- Cool Uncle Tensei”

“That’s cringe what the fuck” Mom cringed “When he gave me an offer, he just put ‘quirk’ on the line.”

“He put ‘For my favorite little brother- Cool Big Bro’. Like he isn’t my only brother!”

“Manual doesn’t get paid enough for this shit” Mom sighed with us “When is that man retiring?”

“Whenever Tensei decides to retire” Dad replied with a chuckle “I asked him that too when I took on the role of head hero of the agency.”

“Wait, dad you don’t own the agency?”

“Hm? I don’t, it’s Tensei’s agency and he calls the shots” Dad chopped “I’m just the public face of the agency, your uncle is the boss.”

That was all news to me, hot tea if you will.

“Yea, it’s not much of a secret though. Tensei gets more coverage than you do still” She said to Dad “But that’s because he’s hot and single.”

“Am I not hot?!”

“You are to me~” Mom laid on the charm “But nobody is swooning over you because you look like stern business man in all of your photoshoots” She gave him a peck and wrapped her arms around him “They don’t need to know how hot you really are, because you’re all mine~”

“Okay, hi, I’m still here” I interrupted the moment, triggered by all those things I saw with the device “I just wanted to see what’s happening at home and tell you that.”

“Not much is happening at home, it’s gotten very quiet now that it’s just Hanaka and Tensei here” Mom pouted “I miss you so much, wish I could hug you right now.”

“I miss being home too, cooking for myself for the day sucks.”

“Oh why don’t you meal prep?” suggested Dad “That what I did when I lived with Tensei, we meal prepped our lunches so we didn’t spend money on fast food. And I know you’re picky and don’t like long food lines.”

“That’s- something I didn’t consider” That expanded my brain “Damn that’s genius, that’s a whole 45 minutes of sleep added everyday, just for prepping ahead of time.”

“Sometimes I have good ideas” Dad adjusted his glasses with a smirk.

“Bold statement coming from someone that put cooked oatmeal in cookies their first time cooking” Mom roasted.

“EW THAT’LL MAKE THE COOKIES ALL MUSHY” I yelled and gagged “Why?!”

“I didn’t know if it was supposed to be cooked or not!” Dad defended himself “It was my first time baking anything and I did it for your mom’s birthday when I lived with her.”

“I’m just glad you figured it out by the time you had kids!”

“Same” Mom agreed.

“Everyone is a critic in this house” Dad grumbled.

  We talk for a while longer before saying our goodbyes. As I started to get comfy in bed, I snapped my eyes wide open realizing something....mom mentioned the incident that happened almost 18 years ago. But I recently turned 17.....OH SHIT THAT’S A DIFFERENT INCIDENT! My incident (at least the one that I know of) happened when I was 5, when the old house got broken into with us inside. And that was 12 years ago, so this might be important! I scrambled to write this down in the timeline, who knows what else I might of missed in that conversation or in others! Now I’m a little nervous for this internship, what happened right before I was born?

-The next day, Homeroom-

“Okay I know I’ve been pushing this back every other day BUT I swear this is the last time” sensei said after roll “So if you please take out the syllabus and take out a pencil.”

The class groaned because we all know what he’s gonna ask us to do. Like he said, he’s been pushing back the semester project. I guess now it’s gonna the year end project because that’s the next available space to add anything before the school year ends! Things are just popping up all the time, villain threats and attacks, there was a false alarm kidnapping and everyone was on lockdown, and an order to have us be ready for a school attack. At this point, my nerves have been fried past my limit that I basically run on adrenaline at the drop of the hat. To be honest, I still don’t know if I’m ready to do the real deal when it comes. But it’s end of September and I feel the nippy of that cold weather I’ve been craving. Nippy out, sweaters out!

“...so you have a week to finalize your projects when you come back from your internships. After that is finals week, so be prepared for that.”

I raise my hand “Sensei, one of the test days conflicts with my hero final.”

“Oh? Hm... then I’ll talk it out with your sensei” He writes that down on his notes “Thank you for bringing that up now.” 

We go through our usual training and it was kicking my ass today. Well, more like I was kicking my own ass today as I’m trying to train as much as possible to show that agency that I was the best choice. Though I did and passed my agent licensing, I still feel like I’m not at my fullest potential. Problem is that I don’t know what else to do to further my abilities aside from getting support items but even they don’t know what to give me. I wish somebody could give me a helpful hint like in video games.

Aside from my own short comings...the school dance is coming up and I’m not going. Dances aren’t my thing and it’s not like I have a girlfriend that’s begging me to go with them. Otherwise, I’d go. Beizu and I have a whole boys night planned since two others don’t want to go either. Just guys being dudes.

-Night of the Dance, dorms-

“I made queso dip!” I announced as I floated in the shared space with the giant, ugly mug full of hot cheese.

“That mug is seriously the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!” chortled Kopi “Can’t believe your mom left this thing for prosperity.”

“Can’t believe that thing is older than any of us!” added the other classmate “But who has the chips?! I wanna dig in!”

“Our delivery is going come any minute now” Beizu checked the time “Don’t start sipping out of that thing.”

“Ew why would we-”

“I was talking to Iwa” Beizu clarified “Can’t leave him alone without him turning full goblin mode.” He squinted at Iwa “This bitch would sleep in a nest of pillows and plushies if his parents didn’t love him enough!”

The boys looked at me with a range of emotions of disgust “What? I know better now! Besides, I’d sip out of this when everyone had enough.”

“You two known each other since kinder or something?” asked Kopi “I don’t think I ever see you two apart outside of class time.”

“We go way farther than that!” I chuckled “I’ve known Bei my entire life! Our mom’s raised us together and I don’t know a life without him. We went to the same schools and everything! We know we’re separate people with different tastes, but we just feel better going through things together.”

“So you two dating or?” asked the other classmate.

I choked on air “Oh god no! What makes you say that?”

“The shared room, the lunches together, the random snuggling in the shared space” Kopi listed “The pet names, the matching outfits...are you sure you’re not?”

“Nope, we’re just two boys that like to snuggle” Beizu clarified “Try it sometime! It’s a good bonding experience.”

“Yup! Snuggling or having as much as a hug everyday combats depression” I slid in with the scientific facts “So don’t be so uptight and judgmental, it’s not gay if you do it for your mental health.”

“You know what, you right” Kopi came to terms with it “And I have been down lately, haven’t hugged my mom since we moved in.”

“I’m gonna hug the depression outta you bro!” exclaimed the other classmate as he came in for a firm hug “I got you!”

“Wow, thanks bro” Kopi said with his eyes watering and hugging back “Fuck masculine culture, we cuddling and shit.”

There was a knock at the door “Oh that’s our delivery!” Beizu gets up “I’ll get it.”

“I got the goods for boys night!” Uncle Jin exclaimed as Beizu opened the door “Hello everyone, nephews. I got your requested drinks, chips and fried chicken meal from that one place I can’t pronounce” He handed over the bags “I also added a few extras goods for a really good boys night.” He gave us a look after he said that “Well, I’m off! I’ll be seeing my nephews later, stay out of legal trouble boys!”

“Wait he’s both of your uncles? How-”

“My mom and his biological aunt were best friends with him since their UA days” I explained “He’s an orphan, so he considers my mom and his aunt family. So when my mom had kids, he took on the role of uncle and we were just raised to call him that.”

“Yup, his siblings also call my aunt their aunt too” Beizu brought over the food “Just to make things easier, they’re our aunty and uncle.”

“That’s so cool that your families are just so close like that!” Kopi said, wide eyed “Do you feel like cousins? Since you were raised together?”

“Hm, it’s more like brothers” I thought about it “It’s hard to explain, all I know is that I’m very close and comfortable around Bei and his mom like we were always family.”

“Okay I’ll say it!” blurted out our other classmate “Your uncle looks like a K-pop star, is he a retired K-pop boy?”

“No....he’s just Korean” I didn’t know how else to explain that “I will say that he gets stopped on the street a lot for that same reason. So many girls claim he looks like Hobi from BTS. But alas, it’s just our uncle Jin.”

“What did he pack as an extra?” Kopi asked as Beizu brought over the bag.

“Lets see....OH SHIT!” I said as I took out a box from the bag “TWINKIES!”

“NO WAY! WHAT ELSE?!” Beizu was getting feral as he took the bag to see what else is in there “LUCKY CHARMS!!!!!!”

We were hollering and circling each other like howler monkeys, full feral mode with the boxes of junk food in each hand.

“What’s that?” asked Kopi cautiously.

We hard stopped our hollering and turned toward the two confused boys.

“Fellas, I’m about to introduce to you the reason America is number one in obesity” I said, ripping open the box “This is a Twinkie, these are so good and hard to get imported into the country, that my mom has a supply of these under lock and key somewhere in the house so we don’t eat through them in one sitting.”

“And these are Lucky Charms cereal, the actual cereal part is basically cat kibble” Beizu tossed them a mini box to each of them “But the marshmallow bits are what make the cereal so iconic. Also a rare import and I basically only have these when I’m over at his house on special occasions.”

Kopi had the first bite of Twinkie “Oh..my..god...What the fuck” he gasped and covered his mouth “I said a bad word! I get it now, if Japan freely imported this, we’re doomed as a country” He took another bite “This is dangerous.”

“Oh wow my teeth hurt already from all the sugar in this” said the other classmate, munching on Luck Charms “But it’s so good, this is a children’s cereal?! I get the hype.”

And thus boys night was just a sugar fueled, anti-prom... We watched Shrek movies and had a handstand contest, followed by never-have-I-ever and destroying masculinity by introducing Kopi to some skincare. That boy admitted to washing his face with shampoo OF COURSE I GOT OFFENDED! And we all had a sugar crash on the couch by the time everyone came back from the after party. One of the most memorable boys night if I say so!

More fast forwarding to the interesting part! The internships! Beizu is going to Hokkaido and I’m going to the capital. But first, we had to do some shopping for Beizu for some cold weather gear.

“Did that parka fit Bei?” I asked as I held an armful of thermals outside the fitting room “Also what size are you in pants? There’s a sale on thermals and I grabbed a few before these old women swarmed the rack.”

“It fit fine! You’re making such a fuss over this” chuckled Beizu “Why? I just need a parka and socks.”

“You’re gonna need thermals too! Hokkaido is predicted to have record cold while you’re there” I held the thermals up to his body to see which ones would fit “Remember what Uncle Jin and Mr Hitoshi told us about their times in Hokkaido?! So excuse me for wanting my best friend to stay warm.”

He just looked at me shuffling my armful of thermals “You’re so cute when you fuss over me, like a mom.”

“Shut up and try these on” I tossed him the items playfully “I’ll be looking at gloves if you need me.”

“Okay, mom” He chortled before going back into the fitting room.

We don’t really go clothes shopping together, we have two different aesthetics. He dresses very average, not that much colorful or statement. I on the other hand dress like a ‘Gucci Goblin’ as Tensei put it. I love a statement piece, bold colors and patterns that clash just right! Bonus points if its designer! You can catch me on my goblin shit in some knee-high socks, shorts and oversized sweater. So with my shopping mentality and Beizu’s lax approach to shopping, I’m often the one doing all thorough fittings and getting things ‘just in case’. One of us had to be that friend, or we’d be the ugliest dudes around!

“Okay I’m back” said Beizu as he walked over to where I was “These ones fit, was that all that needed to be fitted?”

“Yes, I got the gloves” I held them up for him to grab “Now we can go to checkout.”

“Great because I’m hungry! We should hit up the food court” Beizu suggested “What’s the craving for today?”

I thought about it “Lowkey want to inhale like 6 cinnamon rolls with an iced coffee, But if I’m keeping it real, we’re just gonna end up at Panda Express.”

“Don’t orange chicken shame me!”

“We’ve had authentic Chinese food Bei!” I retorted “And yet you still want the borderline neon orange shit!”

“Sometimes the neon orange shit appeals to me more than thousand year old egg in congee” huffed Beizu as we approached the line to pay “But that’s why I asked what’s the craving for today.”

“Fine, how about we get some udon?” I compromised with my arms crossed “Because I wanna get in that cold weather coziness.”

Some of our favorite winter time rituals we have is eat udon and binge watch Steven Universe. But of course, I’m picky, so my favorite udon is kitsune with extra fish cake and the fried tofu extra fried. Otherwise I won’t eat it, I hate soggy food!

“Excited for your internship?!” Beizu asked me as I was carefully eating my first bite of the hot udon “It’s going to be the first time we’ve been apart for so long.”

“It’s only two weeks” I chuckle “But I am excited, what sort of things will I learn from their agency?! Yea I’m going to see that broccoli man in that time span, but they have some of the best agents there! Plus they have the most secure agency in the country! And the company had a part in that.”

“I didn’t know that! That’s so cool!” gawked Beizu “It’s like visiting a piece of history...say, why don’t you take the device?”

I stopped my next bite of food “Wait, why? I thought you wanted to work on it some more.”

“Just giving it the final outer shell to house all the extras I’ve added to look more uniform” He picked up a noodle “To be honest, I can do that when we come back. But it’s functional and with full charge that’ll last the 2 weeks, so why not?”

I watched as he slurped down his noodle “I suppose I can see some of the past with it, don’t know how much will help us in our little investigation.”

“If you ask what year they got their security system, it can tell us whether or not your mom installed it or not.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Beizu slurps his noodles loudly “My mom told me that for security systems, depending on which on it is, in the early years of the company was installed by your mom or my dad.”

“Wait, that’s tea.”

“No it’s strawberry Calpico” he held up his drink.

“NO! I mean, what you said was a juicy piece of information!”

“Oh! Yea I guess it is” He set the pink drink down “Mom was getting a little chatty with me over video call a few nights ago, it started off with her uncovering a few old things from the attic and ended up with her telling me a little more about my dad.”

“What did you learn?”

“That he loved working at the company because it let him be himself while being needed. He was the first one your mom hired to work for her!” He picked up some broth “In the early years, he’d do the marketing and the assembling along with finding more displaced heroes and agents that needed work. The company wouldn’t be where it is now without him putting in that initial effort.”

“That’s amazing! I think I’ll find something to contribute to that” I was moved by that “Hopefully I won’t get too swamped with agent stuff.”

We hurried to our dorms after our meal to finish packing. Almost too excited to sleep that night for the information we might uncover! So many things that could happen, wonder if I’ll be prepared enough to follow along.

-Morning of departure day, train station-

“Got your scarf?” I fussed over Beizu one last time before departing “Don’t want you to catch a cold or sore throat before getting there!”

“I have it right here! Relax Iwa!” Beizu put his hands on my shoulders “We’ll be fine, you have the device, I have all my gear... I’m just going to miss you.”

“We’ll video-call, it won’t be too bad” I got startled by the station announcements “I can never understand what the fuck these people say over the speakers! But you better go to the waiting dock, it’s almost 11am.”

“I know, let me just” He brought me in for a tight hug “One last hug until we reunite!”

I hugged him back “Okay, one more hug.”

After maybe a minute, he broke the hug and grabbed his luggage “I love you Iwa.”

I smile “I love you too Bei.” I watch him walk out of sight and I heading toward the pick up area. The capital isn’t too far from the station, it’s maybe an hour car ride, so it was arranged for me to get picked up.

A very official looking town car rolls up to the curb.

“Iwata Iida?” asked a voice from the cracked window of the town car.

“Yes, that’s me!” I stand at alert.

“No need for formalities!” said the voice as the window rolled all the way down “hop on in Iwata! It’s nice to see-”

“EWWWW WHAT’S BROCCOLI MAN DOIN’ HERE?!” I said with disgust “Naw I rather walk to the capital!”

“Please don’t! Your dad requested that I escort you to the agency” the green haired man got out of the car to stop me “He’s going to arm chop me to death if I don’t insure your safe arrival.”

“That’s not my problem!” I huffed as I walk away.

“We got you McDonalds” said another voice from the backseat window “and a large coffee.”

I stopped and did a 180 “YES SIR!” I jumped in the back of the town car as broccoli man put my luggage in the trunk. I looked at the man in the backseat, he had a centipede head.

“Hello son of Ingenium and Agent 19, let me introduce myself” politely bowed the man “I am Centipeter, Sir Nighteye’s right hand man, I handle the internships for both hero and agent departments.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Iwata El Roca” I return the bow “You can call me however you’d like, er, I guess it’s professional to address me by my agent number? In that case I’m agent 88.”

He hands me the food and large coffee “It’s an honor to have the son of two very good associates of ours! I didn’t know Agent 19 was a mother!” commented Centipeter “I thought she just put in all her energy in the company! I went to her wedding after all, so I know your father as well. Good on them for having their only son to carry-”

“Huh? I have 3 other siblings” I raised an eyebrow, mouthful of egg McMuffin “I do this agent shit for me! Fuck whatever my old man said and my mom is an excellent mother, CEO and activist.”

“Don’t argue or lecture him” tiredly sighed Deku as he drove out into the street “He’s as vulgar as his mother, and we all know how that ends.”

“Broccoli man is right” I sipped my coffee “Don’t try it, I will roast ya ass.”

“Well, I guess I misspoke” Centipeter cleared his throat “anyways, it’s a pleasure that you took on Sir’s request! Rarely does he have a look at agent interns.”

“Wait what do you mean?”

“Sir is a very busy man and is more focused on his top heroes” The right hand man explained “But he asked for you before somebody went to the display! He didn’t explain why BUT I have a feeling he peeked into the future and his ability to do so is to be trusted.”

That didn’t settle that well with me “Huh, then I guess.”

“He even predicted that you wouldn’t get in the car unless we had 2 egg McMuffins, 2 hashbrowns and a sausage burrito with a large coffee” he looked at a sticky note “with two sugars, no creamer. And to make sure Deku doesn’t show his face...oh dear I messed that one up” he chuckled nervously “But you’re here, and I can’t wait to see what Sir has in store for you!”

I peeked into the bag, and I’ll be damned that it was exactly my breakfast McDonalds order! Thats creepy that this stranger knows what I like and dislike but mom claims that he doesn’t know I exist?! Something is up and I’ll get to the bottom of it...after I chug this coffee to strike dominance in this town car. 

I get led into this bougie ass building that had like 5 layers of security for anyone to enter. Next was the part I was dreading, the sleeping quarters. Mom said she had own room and so did Lili, but they’re the only exception because I’m a boy. So I have to mix with the other men that I HOPE they don’t harass me! It seemed like I was alone to settle in the neatly arranged room of bunk beds and wall lockers...until I was grabbed by the shoulder and yanked back.

“BOSS WHAT ARE- you’re not the boss lady?!” said this man with dark skin and green eyes “But you look so much like her, whats your name boy?”

I was still a little shaken up “I’m Iwata Iida, I MEAN Agent 88!” I stumbled on my words “I’m just settling in! I don’t know who you’re referring too and I’m sorry if I was disturbing you.”

“Don’t be scared boy, I should be apologizing to you” he let go of me and bowed “It’s just that you look so much like somebody I worked for. The curly hair and short stature from behind got me excited that she came back to do some agent work for us.”

“Oh? Do you often get borrowed agents?”

“Nope, it’s usually just her- OH WHERE ARE MY MANNERS! I’m Agent 711, Captain of the agent fleet here” He introduced himself “I originally came in here to see if the intern was here yet but it seems like I got on the wrong foot with you.”

“It’s no problem! I just finished settling in and ready for the next part.”

“Good! Lets take you to the captains office.”

I go into this office with a frosted glass door, where another man was sitting on the desk, he looks up with his sharp gaze “No way, theres no way!”

I tensed up “Umm sorry?”

The captain shut the door “Dude I KNOW! HE LOOKS JUST LIKE HER!”

“No, take a look at this!” the man on the desk “Sir just dropped these off to me, look at the tag and the info page.”

The captain got the file from his associate, his eyes widened the more they read through the page “Dude...he’s her son?!”

“Right?! I didn’t know she had other kids!” the associate turned to me “Let me introduce myself, I’m agent 404, Co-captain of this agent fleet.”

“Nice to meet you! I’m sure you already know who I am” I bowed politely “I promise to keep up and be worth the trouble.”

“Wow, sorry I just can’t get over that you’re 19′s son! I suspected she did have more but she never brings you or family up” responded the man “I feel so old, seems like it was just last month I was still working for her.”

“Oh yea, you worked for her too! I always forget” chuckled the captain “404 and I worked for your mom before working here, we owe your mom for helping us in the beginning of our careers.”

“Really? It seems like mom helped everyone I’ve encountered back in the day!” I was started to get a little annoyed by all these occurrences.

“Yup, your mom got me out of a legal funk!” pipped up the captain “I got framed for sexual assault at the agency I started working at right out of high school. Your mom suspected racial bias and she turned up that my accusation was a scapegoat to a slew of other legal problems with that agency. Of course nobody would hire me with that mess attached to my name, so she offered me a job at the company until that mess clears up or some other agency wanted to take me in” the man smiled and leaned on the desk “I was so happy that she took me in, otherwise I’d be homeless or dead within a month! She helped me get the job here too, Sir trusts her word and he hired me after about 4 years working for your mom.”

“Your mom helped me when my day job let me go and I was between agent work. And I was there up until the company moved locations, then I started here” the co-captain smiled “She’s such a lovely woman, if she didn’t have that fussy assistant, I’d be her afternoon appointment if you know what I mean!”

“Eww you wanted to fuck my mom” I blurted.

The men turned red.

“Oh you’re exactly like her” laughed the captain “Honest and vulgar! I like that!”

“Yup, but lets get on with why you’re here” the co-captain got back on topic “Initially you were supposed to meet with Sir, but no surprise, he had to attend to his top heroes for some reason. So he asked for us to do the tour and other routine things.”

I get to meet the other agents and got to see the other parts of the agency. The routine was a not as exciting as I thought but the whole thing that I was supposed to meet with Sir Nighteye was at the back of my mind the whole time. What does he want from me? What makes me so special?

-Chapter 10, End-

<Previous - Next>     

[shadottie]

Hey my dudes, take care of yourself. Talk to someone, write in a journal, vent on the internet, just do something for yourself. 

Anxiety and Depression(tm) are shitters, don’t let them stop you from reaching help or some clarity.

I find myself wanting to vent a lot, and in hand, I want to find a way to battle what warrants that venting-- for not myself, but to help others. For the hundreds of people are following me, if it would mean something to read a post that another is struggling and there is a way out-- that there is a way to help yourself.

There is.  There always is.

There’s that part of me that’s like, “I don’t want to be a bother” “My problems are valid compared to someone else’s” “I don’t deserve to have these feelings compared to what others go through”

It’s a difficult thing to deal with. You want to convince yourself that you’re worth it, that you can depend on somebody, but at the same time, you don’t want to worry them unnecessarily. Going to another might look like you’re betraying the trust of another. Venting to the vast space of the internet than any one person in particular may look negligent too. Sometimes? Sometimes you just want to scream into the abyss. If someone reaches back, great.

I’m kind of there right now. I’m going to do it than let guilt deter me. 

I’m stressed out.  I know I am. I had such a stupid panic attack today, yesterday, the day before that. It’s been consistent sensations like I’m on the verge of like blanking out, when I can feel that flight or fight response kicking in. It’s a little similar to when I get too emotional over situations, and a sudden flip of the switch has me apathetic. Those weird sensations are always tied to stress or an anxiousness. I’m otherwise fine when I get up and do something else like clean or take a walk. There’s nothing wrong with me. 

What could it possibly be? Who knows. Anxiety tells me it’s gotta be something. I should check the internet right? Consult for the millions of possibilities of how I might be dying right now in this very moment, when I’ve “”””Survived”””” a couple of other instances that aren’t at all consistent besides when I’m stressing out. I don’t do that webmd shit anymore. 

My brain just does this dumb shit where I have a lot going on for me, instead of stressing about that, something starts hurting on my body. I start to feel dizzy. I suddenly lose focus and blank sometimes, or can’t finish my thoughts. Clearly, I’m fucking dying in this very moment. Like, no? No. 

I haven’t been taking care of myself either. No wonder I feel like shit. dumbfuck, I’m. eating for the first time at 3:30 in the afternoon and have had like... coffee and a couple cups of water. You’ve been up since 9. Coffee is dehydrating but also pumps your heart rate. Like??? no shit.

Today, I was panicking so hard for the sensation I was feeling, I left the apartment to go for a walk and that fatigue came back instead of rationalize myself and talk it out with Cory. This was before I ate something, mind you, and not drinking as much as I should for water. Like. Duh. But no, Anxiety’s like ‘see, something’s wrong. You can’t run from it. You have something in your brain that’s killing you’

And you know what? Technically, I do. It’s this anxiety and depression bullshit that I’m going to kick the ever living shit out of so I can have a normal life, so I can lead a healthier and happy life with Cory too. 

Why do I do this? Why does my brain do this? Why can’t I just apply that stress and anxiety to worrying about a deadline, or if I’m going to get this done by a certain day? Or... ya know, whatever’s bothering me that has nothing to do with my body’s malfunctions. I’ve survived this shit plenty. It started at a tender age of like...preteens, give or take.

Despite everything, my little 4-H club elected me to be their leader. I’ve always been a follower. I’ve never had anyone depend on me. Then this, this happened. Something I was scared to do, being such a wallflower at the time (and I still am, letsberealBUT...). It’s.. silly to think back on now, to think how far I’ve come as a person since then.  At the time, I thought my heart was going to stop while I slept. There were nights I convinced myself that my kidney was going to explode, or an organ was giving out. I’d keep a hand to my pulse as if a 12-year-old would have any way to discern a weird heartbeat. My parents would sit with me until I was on the verge of passing out.  We’d talk from time to time. I started listening to soundtracks to help put me to sleep. They’d help me think up stories for what was going on depending on a track. They took me to the hospital once when I had an especially bad attack. The doctor asked me if I wanted to take medicine. I wanted to try to fix it myself. (And, honestly, the thought of taking medicine for this scared me and I thought I’d be weaker for it at the time. That’s not the case.  Everyone’s different, and as long as that medicine is used how it should be, to help and heal, so you can be your own person again on your own one day.)  

I kept listening to tunes.  I kept thinking up stories to help me forget, to help me sleep at night. I kept falling asleep midway through a journal entry about how hard I crushed on a boy, or some event at school, or writing my own silly Zelda fanfics, or whatever.  It worked. I got over it in time.

This won’t be any different. What I wouldn’t give if those were the feelings I was having now instead. I know that song and dance.  I could handle it. But, I’m growing. The body gets older, things are changing all the time.  There isn’t any possibility of me actually being hurt, I just need to take care of myself. I’m fixing my sleep schedule, eating healthier when I do eat.  I need to eat more. I am getting into better habits about water, drinking it with Miyo or whatever if I’m bored with just drinking water.

I’m stressed. 

 I’m scared. 

I hit lows where I don’t care about eating. I don’t care about ...well, taking care of myself.  I’d lie like a lump on the floor all day if my burning will to kick ass didn’t have me obsessing with work after a couple minutes of lying there.  It’s... so ridiculously stupid, and I hate that I do that to myself. I’m trying to be better. 

I’m building momentum with my career. Things are going well. Something’s going to go wrong, isn’t it? i’m going to be punished for spending that occasional $10 for a book of Nichijou for Cory; or buying lunch out, aren’t I?

What a fucking stupid mindset. I’m just going to keep going forward anyway. 

There has been good.  Streaming and doing more with Cory-- watching shows like Nichijou and Jojo with him too. Finding inspiration again.  A lot. 

I have something I’m so excited to share with you guys in December. On another note, I get to work with someone I looked up to and made a friend with, in the FFXIV community. I braved talking to another  because I had something to share, who responded rather nicely to me! I’m apart of a weekly static now for FFXIV too, playing PLD, and it’s stressful but I’m trying to have fun. I need to work on a better layout though. Artist hands get crampy with the buttonpressing during stressful moments. 

Despite a rather abysmal 2017 con season for us,  we made the most with what we had, and actually did much better than our 2016 run through those specific cons. I’ve been doing well off with my work load that I can treat myself and I can treat Cory more.  I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had with Patreon and Twitch Affiliate status. Those along with work are helping with bills, living expenses, and making a sane cushion for ourselves again.  We’re not living paycheck to paycheck really anymore. Next year will be a great year for conventions, getting out more, getting out of this little apartment more. I hate that winter’s already here. I miss green. 

I’ve had a lot of horribly raw feelings lately. Upset about this, super duper depressed about that, and just a whole mix of chemicals that I normally don’t exercise in feelings. I feel like a rotten human being with how aloof I can be. I need to work on having a relationship with the love of my life, balancing that with work and personal time. 

I worry if I’m annoying when people don’t respond to me and I keep poking despite that worry to show care. Anxiety whispers that I’m just being a pest. D&D has been fun, but I’ve been worrying a lot about that too. Something happens one way or another where I can’t always be focused, or I’m a depressed mess before hand, and-- I stress out too much that my quiet or involvement is annoying in some way or another. I’m trying harder to jump into things. I always have fun anyway when things kick off.

I’m scared for a friend making a visit to meet some people over this weekend.  He’s supposed to be home today, I haven’t heard from him. I’m trying not to worry still. 

I think about my parents a lot and my brother.  I reflect on my life and where I’ve gone, and how it’s already been 10 years since I graduated high school, five since I walked away with a Bachelor’s.  I think about how certain people aren’t here anymore, and that isn’t going to change. Life is precious, and honesty is a gift. I’ve been more headstrong about expressing my thoughts and feelings. More often than not, I just see assumptions causing a mess. I’ve caused a mess and many that way.

I have a lot on my mind than I realize, and when these anxiety attacks hit, I don’t know what to hold onto for what’s causing the problem.  All of it’s there, and now most of it’s here in a post. There may be more.  I’m honestly going to probably try to be a little more active as a person in tandem with being an entertainer. Honestly, I have days where I stress out about not posting art, and feel guilty about that too.

I was doing so well there, and now I’m literally running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I’ll get over it. I always do. There’s far more important things to focus on, to enjoy, to experience, than this fear. 

if you made it this far, thanks. it really means a lot. I hit a point where I don’t know what else to wordpuke, but that gross feeling of mine is gone and I have clarity again. 

Have a good night.

[insecure-hbo-recaps]

hella questions

Previously on Insecure: A bunch of bad dates, missing Lawrence, trifling Lawrence, failed "get my ex back" party, Molly is way underpaid. And two minutes of ex sex.

"Y'all fucked?" is the incredulity that welcomes us to the second episode of the season. I can't decide if I love or hate that Issa has one of those old school ugly wooden entertainment center things that I'm sure we ALL had growing up.

Issa is also wearing a hoodie with Harriet Tubman on it... though I can't figure out what the two pictures on her wall are. Molly wants to know who initiated the sex and whether they've spoken since. They aren't really in any better place, and Molly doesn't find this encouraging. Issa is grasping at straws. Molly asks whether it was a getting back together fuck or a "fuck you" fuck. Hmmm. As someone who recently had sex with her ex that she's still in love with... it was definitely neither lol. It was... well, actually, it was a “I put up this picture of me kissing another dude as my facebook profile pic so that everyone could stop feeling sorry for me for being single, but you think I moved on and am dating someone else and don't love your trifling ass anymore and you got the nerve to have a jealous streak" kind of a fuck. This fool asked me like four times "so what's new with you?" As if I would tell if it WAS true, lol. Anyway, the sex between Lawrence and Issa would fall in a similar category - dudes being in their insecure ass feelings but STILL not trying to give you the respect you deserve.

Issa calls the sex "nebulous." Nebulous: unclear, vague, or ill defined. Molly is wary of drawing any conclusions based on this murky outcome, but Issa brightly tries to convince herself the sex means something good. Idk, girl. I don't feel like that. I'm not even going to delude myself that way.

Lawrence is in the gym, because in case you haven't noticed, he ain't a capn crunch eating white socks scrub no more. He starts to text Issa that he made things weird and didn't plan for it to happen, but thinks better of it and deletes it.

Meanwhile, Molly did stick with her therapist and is at a second session. Far from how close mouthed she had been before, she is ranting energetically about her stronger work ethic and going above and beyond but still being underpaid. Honestly, this is why I just solve this issue by half assing everything at work. I'm never going above and beyond. I will ALWAYS be a solid 3/4 at annual performance review time. Fuck your five star review. This job don't give a fuck about me and I don't give a fuck about y'all. And when the pay stops being enough, my resume makes it easy for me to bounce and renegotiate a new salary. But Molly is not interested in conceding defeat and can't understand why she can't figure out a way to get into the all boy's club. The therapist points out that Molly is "shoulding" all over herself. And if you watch this show, you've seen Sex and the City, so we don't need to break down the logistics of this.

The therapist tries to tell Molly she's living in the reality she thinks she should have, not the one she does have. Molly, naturally, doesn't understand what she's saying. The therapist tells her that there are certain standards levied at black women - and let's take the time to point out the difference here... in the past, the standards of a black woman were to singlehandedly manage a household and all of its financial and functional needs, put yourself aside and be a supporting force for everyone else in your life, and maybe you might find a man but how can you expect that, and you shouldn't, because it's too hard, and well, if you can't find one, maybe nice Willie the janitor will be there for you and don't be thinking bout no law degree. That shit ain't the move no more. These days the perfect standards of being a black woman are all about getting your 2013 self titled album Beyonce on - fulfilled in yourself and your life choices and not subscribing to any ideology that says you can't be enough or what you have to offer isn't valuable... with a slice of "even if no one else can see my value, I know it far exceeds that of many of those around me." Later for settling. Later for accepting scraps. But now that opens the door to a battle that's twice as hard, choosing to except the ways in which you are exceptional, in a world that is not willing to agree with you purely because... you are a black woman.

The therapist asks Molly if she would be open to a life that doesn't look like the one she thinks she "should" have. Molly isn't ready to grapple with that idea, and demurs on scheduling the next session. See what I'm saying? Bitches afraid to look at themselves.

Gallery opening. Which, again, is a little too close to Sex and the City for me, but I don't know what y'all be doing in California or New York. Gallery openings ain't a thing in Chicago. The four of them are talking about Issa's party. Tiffany is being annoyingly bougie as usual, Kelli is only mildly extra. I don't... I don't know what to say about these outfits.

I fully respect everything Insecure is doing. But I'd be a damn lie if I said... it was very... right, I suppose. It wouldn't be the route I'd take if it were my show, I guess is what I'd say. They are trying to decide plans for the weekend but Issa doesn't want to go out clubbing - she thinks sleeping with Lawrene means a reunion is imminent so she can't really be going out anymore. Tiffany decides to empathize and shares that her gay husband lived in a hotel for basically half a year while they were going through something. "The point is, even perfect couples have problems," Tiffany says, and I'm not looking forward to the season where they try to humanize Tiffany by showing she hides behind all this "perfect" bullshit to cover up the fact that she is miserably depressed and hates herself. I accidentally paused at a moment that captures this sentiment:

Issa thinks she just needs to give Lawrence time to forgive her; he can't just walk away from five years like that. Every single time I've thought I offered something so incredibly unique to a man he'd be stupid to walk away from it, I was patently, 100% wrong. Kelli points out that for 2 of those years his bum ass mooched off on her couch and Issa should move on. Issa wants to work it out. But... really? Why would Issa want to still be with Lawrence? She wasn't happy with him, that's why she cheated in the first place. And I'm not buying that she saw the error of her ways and truly wants the life they had together in the end. More like being single is shit, especially when you've had someone as your counterpart for a significant chunk of time, and rather than adjusting to something new it's easier and more comfortable to want back what you had.

Kelli lets it slip that Lawrence is with someone knew, which Tiffany was also aware of. They know who she is and everything, but Issa claims she doesn't want to know. In the two seconds it takes to decry that claim, Molly finds Tasha's instagram profile. Tiffany offers some friendly shit-talking ("why does she only speak in emojis?") and Kelli says she looks like a stripper. Issa pretends like she doesn't want to know who she is.

Gallery bathroom. While Issa is doing her "go high or go low?" mirror freestyle, I am just mesmerized by her crown-mimicking braidout. Like. I wouldn't wear it because I couldn't pull it off, but it is fascinating on her. She decides going the high road is overrated, and when Molly comes to check on her, Issa snaps, "pull that bitch up!" The soundtrack that kicks in at that moment - bass heavy intoning "fuck that nigga" - pulls all of us back on the thrones we sometimes forget but need always to occupy.

The next day. For reasons that are unclear, Issa stops by Chad's apartment looking for Lawrence. Chad remarks on her glow up approvingly, which Issa awkwardly plays off. They have awkward small tight for a bit before Issa asks for Lawrence. Chad doesn't want to say where he really is, and if I had the skills/patience to make gifs, I'd insert one here now of the coy way he then slups on the straw of his beet juice. As it is, Issa concedes defeat and decides to leave.

It turns out Lawrence is at Tasha's, watching Defamation. I know that's not the name of their in-series show, but I can't be bothered to find out what it was, so I'm just going to call it the same as DWP's. Tasha is into it while Lawrence is aloof, and the thing that makes *me* most uncomfortable about Tasha - as stated, I do not buy into the thotty because she is traditional narrative - is her liking Real Housewives-y television and occupying that "black women in Atlanta" sort of social space. I do fully approve of her around the way girl oversized gold hoops.

Lawrence says he has things on his mind and Tasha, again refreshingly casually, asks whether he wants to talk about it. She gets a text from her mom, informing her about a family barbecue. She takes a moment and hints about whether or not Lawrence would like to come. Rather than pretend to be oblivious, Lawrence actually makes a noise like he acknowledges this time that he knows this would mean something, and Tasha, sensing his hesitation, immediately walks the invitation back. Lawrence decides to just drop that he slept with his ex. He tries to explain why it happens and says he just wants to be honest, and doesn't know what it means. Hmm. I don't know at this point in their relationship how big a deal this should be, so Tasha's measured response of "I think you need to go" is about level and appropriate. Oh MAYNE, she got that black glass and gold accented vanity mirror that I'm sure was a pattern we ALL had in our moms' bedrooms at some point.

Dunes. Issa is getting ready for bed, trying to resist looking up Tasha. Of course she isn't able to manage it, and pulls up Tasha's instagram.

Law firm. Molly rolls up on the front desk lady and they exchange pleasantries and niceties. Molly wants to know about a hockey game the bosses are going to. She is planning to shoot her shot and try to ingratiate herself into the "boy's club." "I'm scared of you," the front desk lady says neutrally, grinning and turning back to her computer.

Issa's boring after school job. The principle is prejudiced against latinos, Frieda doesn't like it, Issa is tone deaf. Blah blah blah.

So how do we feel about Chad's suit? Apparently he had to wait outside for Lawrence to express his disbelief that Lawrence told Tasha about Issa. Uh, how did he find out about that? lol. Lawrence says he couldn't lie about it because he's "not dirty like that." Chad, and all of us:

Seriously, what's up with Lawrence? He is delusional about his capacity for being a good dude. Which, to be perfectly frank with you, is not very surprising to me for a guy who could mooch off his girlfriend for two years and then be totally blindsided with her being dissatisfied and unhappy in the relationship. Lawrence can't believe he slept with Issa, thinking he was once step out the door away. Chad is overall not surprised that Lawrence went back to being a "John Legend ass nigga."

Apparently they are going to check out a new apartment for Lawrence. Why does Chad need to be there for that? Chad mentions that Issa came by looking for him, acknowledging her glow up: "did she always look like that?"

The broker is a black woman in an off white pantsuit. You know how sometimes you'll be watching white tv and you never see any black people until you need a bus driver or a maid or a nurse or some other menial service person? Insecure does this in reverse where most of the roles of businesspeople in the community are held by black women, which is truer to life. Anyway, she's Patty from ABG. The apartment seems to have disturbingly pale sea green walls which I would not be happy with. I'd feel like my entire apartment is a bloody bathroom from a scary movie. That's the exact same shade of sea foam green blue.

They like the apartment. It's pretty big. I know nothing about Los Angeles real estate but I assume it's extremely expensive. Lawrence is hesitant to commit, possibly because he wants an invite back to the Dunes. Who knows, the scene doesn't elaborate.

High School. Frieda is mad about Principal Gaines not caring about the latino students. She calls it a "racist joke" he made. Issa doesn't care, and Frieda's Clueless White Person rambling doesn't help. They arrive to the after school program to find it full of students. Gaines hooked them up with kids. Issa is thrilled but Frieda is concerned about the lack of latino students.

Molly is riding an escalator somewhere. Where ya going, Molly? Ooooh... eeeee... she's making the bold but fairly ill considered decision to try to rub elbows with the boys club in the box seats for a hockey game.

I don't begrudge Molly attempting to shoot her shot, but there have got to be more... shall we say organic ways for her to attempt it. We look like assholes popping up in entirely the wrong context like this. Now I'm having a flashback to an ill advised friendship with an overweight white woman who, time would reveal, primarily wanted to use me to get an in into black spaces where she could meet black men. But never fear, her black female friends were just as corny and thirsty: her black counterpart was this overweight chick who went out of her way to assure all of us how much she loved hockey and when she talked about basketball she made sure to only talk about the two or three white players on our home team. The thirst was real and it went in both directions, and that is tonight's anecdote on why I make very little effort to make female friends as an adult.

Back at the Dunes, Issa cannot resist the allure of her phone, holding the secrets as it does to Tasha's insta. Of course she eventually caves and we are treated to this snap filtered gem:

Doing the most. But followed up by this:

Loving the wig. Issa throws the phone down pretending she doesn't care, going back to her book.

Back at the hockey game, Molly's attempts to bond with middle aged white men is typically embarrassing. They're drinking shitty beer, Stella Artois as far as I can tell? Molly takes a moment then decides to shoot her shot, socially approaching her boss. He's wearing a ridiculous suit. They make small talk about lobster rolls, but Molly misses the timbre of the humor and her "women are clueless about sports" bit doesn't quite land. Which I'm going to go ahead and chalk up to a racial barrier because let's just admit it. It's not believable to pretend a black woman gives a fuck about hockey. I have sat around with white dudes and tried to watch hockey games. That shit is boring. They score once every fifteen minutes. Let us submit a blanket moratorium on black women appeasing whites by pretending to like hockey.

The next morning at work, Molly tries to maintain cordial commentary with her boss but it's awkward and they both wish it had never happened. She walks away from the break room while her boss and a random white man look awkwardly after her before going back to their conversation.

Hey. Don't you fucking hate that we have to do this shit?

Chad's. Lawrence is on his air mattress, looking pensive. Dune's. Issa is on her mac still stalking. She has progressed to facebook. Then she swaps to Twitter. Then she swaps to the LinkedIn. I have amazing internet stalking skills. I once found posts from a message board someone posted on anonymously in high school. I knew an ex of mine had gotten married like six months after I dumped him and I wanted to know who the wife was - that took licensed private investigator levels of digging because he had zero online footprint and a super generic name. I once found someone's professional license, which listed their contact number, saved the number to my phone, and used it to find their instagram page. Fuck with me dog. No one has shit on my internet stalking game. I'm not crazy just nosy as fuck.

Letsmovealong... Tasha's social media is meant, I'm thinking, to paint her as slightly basic. She has Beyonce quotes in the Beyonce font, she's wearing an uncomfortable suit in her linkedin pic. She takes pics eating jalepeno poppers in ecstasy. And, to be fair, I think that's the characterization we are meant to take away from Tasha. She isn't quirky like Issa. She's just "regular black." And I know that's a thing that people have had negative reactions to, so I don't mind telling you I aggressively defend "regular black." I live on the northside of my city, which is white neighborhoods. Every man I date has no less than a college degree and often a graduate or professional degree, as, having one myself, this only makes sense for finding someone with compatible values. So my ability to occupy a quirky, upwardly mobile black space must take responsibility for blackness as a whole, in the sense that it would be shameful for me to shun "regular blackness." Whenever I'm wearing curly 30 inch remy in my sew in and I meet randoms who ALWAYS ask me whether I'm latina I make SURE to put them in their place. Asking me whether I'm mixed. That's not a compliment, y'all. Don't be on the okcupids and the tinders talking about you're "other" race. I used to block men on sight with bedebees talking about some "Mixed race, other." Don't side with the oppressors. Don't shun regular blackness. (I have seen many, many black people do this, both male and female, and it is incredibly disheartening and disappointing. It's not just men. Women do it too. All of y'all need to stop.)

Issa realizes that Tasha works at the bank Lawrence goes to. So the next morning she takes it upon herself to take a visit, taking note of the Best Buy right next door. Issa goes inside and gets in Tasha's line. "I'd like to make a deposit," she says, and then cold-cocks Tasha. This, of course, is yet another fantasy.

But in real life, Molly is having a cup of espresso on some campus somewhere. Lawrence spots her and decides he's not petty enough to not say hi. I'm loving the linen denim blue button up, less endeared by the flat hipster leather backpack, but I don't mind the attempt. They hug with Molly surprised to see him - she was there for some meeting or other. Lawrence says it's "Meridian" which I know as a health insurer, but probably means something different as it's where he works. Molly's wear a midi dress and heels which... I remember those cut out shoulder cut out things from a time far far in the past, guys.

They make small talk about Lawrence's new job and how they're both "good." Lawrence makes to walk away but Molly, steeling herself, calls him back. She wants to talk about Issa, who she tells him is "still torn up." "And?" Lawrence says, rudely. Yeah, Lawrence has no concept of the fact that their relationship was garbage. Maybe it wasn't always, but where they were when we met them, their relationship was trash.

Molly champions Issa and asks whether he hates her. He says he doesn't, so Molly asks if he'd ever take her back. We don't get to see Lawrence's response as we swap to Issa in her car. She's still outside of the bank when Tasha walks past, talking to a friend. Issa drops the recline on her seat all the way back to hide. Molly calls at this moment, walking away from her conversation with Lawrence and carrying a fabulous pale tan attache case. She makes it clear to us that she was only there as a plant, to run into Lawrence so she could ask him about Issa. This is the new age adult version of the secret three way call.

Issa asks what Lawrence said about her. Molly apologizes, and breaks the bad news that Lawrence says he's done. He ended up taking the new apartment, so he's not coming back. Issa digests this in silence. Molly offers to come by but Issa tells her she's fine. She reclines in her car a bit longer into an annoying security guard comes by and tells her she can't sleep there.

Nighttime. Molly's still at work, skyping with Hannah, the lawyer who recently transferred to the Chicago office. They're both working late. My ambitions and skillset and also personal passions would seem to dictate that I should have been a lawyer. But even when I was much younger and just starting to think about what I wanted my life to look like, I never wanted to give more of a fuck about work than anything else in my life. Like, this being at the office at nighttime shit? No thank you. ....I kinda regret that now. You know? Maybe in the go-go 90s I took the trope of the serious businesswoman who doesn't have time for a man and a life and a family too seriously. I don't know.

Molly makes professional good with Hannah, offering to help with her workload - and this is kind of what I mean - in kind of like "I'm a workhorse, use me." Hannah is touched by the offer, and agrees to throw some work Molly's way, perhaps recognizing the ploy Molly is extending. So that one, at least, went over well.

Somewhere in LA. While Molly's in her office, Lawrence has stopped by Tasha's house. She comes out to meet him where he is waiting by his car. She's wearing ripped jeans and very clunky sneakers. When Lawrence says hi, she regards him coldly. He launches into an apology, telling Tasha she didn't deserve that. Tasha, still playing "cool girl" who doesn't make a big deal about the fucked up shit you're dealing, plays understanding, that she gets why he was still messing with his ex. She knows their relationship wasn't exclusive.

She's giving him an out. But Lawrence muddies this by saying his thing with Issa was over. Tasha tried to let him keep things casual, but his response signals that casual behavior isn't ok while they are seeing each other. Recognizing this, Tasha makes an excuse for why she has to go back inside.

But, at the last minute she just can't help it, and caves, asking him whether or not he wants to come in for dinner. Lawrence, who was walking away, stops and takes her up on it. Damnit, Tasha. You almost made it.

Dunes. Issa, in her hairscarf and tshirt again (this has been a dry week for Issa right?) is putting away her laundry. She is suddenly annoyed about hanging all of her clothes on one side of the closet. Lawrence's shit is gone. She angrily shelves her shit on the opposite side, and, in bed, pulls her pillow in the middle, grappling with the reality that Lawrence is really not coming back.

Swiper more swiping helps blunt some of the pain as Issa pulls up Tinder again, trying, still trying.

[insecure-hbo-the-recaps]

hella questions

Previously on Insecure: A bunch of bad dates, missing Lawrence, trifling Lawrence, failed “get my ex back” party, Molly is way underpaid. And two minutes of ex sex.

“Y'all fucked?” is the incredulity that welcomes us to the second episode of the season. I can’t decide if I love or hate that Issa has one of those old school ugly wooden entertainment center things that I’m sure we ALL had growing up.

Issa is also wearing a hoodie with Harriet Tubman on it… though I can’t figure out what the two pictures on her wall are. Molly wants to know who initiated the sex and whether they’ve spoken since. They aren’t really in any better place, and Molly doesn’t find this encouraging. Issa is grasping at straws. Molly asks whether it was a getting back together fuck or a “fuck you” fuck. Hmmm. As someone who recently had sex with her ex that she’s still in love with… it was definitely neither lol. It was… well, actually, it was a “I put up this picture of me kissing another dude as my facebook profile pic so that everyone could stop feeling sorry for me for being single, but you think I moved on and am dating someone else and don’t love your trifling ass anymore and you got the nerve to have a jealous streak" kind of a fuck. This fool asked me like four times “so what’s new with you?” As if I would tell if it WAS true, lol. Anyway, the sex between Lawrence and Issa would fall in a similar category - dudes being in their insecure ass feelings but STILL not trying to give you the respect you deserve.

Issa calls the sex “nebulous.” Nebulous: unclear, vague, or ill defined. Molly is wary of drawing any conclusions based on this murky outcome, but Issa brightly tries to convince herself the sex means something good. Idk, girl. I don’t feel like that. I’m not even going to delude myself that way.

Lawrence is in the gym, because in case you haven’t noticed, he ain’t a capn crunch eating white socks scrub no more. He starts to text Issa that he made things weird and didn’t plan for it to happen, but thinks better of it and deletes it.

Meanwhile, Molly did stick with her therapist and is at a second session. Far from how close mouthed she had been before, she is ranting energetically about her stronger work ethic and going above and beyond but still being underpaid. Honestly, this is why I just solve this issue by half assing everything at work. I’m never going above and beyond. I will ALWAYS be a solid ¾ at annual performance review time. Fuck your five star review. This job don’t give a fuck about me and I don’t give a fuck about y'all. And when the pay stops being enough, my resume makes it easy for me to bounce and renegotiate a new salary. But Molly is not interested in conceding defeat and can’t understand why she can’t figure out a way to get into the all boy’s club. The therapist points out that Molly is “shoulding” all over herself. And if you watch this show, you’ve seen Sex and the City, so we don’t need to break down the logistics of this.

The therapist tries to tell Molly she’s living in the reality she thinks she should have, not the one she does have. Molly, naturally, doesn’t understand what she’s saying. The therapist tells her that there are certain standards levied at black women - and let’s take the time to point out the difference here… in the past, the standards of a black woman were to singlehandedly manage a household and all of its financial and functional needs, put yourself aside and be a supporting force for everyone else in your life, and maybe you might find a man but how can you expect that, and you shouldn’t, because it’s too hard, and well, if you can’t find one, maybe nice Willie the janitor will be there for you and don’t be thinking bout no law degree. That shit ain’t the move no more. These days the perfect standards of being a black woman are all about getting your 2013 self titled album Beyonce on - fulfilled in yourself and your life choices and not subscribing to any ideology that says you can’t be enough or what you have to offer isn’t valuable… with a slice of “even if no one else can see my value, I know it far exceeds that of many of those around me.” Later for settling. Later for accepting scraps. But now that opens the door to a battle that’s twice as hard, choosing to except the ways in which you are exceptional, in a world that is not willing to agree with you purely because… you are a black woman.

The therapist asks Molly if she would be open to a life that doesn’t look like the one she thinks she “should” have. Molly isn’t ready to grapple with that idea, and demurs on scheduling the next session. See what I’m saying? Bitches afraid to look at themselves.

Gallery opening. Which, again, is a little too close to Sex and the City for me, but I don’t know what y'all be doing in California or New York. Gallery openings ain’t a thing in Chicago. The four of them are talking about Issa’s party. Tiffany is being annoyingly bougie as usual, Kelli is only mildly extra. I don’t… I don’t know what to say about these outfits.

I fully respect everything Insecure is doing. But I’d be a damn lie if I said… it was very… right, I suppose. It wouldn’t be the route I’d take if it were my show, I guess is what I’d say. They are trying to decide plans for the weekend but Issa doesn’t want to go out clubbing - she thinks sleeping with Lawrene means a reunion is imminent so she can’t really be going out anymore. Tiffany decides to empathize and shares that her gay husband lived in a hotel for basically half a year while they were going through something. “The point is, even perfect couples have problems,” Tiffany says, and I’m not looking forward to the season where they try to humanize Tiffany by showing she hides behind all this “perfect” bullshit to cover up the fact that she is miserably depressed and hates herself. I accidentally paused at a moment that captures this sentiment:

Issa thinks she just needs to give Lawrence time to forgive her; he can’t just walk away from five years like that. Every single time I’ve thought I offered something so incredibly unique to a man he’d be stupid to walk away from it, I was patently, 100% wrong. Kelli points out that for 2 of those years his bum ass mooched off on her couch and Issa should move on. Issa wants to work it out. But… really? Why would Issa want to still be with Lawrence? She wasn’t happy with him, that’s why she cheated in the first place. And I’m not buying that she saw the error of her ways and truly wants the life they had together in the end. More like being single is shit, especially when you’ve had someone as your counterpart for a significant chunk of time, and rather than adjusting to something new it’s easier and more comfortable to want back what you had.

Kelli lets it slip that Lawrence is with someone knew, which Tiffany was also aware of. They know who she is and everything, but Issa claims she doesn’t want to know. In the two seconds it takes to decry that claim, Molly finds Tasha’s instagram profile. Tiffany offers some friendly shit-talking (“why does she only speak in emojis?”) and Kelli says she looks like a stripper. Issa pretends like she doesn’t want to know who she is.

Gallery bathroom. While Issa is doing her “go high or go low?” mirror freestyle, I am just mesmerized by her crown-mimicking braidout. Like. I wouldn’t wear it because I couldn’t pull it off, but it is fascinating on her. She decides going the high road is overrated, and when Molly comes to check on her, Issa snaps, “pull that bitch up!” The soundtrack that kicks in at that moment - bass heavy intoning “fuck that nigga” - pulls all of us back on the thrones we sometimes forget but need always to occupy.

The next day. For reasons that are unclear, Issa stops by Chad’s apartment looking for Lawrence. Chad remarks on her glow up approvingly, which Issa awkwardly plays off. They have awkward small tight for a bit before Issa asks for Lawrence. Chad doesn’t want to say where he really is, and if I had the skills/patience to make gifs, I’d insert one here now of the coy way he then slups on the straw of his beet juice. As it is, Issa concedes defeat and decides to leave.

It turns out Lawrence is at Tasha’s, watching Defamation. I know that’s not the name of their in-series show, but I can’t be bothered to find out what it was, so I’m just going to call it the same as DWP’s. Tasha is into it while Lawrence is aloof, and the thing that makes *me* most uncomfortable about Tasha - as stated, I do not buy into the thotty because she is traditional narrative - is her liking Real Housewives-y television and occupying that “black women in Atlanta” sort of social space. I do fully approve of her around the way girl oversized gold hoops.

Lawrence says he has things on his mind and Tasha, again refreshingly casually, asks whether he wants to talk about it. She gets a text from her mom, informing her about a family barbecue. She takes a moment and hints about whether or not Lawrence would like to come. Rather than pretend to be oblivious, Lawrence actually makes a noise like he acknowledges this time that he knows this would mean something, and Tasha, sensing his hesitation, immediately walks the invitation back. Lawrence decides to just drop that he slept with his ex. He tries to explain why it happens and says he just wants to be honest, and doesn’t know what it means. Hmm. I don’t know at this point in their relationship how big a deal this should be, so Tasha’s measured response of “I think you need to go” is about level and appropriate. Oh MAYNE, she got that black glass and gold accented vanity mirror that I’m sure was a pattern we ALL had in our moms’ bedrooms at some point.

Dunes. Issa is getting ready for bed, trying to resist looking up Tasha. Of course she isn’t able to manage it, and pulls up Tasha’s instagram.

Law firm. Molly rolls up on the front desk lady and they exchange pleasantries and niceties. Molly wants to know about a hockey game the bosses are going to. She is planning to shoot her shot and try to ingratiate herself into the “boy’s club.” “I’m scared of you,” the front desk lady says neutrally, grinning and turning back to her computer.

Issa’s boring after school job. The principle is prejudiced against latinos, Frieda doesn’t like it, Issa is tone deaf. Blah blah blah.

So how do we feel about Chad’s suit? Apparently he had to wait outside for Lawrence to express his disbelief that Lawrence told Tasha about Issa. Uh, how did he find out about that? lol. Lawrence says he couldn’t lie about it because he’s “not dirty like that.” Chad, and all of us:

Seriously, what’s up with Lawrence? He is delusional about his capacity for being a good dude. Which, to be perfectly frank with you, is not very surprising to me for a guy who could mooch off his girlfriend for two years and then be totally blindsided with her being dissatisfied and unhappy in the relationship. Lawrence can’t believe he slept with Issa, thinking he was once step out the door away. Chad is overall not surprised that Lawrence went back to being a “John Legend ass nigga.”

Apparently they are going to check out a new apartment for Lawrence. Why does Chad need to be there for that? Chad mentions that Issa came by looking for him, acknowledging her glow up: “did she always look like that?”

The broker is a black woman in an off white pantsuit. You know how sometimes you’ll be watching white tv and you never see any black people until you need a bus driver or a maid or a nurse or some other menial service person? Insecure does this in reverse where most of the roles of businesspeople in the community are held by black women, which is truer to life. Anyway, she’s Patty from ABG. The apartment seems to have disturbingly pale sea green walls which I would not be happy with. I’d feel like my entire apartment is a bloody bathroom from a scary movie. That’s the exact same shade of sea foam green blue.

They like the apartment. It’s pretty big. I know nothing about Los Angeles real estate but I assume it’s extremely expensive. Lawrence is hesitant to commit, possibly because he wants an invite back to the Dunes. Who knows, the scene doesn’t elaborate.

High School. Frieda is mad about Principal Gaines not caring about the latino students. She calls it a “racist joke” he made. Issa doesn’t care, and Frieda’s Clueless White Person rambling doesn’t help. They arrive to the after school program to find it full of students. Gaines hooked them up with kids. Issa is thrilled but Frieda is concerned about the lack of latino students.

Molly is riding an escalator somewhere. Where ya going, Molly? Ooooh… eeeee… she’s making the bold but fairly ill considered decision to try to rub elbows with the boys club in the box seats for a hockey game.

I don’t begrudge Molly attempting to shoot her shot, but there have got to be more… shall we say organic ways for her to attempt it. We look like assholes popping up in entirely the wrong context like this. Now I’m having a flashback to an ill advised friendship with an overweight white woman who, time would reveal, primarily wanted to use me to get an in into black spaces where she could meet black men. But never fear, her black female friends were just as corny and thirsty: her black counterpart was this overweight chick who went out of her way to assure all of us how much she loved hockey and when she talked about basketball she made sure to only talk about the two or three white players on our home team. The thirst was real and it went in both directions, and that is tonight’s anecdote on why I make very little effort to make female friends as an adult.

Back at the Dunes, Issa cannot resist the allure of her phone, holding the secrets as it does to Tasha’s insta. Of course she eventually caves and we are treated to this snap filtered gem:

Doing the most. But followed up by this:

Loving the wig. Issa throws the phone down pretending she doesn’t care, going back to her book.

Back at the hockey game, Molly’s attempts to bond with middle aged white men is typically embarrassing. They’re drinking shitty beer, Stella Artois as far as I can tell? Molly takes a moment then decides to shoot her shot, socially approaching her boss. He’s wearing a ridiculous suit. They make small talk about lobster rolls, but Molly misses the timbre of the humor and her “women are clueless about sports” bit doesn’t quite land. Which I’m going to go ahead and chalk up to a racial barrier because let’s just admit it. It’s not believable to pretend a black woman gives a fuck about hockey. I have sat around with white dudes and tried to watch hockey games. That shit is boring. They score once every fifteen minutes. Let us submit a blanket moratorium on black women appeasing whites by pretending to like hockey.

The next morning at work, Molly tries to maintain cordial commentary with her boss but it’s awkward and they both wish it had never happened. She walks away from the break room while her boss and a random white man look awkwardly after her before going back to their conversation.

Hey. Don’t you fucking hate that we have to do this shit?

Chad’s. Lawrence is on his air mattress, looking pensive. Dune’s. Issa is on her mac still stalking. She has progressed to facebook. Then she swaps to Twitter. Then she swaps to the LinkedIn. I have amazing internet stalking skills. I once found posts from a message board someone posted on anonymously in high school. I knew an ex of mine had gotten married like six months after I dumped him and I wanted to know who the wife was - that took licensed private investigator levels of digging because he had zero online footprint and a super generic name. I once found someone’s professional license, which listed their contact number, saved the number to my phone, and used it to find their instagram page. Fuck with me dog. No one has shit on my internet stalking game. I’m not crazy just nosy as fuck.

Letsmovealong… Tasha’s social media is meant, I’m thinking, to paint her as slightly basic. She has Beyonce quotes in the Beyonce font, she’s wearing an uncomfortable suit in her linkedin pic. She takes pics eating jalepeno poppers in ecstasy. And, to be fair, I think that’s the characterization we are meant to take away from Tasha. She isn’t quirky like Issa. She’s just “regular black.” And I know that’s a thing that people have had negative reactions to, so I don’t mind telling you I aggressively defend “regular black.” I live on the northside of my city, which is white neighborhoods. Every man I date has no less than a college degree and often a graduate or professional degree, as, having one myself, this only makes sense for finding someone with compatible values. So my ability to occupy a quirky, upwardly mobile black space must take responsibility for blackness as a whole, in the sense that it would be shameful for me to shun “regular blackness.” Whenever I’m wearing curly 30 inch remy in my sew in and I meet randoms who ALWAYS ask me whether I’m latina I make SURE to put them in their place. Asking me whether I’m mixed. That’s not a compliment, y'all. Don’t be on the okcupids and the tinders talking about you’re “other” race. I used to block men on sight with bedebees talking about some “Mixed race, other.” Don’t side with the oppressors. Don’t shun regular blackness. (I have seen many, many black people do this, both male and female, and it is incredibly disheartening and disappointing. It’s not just men. Women do it too. All of y'all need to stop.)

Issa realizes that Tasha works at the bank Lawrence goes to. So the next morning she takes it upon herself to take a visit, taking note of the Best Buy right next door. Issa goes inside and gets in Tasha’s line. “I’d like to make a deposit,” she says, and then cold-cocks Tasha. This, of course, is yet another fantasy.

But in real life, Molly is having a cup of espresso on some campus somewhere. Lawrence spots her and decides he’s not petty enough to not say hi. I’m loving the linen denim blue button up, less endeared by the flat hipster leather backpack, but I don’t mind the attempt. They hug with Molly surprised to see him - she was there for some meeting or other. Lawrence says it’s “Meridian” which I know as a health insurer, but probably means something different as it’s where he works. Molly’s wear a midi dress and heels which… I remember those cut out shoulder cut out things from a time far far in the past, guys.

They make small talk about Lawrence’s new job and how they’re both “good.” Lawrence makes to walk away but Molly, steeling herself, calls him back. She wants to talk about Issa, who she tells him is “still torn up.” “And?” Lawrence says, rudely. Yeah, Lawrence has no concept of the fact that their relationship was garbage. Maybe it wasn’t always, but where they were when we met them, their relationship was trash.

Molly champions Issa and asks whether he hates her. He says he doesn’t, so Molly asks if he’d ever take her back. We don’t get to see Lawrence’s response as we swap to Issa in her car. She’s still outside of the bank when Tasha walks past, talking to a friend. Issa drops the recline on her seat all the way back to hide. Molly calls at this moment, walking away from her conversation with Lawrence and carrying a fabulous pale tan attache case. She makes it clear to us that she was only there as a plant, to run into Lawrence so she could ask him about Issa. This is the new age adult version of the secret three way call.

Issa asks what Lawrence said about her. Molly apologizes, and breaks the bad news that Lawrence says he’s done. He ended up taking the new apartment, so he’s not coming back. Issa digests this in silence. Molly offers to come by but Issa tells her she’s fine. She reclines in her car a bit longer into an annoying security guard comes by and tells her she can’t sleep there.

Nighttime. Molly’s still at work, skyping with Hannah, the lawyer who recently transferred to the Chicago office. They’re both working late. My ambitions and skillset and also personal passions would seem to dictate that I should have been a lawyer. But even when I was much younger and just starting to think about what I wanted my life to look like, I never wanted to give more of a fuck about work than anything else in my life. Like, this being at the office at nighttime shit? No thank you. ….I kinda regret that now. You know? Maybe in the go-go 90s I took the trope of the serious businesswoman who doesn’t have time for a man and a life and a family too seriously. I don’t know.

Molly makes professional good with Hannah, offering to help with her workload - and this is kind of what I mean - in kind of like “I’m a workhorse, use me.” Hannah is touched by the offer, and agrees to throw some work Molly’s way, perhaps recognizing the ploy Molly is extending. So that one, at least, went over well.

Somewhere in LA. While Molly’s in her office, Lawrence has stopped by Tasha’s house. She comes out to meet him where he is waiting by his car. She’s wearing ripped jeans and very clunky sneakers. When Lawrence says hi, she regards him coldly. He launches into an apology, telling Tasha she didn’t deserve that. Tasha, still playing “cool girl” who doesn’t make a big deal about the fucked up shit you’re dealing, plays understanding, that she gets why he was still messing with his ex. She knows their relationship wasn’t exclusive.

She’s giving him an out. But Lawrence muddies this by saying his thing with Issa was over. Tasha tried to let him keep things casual, but his response signals that casual behavior isn’t ok while they are seeing each other. Recognizing this, Tasha makes an excuse for why she has to go back inside.

But, at the last minute she just can’t help it, and caves, asking him whether or not he wants to come in for dinner. Lawrence, who was walking away, stops and takes her up on it. Damnit, Tasha. You almost made it.

Dunes. Issa, in her hairscarf and tshirt again (this has been a dry week for Issa right?) is putting away her laundry. She is suddenly annoyed about hanging all of her clothes on one side of the closet. Lawrence’s shit is gone. She angrily shelves her shit on the opposite side, and, in bed, pulls her pillow in the middle, grappling with the reality that Lawrence is really not coming back.

Swiper more swiping helps blunt some of the pain as Issa pulls up Tinder again, trying, still trying.

[michaelpatrickhicks]

My First-Ever ConFusion Convention!

So, I meant to write about this last week, but life, as it so often does, interrupted. Last week was a big, big week. We inaugurated a Russain-aided, bloviating, ignorant, walking spray tan with a bad comb-over as our forty-fifth President of the United States, and he's been stomping the shit out of our Constitution ever since, targeting women, journalists, science, intelligence agents, and immigrants with unbridled hostility. It seems like so much more time has passed than a mere week-plus, but we only just wrapped our first actual whole fucking week with the Pussy Grabber In Chief at the helm. 

Friday, Jan. 20, 2017 was a dreary, appropriately rainy, and depressing day. Thankfully, Saturday was pretty awesome, and I spent a good deal of time hanging out with the science fiction and fantasy fandom over at ConFusion 2017. This is a fan-run convention, and one of the longest running conventions of its kind, having started back in the early 1970s and celebrating its forty-third year. It's also an event that is local to me, although this year was my first time attending.

And you know what? ConFusion was a hell of a lot of fun. I arrived there at 9 a.m., spent the day in readings, Q&As, and milling about, getting books signed. I left after the 5 p.m. autograph session to return home to my wife and son (she had broken her foot, and he's been teething ferociously, so many, many thanks to them for letting me have a me-day). I learned, first-hand, what con crud feels like, arriving home bleary eyed, hungry, and in need of a shower from hanging out with a thousand-plus readers and writers. 

While I was having fun, all around the world women, and men supportive of the cause, were marching in solidarity against Trump in the Women's March on Washington. I followed the hashtag and some of the other authors I follow who were partaking in the march, and my heart was happy at the sight of what quickly became the largest act of protest in American history. According to a report at the New York Times, attendance for the march was three times larger than for Trump's sparsely-attended inauguration (a fact that shouldn't surprise anyone, since he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes), which was more than enough to put a big smile on my face. Trump would take to the airwaves, using his first full day in office, to condemn the media for accurately reporting on the sparse turnout for his inauguration, and then unleashed his press secretary to scold and lie to the media, so anything that helped get under his thin, orange skin was something to be applauded.

Given the state of our nation, inside ConFusion John Scalzi joked that his upcoming release, The Collapsing Empire, was either the best-timed, or perhaps worst-timed, book title of his career. He read from Chapter Two of this book, and it was pretty damn amusing. I recently received a NetGalley ARC and am looking forward to diving into it soon. There's a few books ahead of it, but based on Scalzi's reading, it's going to be a grand old time for this little bookworm. He confirmed that the naming conventions of his spaceships are in honor of Iain M. Banks, so fans of the Culture books have a little extra to look forward to. There was also a wonderful amount of swearing by his potty-mouthed, ass-kicking heroine, which I always appreciate, and Scalzi recently received positive reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, so I'm certainly expecting great things. Congrats, John!

Joining Scalzi for the reading panel was Joe Hill, who read from The Fireman, a book I read and enjoyed last year, and even ordered a signed copy of. He and Scalzi argued over guitarists, which culminated in a pillow fight (which I made to sure record!) at the start of the panel. From there, they read, joked, and argued over Star Wars, Marvel movies, and music. It was such a good time, and helped set my expectations for the rest of the day.

For the mid-part of the day, I hung out with Shay VanZwoll, my editor on Extinction Cycle: From the Ashes (A Kindle Worlds Novella), and got to meet her husband. Shay's been attending ConFusion for good number of years, and she introduced to me a few people, including author Ferret Steinmetz, who wrote the 'Mancer trilogy and has a new book, The Uploaded, due out in September. He told us a bit about this forthcoming release, and it's sounds superb. Shay and I pre-ordered it soon afterward. You can read a bit about it over at Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Over the course of the day, I also got to meet Delilah S. Dawson (who writes The Shadow books as Lila Bowen), during a kaffeeklatsch she hosted for writers and attendees new to ConFusion. It was a lot of fun to pick her brain and hear her thoughts on the state of writing these days. I also got to meet some local indie authors, and authors-to-be (Hi, KC!) 

Later in the day, I attended Mallory O'Meara's Q&A. As ConFusion's Media Guest of Honor, O'Meara was on hand to discuss her role as producer for the upcoming puppet film, Yamasong: March of the Hollows. I missed the special sizzle reel screening at 9 p.m., but from what I've seen online it's a pretty intriguing project with some great star power behind it (Nathan Fillion, Malcolm McDowell, Abigail Breslin, Whoopi Goldberg, George Takei). The poster is pretty awesome, and I was able to get an autographed copy from Mallory.

In terms of autographs, I did pretty well for myself, I think. Joe Hill signed the first three volumes of Locke & Key, which I had brought with me. I bought paperback copies of Ferret's trilogy (these look terrific in print, done up in matte black covers; sexy stuff!), as well as Michael Underwood's Genrenauts: The Complete Season One Collection - also a terrific looking paperback. I also got the first two books by Patrick S. Tomlinson, The Ark and Trident's Forge. 

Angry Robot Books has been one of my favorite SFF publishers over the last few years, and it was great to see them have such a strong presence in terms of author showing. In addition to Underwood, Tomlinson, and Steinmetz, Kameron Hurley and Adam Rakunas were on hand to sign books and discuss their works. My biggest regret was not being able to fit in one of the panels attended by Sarah Gailey, particularly her reading from the upcoming River of Teeth from Tor Books. I'm desperate to read that book, and with its focus on killer hippos and mercenaries how could I not be? I did get a nice little card advertising the book and showcasing the brilliant cover art, though, so not a total loss. From what I hear, it was a pretty impressive reading. 

I'd say my first ConFusion, and, in fact, my very first convention ever, was a success. I had a lot of fun, got to meet some cool people, and spend worthwhile time with authors, readers, and fans. Given the political reality outside ConFusion, spending time with a community of fans and writers provided a much-needed break from the world, as well as a good dose of sanity. I left ConFusion looking forward, already, to the 2018 gathering. I'm looking forward to diving back into this particular brand of crazy!