#this is like the 4th time ive drawn the same thing

[owomon]

[vthetease]

my favorite things

it's me birthday

so just incase anyone wanted to know some stuff about V

heres some random info about my life as well as some of my favorite things

i am a libra sun, aquarius moon, capricorn rising

i like dark chocolate more than any other; i have since i first got my period. i like gummy candy and starbursts but my favorite are the little cola bottle candies. i like tea and coffee sweet, but flavorful. i like energy drinks and slushees and wanted my first tattoo to be a cola-mtn dew slushee but it wasnt. i like waffles more than pancakes but would prefer a toaster strudel or muffin. i like apples and lemons and cinnamon and garlic and truffle and black cherries but not maraschino. i dont like onions or cilantro or swiss cheese. i dont like chili because something about the consistency of wet, tomato-ee hamburger makes me ill. i also can't drink hard liquor.

i like smells like thick cologne that lingers and juniper and spearmint and old houses and honeysuckle and the smells of the earth when it stops raining in the summer. i like the smell of other peoples laundry soap and coffee more than my own. i like eucalyptus and aloe and teakwood and dragons blood incense.

i like classic rock from my dad and 80s pop ballads from my mom and afi and lincoln park from my older sibling and 4*TOWN for my younger sibling. one of my earliest loves in music was Paramore, and hayley is an inspiration of mine. i like pop punk and the band ive seen the most is sleeping with sirens, 4 times now. i like hip hop and rnb and acapella and piano. i like music that makes me feel alive. anything from violin to screaming, i just like passion. i'm a very passionate person and always have been despite myself.

i sing and like singing in the car, while i shower, and cook. i am very loud but sometimes can do cool things. i like how singing makes me happy and helps me relate to other people and also my predecessors. i like how i feel connected to those before me through my voice. my first time singing in public was my 4th grade talent show. I sang The Only Exception by Paramore because my parents thought Almost Lover was too dramatic and adult for a 12 year old

i like old movies and i used to fall asleep to them at my grandparents and wake up to them at weekends at my dads apartment. i like musicals like ride the cyclone and drama like the fault in our stars and action like john wick and will always be down for a horror movie. i like get out and candyman and hereditary and black swan and blair witch and creep. i like the twilight zone and rod serling has a special place in my heart. i also like alex trebek from jeopardy, matthew grey gubler, penn badgely, andrew scott, evan peters, and my biggest current celeb crush is matt rife.

i like being alone in busy places. i like to talk to people but i also like to disappear to the other room during the party. im the girl you find sitting outside sometimes smoking, or on the balcony. i enjoy walking back into a concert midsong and seeing all the happy little people being happy. i like stepping away from chaos to appreciate it. i like driving on highways at night when its empty and im high. i like watching airplanes land. i like sleep and i sleep in a tank top and underwear but never socks. my dreams always take me back to this very similiar place every single night doing different tasks with different people. i might start calling it the twilight zone. i like to paint my emotions in my makeup and artwork. i have always felt very deeply and openly.

i like the moon and the stars and it is so fascinating to learn about the same beautiful big rock my ancestors saw. i feel drawn to white butterflies and birds and bumblebees and skinks ( they r tiny lizards). i like history and culture, but im really bad at math.

thats all i can come up with for now. if you have any questions let me know

thanks for reading about me, lmk if youre in love yet

valentine, 22 today <3

[cosmindart]

Another Infodump: RANDOMAGOS

Introduction

What are Randomagos?

Basically this is a thing similar to pokemon fan-regions but just not officially linked to pokemon. Beside the themes/aesthetic I went out of my way to change a lot of the core mechanics (The typing system is completely different, the battle system -if I were to make it an actual game- wouldn't be turn based, eggs works differently, etc). There also a bit of digimon inspo in these but it's not as obvious.

The name isn't set in stone yet, I've also consigered Monstrueuf monster + oeuf (egg) also a pun on monstrueux (monstruous) and Yistomons яйцо (egg) +monster. The name Randomago (and by extent the alt name Eggorythms Egg + Algorythm) hint at randomness mechanic (related to breeding)

note: I couldn't fit all the images so some evo lines are missing!

How creature Typing works

Typing is split into 2: Alignments and Will

Alignments has 3 main type that work like rock paper scissor and a bonus 4th type that is weak to all three others. Wills give an additional boots. The themes of the Wills aren't as clear as pokemon type would be but that's kinda the point since I didn't want them to be similar.

Design notes

I wanted the design to have a semi-strict rule set for design so that they could easily be all identified as being part of the same project and not immediately get seen as outright fakemons.

Each creature has their dedicated egg design. Egg would do more than just evolve into beasties, they can also be fed to already hatched critters to make them evolve or used in crafting armors.

The egg theme is maintained in the first evo stage with critters keeping part of their shell as part of their design

There much less restriction with the final stage evos (honestly being forced to use a cracked eggshell on the baby design is hard sometimes). Tho I try to avoid any Gardevoir/Lopunny situations by not making any design that might look "too humanoid" XD

Ive's also considered a temporary fusion-form that only some creatures would have? (by temporary I mean kinda the same way digivolutions or mega evolutions are temporary it would only last a set time per battle or per day)

Battling and Armors

As mentioned at the start, if I were to make an actual battle system it wouldn't be turn-based. Creature would still have specific moves but it would be more like in Kingdom hearts with things being in real time with keybinded move-set. To make it a bit more varied on top of the typing and move-set choices there would be optional armors to equip

Breeding

Still kind of up in the air right now but I wanted to potentially have it that when you breed two creature you wouldn't get one that match the parents unless both parents are the same, instead eggs would be random under the shared alignments (creatures need to be in the same alignment group to breed)

Designs

NPCs

I have these two "trainers": Daren and Daria, Twins (probably non-binary each leaning to a different side of things a tiny bit) I have some potential plot ideas for how they end up being the trainers but Im still a bit ??? about it. (they are Prof Braverly's younger siblings)

the egg-shaped device around their neck is kinda like both a pokedeck, pokeball and digivice at the same time. IT STILL DONT HAVE A NAME FOR IT It's an "EgsNav". It's used to store critters as well as give info about scanned creatures. To capture creatures and transfer them into the EgsNav the trainer needs to use a field-trap (design not yet drawn).

I now also have 3 Professors/teachers that are also champions/representative of each of the 3 alignments

Linear Evolution Lines

Branching Evolution Lines

Merging Evolution Line

[shootingdio]

it is now SKETCH POST TIME once again

ive been (re)reading homestuck and since i am severely insane i started making. troll tboi characters. and thats mostly whats in this post. first up is azazel (any pronouns as usual)

his first name is azazel with the letters scrambled because, while “azazel” IS six letters, it doesnt sound very homestuck-y if that makes sense? last name comes from “le mat” which is “the fool” in french

her quirk is like this (we are using fun alternative pangrams for this post): ⛧ wiz⛧rds job is to vex chumps quickly in fog!

next up is the lost (they/them... as usual)

like azazel, their last name comes from the french name (la lune) of their associated tarot card (the moon)

quirk: Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow .

judas (he/him). this guy has the second lamest name references in this whole thing (the other one i havent actually drawn yet but youll see). hes associated with the number “4” because judas is the 4th character on the select screen and also i felt like associating him with “3” might be too heavy handed/obvious

“yuedas” is judas but longer and with the “y” from almost all spellings of judas name (to make it more homestuck-y). “akelda” is akeldama, a judas unlock/where judas died in the bible

quirk: W4ltz, bad nymph, 4 quick jigs vex.

cain (he/him). my favorite part of his design is that his horns are lockpicks

“kaenic” comes from “k’aeni” (georgian for “cain”), and “szeren” comes from “szerencse” (hungarian for “luck”)

quirk: pack my box with five dozen 7iquor jugs

(Every sea dweller dreams of the day land dwellers go extinct. That’s a fact.)

(i see.... youre living in a completely different reality.)

KETCHUP BLAST

“It should be noted that in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.”

[by-any-other-games]

the outer worlds!

so the base game of the outer worlds is good, no doubt about that. fun characters, fun gameplay, lots of wackiness. the game doesnt take itself too seriously, so it theres all those marvel-esq quips that get tossed in. a good time

BUT

i'd been stalling on playing the new-ish DLC Murder on Eridanos, because after a while, the pattern of shoot people have a conversation gets a little bit boring. lucky for me, this DLC was not that at all. its a great addition to a game mainly about killing people and should have been part of the base game imo

so this here is the trailer, awesome visuals, its got a song, got stuff to make it exciting, its awesome. anyways, very light spoilers below.

it is such a great time to play this DLC for a few reasons

1. its new

2. its interesting

3. its very full of content

so #1, its not just new to the game, but the gameplay is new to the game.

no other section of the game has long drawn out sections where you search for clues, talk to people and try to cross reference their stories. especially in a game where its really easy to just take the easy route and just kill everything in your path.

so it was particularly fun to play a high speech / high smarts charecter who could get into all those details, but i'd be amazed to see what a stupid charecter playthrough looks like (fyi, outer worlds has stupid based speech checks, you have to be concussed or just stupid to use certain options) cause you could totally just run up and say i know who did it and leave. and i dont know what the game would say about that

#2, obsidian were the ones behind fallout new vegas, so they've got experience with the environmental story telling stuff. while a lot of the stuff you can find aren't like, clues, they still help you piece together this mystery. there were so many small details that i felt should have been clues, but just weren't. And it was okay! i still had just enough information to constantly be updating my theory, but not enough to get the bigger picture

and the story sets itself up so well with the universe that the outer worlds has already set up in the base game. corporate sabotage, intrigue, and companies putting profit over lives is bog standard in the outer worlds. so its absolutely no suprise when you find people with slugs sticking out of their neck, saying rizzo's made them feel happy

but its still not addressed, at least not initially, the crime is just the murder of a tv star, nothing to do with the neck slugs, but as you start to go through everything, more and more threads begin to pile up, the neck slugs, the timeline doesn't fit, the things being stolen at the same time the murder happened

#3 oh my god its such a long dlc

it took me 30 hours to play the base game, and the previous dlc, maybe a 20-10 split? it took 16 hours for me to get through eridanos

granted i did every single quest, but that feels like the only way to play it, if youre investigating, you need to have been everywhere. that motivation is far more present than the "save the colony" plot hook youre given in the base game, in fact, its better than just about any rpg plot hook ive seen. you want to solve the murder not because you care about the person, but because its rewarding to figure things out

also a 4th thing that i just really love: they gave you a thread board.

it actually changes with new info, and you can do the 'take a step back' thing to look at the big picture

and now heres a gif of some overkill

[robsroadtorecovery]

Daily(ish) Updates

On Thursday March 28th, Rob went to the ER for stomach pains. He ended up being checked into a hospital in Corona and they did several tests including a bone marrow biopsy. They discovered that he had a low platelet count, high white blood cell count, and an enlarged spleen. He’s needed plasma transfusions to keep his platelet level up. On April 1st he was informed that he has Philadelphia chromosome positive (Ph+) B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and was transferred to UC Irvine Health.

April 3th

-Rob started chemotherapy. His medications for the first three days will be cyclophosphamide (chemotherapy) and mesna (chemoprotectant to reduce side effects). 

-His parents visited him and said that the medication was administered through IV and can take 3 hours to finish the treatment. 

April 4th

-Rob took dasatinib orally, which is another treament for ALL. 

-His sons, Chris and Trey, visited him. 

-Rob said he felt fine but the doctors said that the side effects of chemo are usually felt after 48 hours.

April 6th

-Rob had vincristine and doxorubicin through IV, which are used to treat a variety of cancers. 

-He finished his first round of chemo and he said he felt weak but on the mend.

-He was able to take a walk around the floor.

-The doctors will now monitor his blood production and figure out the next steps in his treatment.

April 7th

-Even though his chemo ended yesterday, they gave him an extra chemo pill.

-He was feeling nauseous and didn’t eat or drink much.

-He was also tired because his bed moves constantly to prevent bed sores but that makes it hard for him to sleep.

-He maintained good blood pressure even when feeling sick, which usually doesn’t happen when he’s sick at home.

April 8th

-He had bad muscle spasms that moved from his back up to his chest. The doctors gave him an EKG and the results looked normal.

-He was able to take a walk today and was in less pain.

-He ate some food and received IV fluids due to dehydration.

-The doctor said he’ll go home in a few weeks and when he starts his next round of chemo it’ll be scheduled and they’ll have a bed ready for him at the hospital. Not sure if the future stay will be a month long like this current one. He is already on his second round of chemo. He will take dasatinib every day until remission since it’s seen as a maintenance drug.

April 11th

-Bob and Linda visited Rob and they said he was in good spirits. He’s still nauseous and vomiting.

-He received a blood transfusion rather than a plasma transfusion. A nurse said that at this stage it’s not unusual for him to get a blood transfusion every day. It is unsure whether or not the blood transfusion is needed due to his low platelet count or if his blood production is lowered due to the chemo. (I’ll ask Heather to ask the next time she visits.)

-Erica visited a couple days before and said he had a CT scan of his legs when she was visiting. They were looking for blood clots but luckily they didn’t see anything. Previously we thought he had a CT scan in his legs to check for blood clots but it was actually an ultrasound. 

-He also had a CT scan while Bob and Linda were visiting. They scanned his lungs since he’s been congested but didn’t see anything. They didn’t seem too worried about blood clots but it was just a precaution.

April 12th

-Heather said he had a low fever and they had to wait for it to go away before he had his blood transfusion.

-He has a sore throat and lesions in his mouth and throat from the chemo. It has made it painful for him to swallow.

-He seemed more upbeat today.

April 13th

-He was pretty groggy today and was dozing off due to his fatigue.

-He gets blood transfusions because his hemoglobin levels are low. He has blood in his urine and stool so that’s probably why he needs blood transfusions. The doctors say this is from the chemo.

-He had another platelet transfusion today.

-He was given chemo today and yesterday. Heather isn’t sure what’s going on because when she spoke to the oncologist she was told that there would be a break in between rounds of chemo. She will try to speak to someone the next time she visits to get a clear answer.

-Rob was able to get out of bed and shower today and was in a pretty good mood.

April 14th

-He will have a new procedure done tomorrow to figure out what is causing his congestion. It’s called a flexible bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage. The bronchoscopy is a flexible tube that has a camera and lighting. The bronchoalveolar lavage is the process of flushing the lungs with saline and can be suctioned back through the tube. They may take biopsies which will be done with a little Pacman looking tool that can take chunks of the lung. If there is bleeding they will use argon plasma coagulation to cauterize any bleeds. He will be under twilight sleep during this process which means he’s anesthetized but still verbal.

-In preparation for this procedure, they gave him a platelet transfusion today and will give him another one in the morning. 

-He is already on his second round of chemo. He will take dasatinib every day until remission since it’s seen as a maintenance drug. I was told there would be a break in between rounds of chemo but Rob confirmed that he’s on his second round. 

-(Backstory: Rob has a habit of falling asleep on the couch and when he was woken up to move upstairs he would sit on the edge of the couch and rock back and forth while falling back asleep. It was hard for Heather to wake him up and he would occasionally fall forward.) So last night he started to do the same thing. He was getting ready to get out of bed and the bed has sensors that notified the staff that he was getting up. He had one foot on the floor and ended up leaning forward on the bed. The staff tried calling his name and nudging him awake but he didn’t respond. They ended up laying him on his back and shined lights in his face. He woke up at that point and was responsive but he said he barely remembered what happened. They gave him a brain CT without contrast because they were worried he had a stroke due to his confused state and how hard it was for them to wake him up. It came out negative.

-He can’t use his CPAP machine when sleeping because it hurts his lungs when his diaphragm expands.

-He’s noticed that it’s been easier to breathe as the chemo progresses because the cancer cells are leaving his body.

-He said he also gets blood transfusions because he’s bleeding internally and when he has bloody urine or stool it’s because the cancer cells are leaving his body.

-He said he has been feeling “dumpy” the past few days but he feels a lot better today.

-He has been on constant fluids since checking into the hospital but today they skipped it because he is now too hydrated to the point of having puffy skin.

-They’re keeping track of his electrolyte levels because it’s important that they stay in a good range.

-Previously we thought he had a CT scan in his legs to check for blood clots but it was actually an ultrasound. 

-He has had a CT scan with contrast in his abdomen as well as twice for his chest once with contrast and once without. He has had a CT scan for his lungs. They’re searching for blood clots, lesions, or more cancer.

-The doctors are already talking about bone marrow transplant. Ideally, they would do it while he’s in remission. His parents, siblings, and children can get tested to see if they’re a match to donate bone marrow. His children are the best candidates because they’re younger and can bounce back quickly from the procedure. It seems like the testing would be a simple blood draw.

-He said that he hospital has decent food.

April 16th

-The bronchoscopy was yesterday and he was awake for the procedure. They took samples of the stuff found in his lung and tested it. Most likely, they are culturing it to figure out what it is. Then they flushed his lungs with liquid and sucked it back out of the tube. 

-He has a coccidioidomycosis infection, also known as Valley Fever. It doesn’t look like it has spread. He will have to take antifungal medication twice a day. He thinks he may have had this infection for a long time, even before being admitted into the hospital. He has had slightly elevated levels of white blood cells when he would get blood work done and he thinks it could be due to this infection. And when the chemo was introduced, it gave the fungus the opportunity to thrive. The antifungal medication can mess with his blood sugar so it needs to be monitored.

-He has two doctors on his team. One is a specialist who works with patients undergoing chemo with cancer in their lymphatic system and how they fight infections. The other is an infection disease doctor.

-For the past 4-5 days he’s been having an injection that is supposed to help him produce red blood cells.

-He had a platelet transfusion yesterday. He now bruises easily.

-He also had a PICC line inserted when he was transferred to this hospital. It’s a catheter that is placed in a vein in his arm and it goes all the way into the large veins near his heart. It makes it easier for him to get his medications or to get his blood drawn.

-He has been stumbling with his words, which may be a side effect and he’s still nauseous. He has lost 15 pounds so far.

-His hair started to fall out today.

-He’s had 5 CT scans with contrast so far. The hospital he was originally at did too many of them in a row and it affected his kidneys. The doctors at his current hospital were worried about kidney failure so they have been watching his kidneys closely.

-He had a lot of good sleep and was able to use his CPAP machine last night. He had a lot of energy today. He was able to walk around the hospital floor as well.

April 21st

-Rob is now home!

-He had really good numbers (platelet, red blood cell, electrolyte count) and was given the okay to leave the hospital.

-He has thrush, which is causing lesions in his mouth and esophagus.

-He’s on oxygen and has to carry around an O2 tank.

-His next meeting with his doctor will be on the 26th.

April 26th

-Not too much has been happening since he’s been home.

-He’s been sleeping a lot.

-His appointment with his doctor today went well and they talked about next steps. He’ll need to get another bone marrow biopsy to see if he’ll need to check back into the hospital and start other chemotherapy treatments. It’s possible he could be in remission.

May 3rd

-He will be checking in tomorrow for another hospital stay. It is unclear how long he will stay there.

-He had the bone marrow biopsy done but he doesn’t know the results so we don’t know if he’s in remission. He needs to be in remission in order to get a bone marrow transplant. Otherwise, he will continue with chemotherapy until he’s in remission.

-His levels are borderline okay so he was still getting transfusions while he was at home.

-He has lost 50 pounds so far.

-Hopefully he can talk to his doctors today to get more information about what the next steps will be.

May 5th

-He has checked back into the hospital. He’s expected to only stay for a week this time. He’s on his “second round” of chemo. He’s been on one chemo pill throughout this entire process but now he’s on the second round of other types of chemo.

-Preliminary results show that he may be in remission. Further tests will be done to confirm the remission.

May 17th

-Updates are now being reported by Heather rather than Rob. He hasn’t been well enough to talk on the phone.

-He was discharged last Wednesday. He was supposed to be discharged on Tuesday but he still had high levels of his new chemo drug, methotrexate, in his system so they kept him for another day.

-He had diarrhea for several days after being discharged and on Friday, it was so bad that they went to the ER. But the wait there was between 4-12 hours and he eventually felt better so they just went home.

-He had labs done on Saturday as well as a platelet infusion. He also had a vitamin shot to help him produce more blood cells, I think it’s B12?

-He had a really bad sore throat on Sunday and it was so bad that he couldn’t take his evening pills.

-He’s nauseous today, which makes it hard for him to drink and eat.

-He has another lab appointment tomorrow and depending on the results he may also get another platelet infusion.

-He has lost 60 pounds so far.

-He has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and hopefully he’ll have the results back from his bone marrow biopsy to confirm that he’s in remission.

May 20th

-The doctor said that he’s essentially in remission even if the test results haven’t come in yet to confirm he’s in remission on a molecular level.

-He will still have to finish his rounds of chemo even though he’s already in remission. He will have 6 more rounds done. If he doesn’t complete all 8 rounds of chemo then there’s a possibility for him to relapse. The bone marrow transplant isn’t enough to keep him in remission, it needs to be all 8 rounds of chemo plus the transplant.

-Since he’s in remission, they will start the bone marrow transplant process. They will need to talk to his insurance to see which hospital the transplant can be done in because sometimes UCI Medical Center can’t do it with certain insurances.

-The transplant can be done starting now until the end of his last round of chemo.

May 31st

-He will most likely check into the hospital next week for this third round of chemo. His hospital stay should only last a week.

-He’s still tired and nauseous but getting better. He has his color in his face back and isn’t relying on the oxygen tank as often.

June 3rd

-On June 1st, he had labs done and almost fainted while at the office. They gave him an infusion of fluids and labs came back showing his creatine levels have almost doubled since Saturday (May 29th). The high levels made them concerned about his kidneys and they told him to go to the ER. The ER told him he had a urinary tract infection.

-He was given IV antibiotics and was discharged the next day.

-He was supposed to start his third round of chemo today but since he's still on antibiotics they will postpone the treatment.

June 30th

-Rob went in for his 3rd round on June 18th and he check out about a week later.

-He had a 7 week gap between his 2nd and 3rd round of chemo and apparently that isn't good. It's supposed to be a 3 week gap in between and any longer than that could mean the chemotherapy won't be as effective. But he was pretty sick during those 7 weeks and they wanted him to feel better before he started chemo. So we believe the doctor's weren't assertive enough when telling him about this 3 week period even though he saw his doctors weekly.

-He is now at home but isn't feeling great after the 3rd round of chemo.

-His insurance won't cover the bone marrow transplant at the hospital he goes to so he will have to find another hospital that will qualify.

July 1st

-He is now on his fourth round of chemo. This one is an out patient procedure. He goes in to get his dose of chemo and then heads home afterwards rather than checking into a hospital for a week.

-He started feeling a lot better after several days of not feeling well at all. He got his appetite and his energy back but not sure how long it will last since he started his fourth round.

July 20th

-He started his fourth round of chemo yesterday. They originally thought the outpatient chemo was the fourth round but it was just remnants of the third round. He will finish it up in four days.

-City of Hope was chosen to be the transplant hospital and his sisters are being tests to see if they're match. If not, they'll look for a match on the registry and if that isn't successful then his sons will be tested. They are half matches so they're not ideal.

-He is officially in molecular remission based off of a test they did with his bone marrow biopsy.

-At the moment he isn't a good candidate because he is too weak. He will have to get his strength up in the next couple of months in order to get the bone marrow transplant.

August 4th

-He had trouble breathing so he was taken to a hospital in Anaheim via ambulance.

-He had a CT scan and was given antibiotics.

-They diagnosed him with pneumonia and transferred him to Foothill Regional Hospital in Tustin.

August 6th

-He was transferred to the ICU this morning.

-He didn't eat last night and didn't want to eat this morning either.

-He was disoriented and that worried the doctor so they gave him another CT scan.

-Heather is trying to get him transferred to the UCI Medical Center since that's where he's been getting his chemo and it's a bigger hospital.

[tfw-no-tennis]

hunty movie 1

sooo ruth and i watched the first hxh movie holla

me as soon as we’re done w/the yorknew arc: OH FUCKY ITS ANIME MOVIE TIME

i love anime movies. theyre so often Entertaining As Hell, and also Not Very Good. its a very fun intersection 

overall this movie slots pretty easily into that category. it was a good time but nothing revolutionary. which is ok! and that makes sense bc its not canon apparently 

this movie was basically the ‘killua and kurapika have Trauma(tm)’ movie lmao 

we open w/killua having a trauma dream abt illumi, rehashing the stuff we saw in the hunter exam arc....we see this a few more times in the movie, and it really drives home how killua is still rlly scared of illumi and kinda just goes into a dissociative trauma state whenever illumi is around (even fake doll illumi or dream illumi, in this movie). poor kid :( :( 

regrettably tho ruth and i agree that illumis outfit in this movie was pretty sexy 

ok that whole beginning part where kurapikas eyes get stolen happens SO fast hvbfhdjshfsk its like ok guess thats the status quo for this movie!

jesus poor kurapika. they cant catch a fuckgin break huh

also that kid was totally the kid that was alluded to by kurapika at the end of the yorknew arc...so i guess that was included in the anime as a setup for this movie? 

also apparently that stuff was based off of a short story thing the author did a while ago which is p cool

leorios terrible drawing skills is hvhbjsdfbsdfngsjkdf

also leorio is so tender w/kurapika hhhhhhh im gonna die. im gonna gay die

and gon and killua are just. tiny soulmate boyfriends ok 

ah yes i see the obligatory movie original character who befriends the protag

it kinda cracks me up how hostile killua is to retz like vhbhskhdfbaj i get that its bc of Trauma and his fear of betrayal/betraying but it also reads as killua being a Jealous Gay which is kinda hilarious 

ruth and i when hisoka shows up: [prolonged annoyed groaning and dismayed yelling]

hisoka literally just shows up to sow chaos and throw around information to stir shit up huh

of COURSE the villain is the former 4th spider thats like. easy choice lmao 

it might just be the fansubs but i feel like there were strong implications that hisoka and 4th spider guy fucked bhjdfashfdjnakn

the most unbelievable thing abt this whole thing is that hisoka didnt kill that doll guy lmao 

ohhh shit its uvo

OHHH SHIT NOBUNGA AND MACHI....its so bad but i really like the troupe members and when they show up im like !!!!!!!

machi is so cooooool

aughhhh its like....i feel bad for nobunga for having to face down uvo like this....and THEN when pakunoda shows up too :( and nobunga tells her doll ‘rest in peace now’ or something when he cuts her down....oof. but also like theyre evil murderers so im!?! conflicted?!?!

also the shadow beast guys that uvo killed showing up and then proceeding to do LITERALLY NOTHING was kinda hilarious

and damn so technically the troupe is on the same side as the main crew, what with all of them wanting to wreck omokages shit

also omokage looks like sephiroth lmaoooo 

ill be honest i barely know what sephiroth looks like but ruth said this and i felt in my bones that its true 

ok i gotta talk abt the kurapika backstory stuff bc OUUGHGHGHGHGH my fucking UWUS BITCH!!!!

seeing a bunch of kurta was sad....and seeing baby-er kurapika OUGH and also pairo is sooo cute and him and kurapikas friendship is so pure 

kurapika is so different :( theyre like, so much more innocent and excitable....thats so damn sad bro wtf 

pairo pulling some slick moves swapping that little potion thing - all while using his blindness as a cover - was so good...no wonder he and kurapika get along so well 

also gotta say its even more brutal that one of the main reasons kurapika didnt get Big Murdered w/the rest of the kurta is bc pairo pulled this stunt - if he hadnt, kurapika wouldve failed the test and never would have left 

also kurapika saying theyre gonna find someone who can help w/pairos eyes ;_; the similarities w/leorios backstory/motivation makes me die 

and seriously im still caught up at how innocent and pure kp is oooof ough 

tho still defs the kurapika we know....theyve seemingly always had a temper, what with the reaction to the dudes in the market 

like, kurapika did NOT hold back...even after finding out that they were just part of the test! tho i do get it bc they insulted pairo...kurapika’s love for their friends/stalwart need to defend their friends is clearly a big thing 

also the market people’s reaction to seeing kp’s red eyes is rlly interesting to me...are the kurta like, known to anybody? or are they more of a vaguely talked-about group that like, ‘probably exists’? or is it that people know abt them but not the red eyes thing? it seems like these people, if any, would know, bc this market is seemingly a day’s travel from where the kurta live....i want more kurta lore bro!!

i big love pairo helping kurapika cheat like that....such an interesting twist, and makes it obvious that theirs is a friendship of equals 

anyways i loved that flashback stuff and it just drives home how absolutely fucked up and horribly sad kurapikas whole existence is, especially in this movie w/pairo’s doll being used against them

n e ways back to the non flashback stuff

i love that gon’s super nose returned for this movie omg 

im just auhghghghgh gon and killua know each other so well uwu....

aaaand illumi (well, doll illumi) is back to fuck shit up for poor killua

ugh it still gets me how clearly terrified of illumi killua is...we dont really see him act like this any other time :( and the fact that doll-illumi was able to scare killua enough to get him to run away and leave gon behind (albeit briefly) was oof 

gon jumping in front of killua and getting his eyes stolen instead....baby boyyyy oughhh

also can i just say thank fuck they didnt replace illumis eyes w/gons bc THAT wouldve been some serious nightmare fuel lmao 

cant believe killua then ran away again and walked emo-ly on the train tracks 

and THEN he saw a train coming and was like oh well :( guess ill die :/ JESUS KID 

but gon w/his Big Sniff Powers comes to the rescue!!

it was so cute how gon told killua that killua didnt run and abandon him - they were working together to fight :’) gon understands killua so well 

i love how the squad then squads up to fight omokage...with half of them being blind lmao 

and in the half that isnt blind is leorio, who STILL doesnt know nen, and literally brings a knife to a nen fight 

i totally saw the whole ‘retz is a doll and her older brother is omokage, and retz actually died a while ago’ thing coming lol but still, not bad

all omokage does is talk abt the beauty of his dolls or w/e like ENOUGH bro 

kurapika fighting pairo and killua fighting illumi (AGAIN) was all so fucked up they shouldve switched opponents for less trauma oof 

and poor leorio is literally no help vhhvdijfhjbashkj he just gets throw around this whole time

kurapikas fight against pairo was sad bc it was such a fucked up situation...kp did gr8 tho, i liked them saying that this isnt the real pairo, cause pairo would never say/do these things. still and extremely sucky situation to be in! 

meanwhile its the gon and killua vs doll-illumi rematch...and this illumi is like, a version of illumi drawn from killuas mind/heart (or something idk, it was kinda glossed over which i understand), which means that hes extra scary and focused on telling killua how much hes just a mindless killing machine who cant have friends 

but luckily we have gon here to help snap killua out of his trauma haze, which certaintly wasnt the case at the hunter exam - so it was kinda nice to see how things went w/gon around :’) they work so well together oughhhhh....and they love each other so much broo gay preteen love real 

hisoka just fuckgin materializing in the house place to help sow more chaos....unbelievable 

me: i bet hisoka wont want to fight doll chrollo bc its not The Same as real chrollo 

ruth: no i think he will bc hes a whore 

hisoka: [fights doll chrollo] 

me: oh shit u right 

kurapika: ok omogake its time for you to FUCKING DIE- 

and then killua stops them and says that he’ll do it, be he doesnt want kurapika to kill anymore :( :( :( bro im sooo fucking sad. killua rlly b out here thinking that hes already too far gone to matter when it comes to murder, but he doesnt want his friends to end up like that, so he might as well take on that burden, because whats one more person’s death on his hands? (EVEN THO HE SAID HE DIDNT WANT TO KILL ANY MORE...but theres exceptions when it comes to saving your friend’s souls and whatnot) :( :( AUGHHH

but luckily retz comes THRU with some good ole fratricide

killua: [takes notes]

the fact that the phantom troupe just fuckgin shows up and is like oh hey its you guys. this casual enemy stuff kills me lmao i love it 

then they just fuckgin LEAVE and theyre like welllll we cant rlly fight u bc of chrollo’s state so by i guess. its NOT On Sight but someday it will be! YOU TOO HISOKA DONT THINK WE FUCKIGN FORGOT ABOUT YOU. 

dramatic house burning! and rip retz, saw that one comin tho 

when they all went thru and said their life goals and then killua was like shit i dont have a cool definitive anime goal LMAOOOO

but THEN gon said his goals should be to stay by gon’s side UHMMM???? baby gays AUGHHHHH and killua is just like lovestruck AUGHHHH 

Gays Win 

then they all peace out to resume the next arc lmaoooo

and then we see flashes of other characters, like the blonde girl (who ruth and i totally thought retz was, seeing thumbnails from this movie....we were like w8 hasnt that girl not been introduced yet??? lmao)

we also see some dude w/long hair and a hat who ive never seen before but ruth went OHHH ITS SCYTHE GUY!!! so i guess hes gonna b important?? lol 

and then we saw chrollo....still in the same place the squad left him vbhajfdjkahsbfkdjabhsukfdj CAN HE NOT GET DOWN FROM THERE W/OUT NEN OR AN AIRSHIP??? THATS SO FUCKING FUNNYYYYYY ARE YOU KIDDING ME 

general thots:

so this was very much an Anime Movie, in that they cant like, advance to plot or develop the characters much, bc its a movie. and this one is non canon

it was enjoyable but i do feel like it was much more typical shounen then hxh usually is...like, i feel like this was made by the same people who make like, the naruto movies or w/e, and w/the same sort of approach/attitude 

this isnt necessarily bad - i LIKE shounen for a reason - but it was a bit noticeable bc it wasnt quite as smart as hxh is usually, and it rehashed a lot of stuff weve already seen in this show itself 

but still i think it did a good job w/what it had, and it had some good angst, and everyone was very gay which is good

the art style was SLIGHTLY wack but it wasnt as bad as i thought itd be 

overall a fun time like most anime movies. didnt reinvent the wheel but i had a good time. im excited for the greed island arc, and im also disproportionately excited to watch the hxh musical bc that is a thing that exists and i MUST see it asap bc that sounds like the kind of hilarious wackiness that appeals to me specifically

so thats it...later! 

[weavingthetapestry]

15th September 1507: Establishment of Scotland’s First Printing Press

(The devices of Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, Scotland’s first printers)

On this day 512 years ago, King James IV granted a charter under the privy seal to the partnership of Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar. This is the earliest record of Scotland’s first known printing press, established around the same time by Chepman and Myllar, in the Southgait of Edinburgh. Although the press was destined to be short-lived, in its brief career it printed several notable books, including poems by Dunbar, Henryson, and Lydgate, and also the Aberdeen Breviary, the Scottish liturgy compiled by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen. Several of Chepman and Myllar’s prints have survived (some in very fragmentary states) and constitute an important source for the history of Scottish literary culture.

The king’s charter, granted at Edinburgh on 15th September 1507, served as a general notice to his officers and lieges not to hinder “our lovittis servitouris” Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, who had, “at our instance and request, for our plesour, the honour and profitt of our realme and liegis, takin on thame to furnis and bring hame ane prent with al stuf belangand tharto and expert men to use the samyn”. The two men who benefited from the charter- Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, were both burgesses of Edinburgh but had quite different backgrounds. Walter Chepman was a wealthy merchant and property owner, who had connections with the royal court (among other things, he received livery for the king’s wedding in 1503) and had even been employed as a clerk by the influential royal secretary Patrick Paniter. He traded in wool, cloth, wood and various other items, but had little obvious experience of the print trade, so his role in the partnership was probably to provide the capital and business expertise. 

Chepman’s partner Androw Myllar is a little more obscure, but we can be reasonably certain that he had some experience of printing and the book trade. He and his wife are mentioned in the Treasurer’s Accounts as having provided books for the king on several occasions, and when his wife was handling the business in Scotland, Myllar, like many other Scots traders, was probably abroad, organising imports and making business connections on the continent. This gave him the perfect opportunity to witness the development of printing in the Low Countries and France, and his name has been associated with two books printed in Rouen in Normandy-  Joannes de Garlandia's “Multorum Vocabulorum Equiuocorum”, in 1505, and the “Expositio Sequentiarum” in 1506. It is clear from a colophon in the former of these books that Myllar had some role in the printing or commissioning of the book, but it is unlikely that he printed it himself. Nevertheless it seems probable that it was in France that Myllar learnt the tools of the trade and acquired the press and ‘”expert men to use the samyn” which were brought to Scotland in 1507. Certainly the printers’ devices used by Chepman and Myllar on their books (see above) show French influence- Walter Chepman’s, with its wild man and woman beneath an oak tree, framing a shield bearing his initials, is very similar to that of the mark of Philippe Pigouchet, a printer of Paris. Androw Myllar’s meanwhile, behind the small shield bearing his initials and a merchants’ mark, includes a miller carrying grain to a mill as a punning allusion on his name (a device very popular in France) and two shields bearing the fleur-de-lis. 

(The Cowgate in darker days- the dilapidated turreted building was Cardinal Beaton’s House, a survivor of the early sixteenth century which sat at the bottom of Blackfriars’ Wynd until the 1870s. In 1509, when Chepman and Myllar’s press was in business nearby, it was owned by the Archbishop of St Andrews).

The two men set up shop in a tenement belonging to Walter Chepman in the “Southgait”- or the Cowgate- of Edinburgh, at the corner of Blackfriars’ Wynd. Although in later centuries the Cowgate would become notorious for its slums, in the reign of King James IV it was a relatively new and fashionable address, where many prominent courtiers, nobles, and prelates had their town houses. It is clear from the privy seal charter which serves as the earliest evidence of the Southgait press that the fledgling printing business was not set up on a whim. The charter states that it was founded “for imprenting of the bukis of our lawis, actis of parliament, croniclis, mess bukis and portuus, efter the use of our realme, with additionis and legendis of Scottis sanctis now gaderit to be ekit thairto, and al utheris bukis that sal be sene necessare, and to sel the sammyn for competent pricis be our avis and discretioun, thair labouris and expens being considerit.” As well as this laudable yet broad call for the printing of Scottish legal, historical, and spiritual texts, one work in particular was singled out by the king’s charter, as it was “thocht expedient be us and our counsall that in tyme cuming mess bukis, manualis, matyne bukis, and portuus bukis efter our awin Scottis use (...) be usit generaly within al oure realme”. The work which was to answer this need was the book now known as the Aberdeen Breviary, “with legendis of Scottis sanctis as is now gaderit and ekit be ane reverend fader in God and our traist counsalour William, bishop of Abirdene”. For centuries the liturgy used in Scotland had been an amended version of the Sarum (Salisbury) use of England, with some native Scots influences and borrowings from the Low Countries. Now though, King James IV and his senior clergy were particularly anxious to develop a distinctively Scottish liturgy which would strengthen the ‘national’ church. To this end William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, the keeper of the Privy Seal, founder of the University of Aberdeen, and an important royal counsellor, had drawn together dozens of legends and feast days of Scottish saints- from the famous St Ninian and St Mungo to the more obscure St Mortlach- and developed a liturgy which emphasised Scottish styles of worship. As English and French publishers were unlikely to print breviaries solely for export to Scotland however, the bishop’s project required the resources of native printing press- and with the foundation of Chepman and Myllar’s Southgait press, this finally became possible.

It was to be a few years before the printing of the Breviary became a reality however. In the meantime, the Southgait press seems to have printed short pieces of a more popular nature, and we are fortunate that nine of these prints, produced c.1508, were rediscovered in the eighteenth century after years of obscurity (they are now in the care of the National Libraries of Scotland). These short blackletter prints include poems such as “The Golden Targe”, “The Two Married Women and the Widow”, and other works by the contemporary writer William Dunbar; “Orpheus and Eurydice” and “The Want of Wise Men” by Robert Henryson; “The Maying or Disport of Chaucer”, also known as the Complaint of the Black Knight and actually by the English poet John Lydgate (this piece is the earliest known printing, dated 4th April 1508); moral texts such as “The Porteous of Nobleness” and the “Buke of Gude Counsall to the King” (addressed to James II); and chivalric literature like “The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane” and “Sir Eglamore of Artois”. Some of these works are known only from the Chepman and Myllar prints, while others can be compared with manuscript collections to gain a deeper understanding of Scottish literary culture and wider European print culture during this period. Their existence also presents the possibility that the output of the Southgait press may have been larger still- a mutilated version of Blind Hary’s epic ‘The Wallace’ and a version of the “Gest of Robin Hood” have also been attributed to Chepman and Myllar, with other fragments. The survival of these early prints is therefore highly fortunate, and I recommend taking the time to browse some of the copies available online. 

The Aberdeen Breviary was finally published in 1510, by which time the press already seems to have been under pressure. Competition from cheap imports was already a threat, and after Walter Chepman’s application to the privy council in January, merchants who had been breaking the rules set out in the previous privy seal charter were named and shamed, while it was declared that nobody should be permitted to take copies of the work that Chepman had printed, in an early example of copyright law. Androw Myllar meanwhile, was no longer in the picture; possibly he had died by 1510, and he was to have no part in the final printing of the Breviary later that year. The complete Breviary ran to 1554 pages, and was split into two volumes, the first being completed by 13th February 1510, and the second by 4th June. Four copies have survived of this initial edition, each one slightly unique, but the king and Bishop Elphinstone’s hopes of permanently replacing the Sarum use in Scotland were to be disappointed. The rite continued to be used until 1534, when England began using increasingly Protestant liturgies which were not suitable in Scotland, and even then the Scots turned to the revised Roman liturgy of Cardinal Quignonez rather than the Aberdeen Breviary. 1510 was also the end for the Southgait press, as it is not known to have produced any further books after the first run of the Aberdeen Breviary, although Walter Chepman remained active as a merchant. The exact reasons behind its disappearance are unclear, although possibly the cheap imports helped hasten its demise. Nevertheless both the Aberdeen Breviary and the Southgait press, each in their own way, made an important contribution to the literary culture of their day in Scotland, and have even greater historical significance as a result.

Selected References: 

“Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland” ed. M. Livingstone

“Annals of Scottish Printing”, by R. Dickson and J. Edmond

“Glory and Honour”, Andrea Thomas

National Libraries of Scotland- various pages

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Powers of X #3

Gotta go fast!

Pride and Grace (X^2):

This issue starts off on a pretty heavy note with a look at the religion of humans in the Man-Machine Ascendancy, and what we see is that humanity has constructed a religion around transhumanism and it’s entirely negative.

So here is the catechism of this religion:

“All humans are slaves,” and humans should “accept [the machines]] dominance.”

Human nature is inherently “fallen,” and in order to ascend humans must reject “every last shred” of their humanity.

Critically, humans must reject the “heretics” who preach biological transhumanism, both becasue of the inherent impossibility of “improv[ing] on our flawed design” and their mistaken belief in free will.

And then just in case you were wondering whether Hickman was going to be at all subtle in his belief that mechanical transhumanism is bad, he then shows us a baby being baptised into this faith by having half its face lasered off as it screams in pain. 

On a more high-falutin’ level, the purple-clad cyborg priest’s concluding thought that “there is something perfect trapped in your flawed human shell” is Gnosticism turned against itself, from a religion that preached an egalitarian message of salvation through transcendant knowledge into a religion that denies the very possibility. It’s also not a good sign that the priest inverts Milton’s most famous epigram on individualistic defiance into a message of submission. 

I find it very odd that so much of the fandom can read these pages and then turn around and call Krakoan culture a cult. As I’ll get into longer, Krakoan culture is all about proving and celebrating individuality as well as community, about rejoicing in the defeat of death, and the multiple layers of call-and-response rest power in the congregation as much as the preacher. If I had to choose between these two religions, I’d pick Krakoa every time. 

And then the mutant resistance shows up bringing fire and the sword(s). And yet, in what is surprising for a group of mutants organized and led by Apocalypse, their tone is more disappointed than hostile. More on this in a bit.

Surviving Sol Mutants Infographic:

In this org chart, we learn about the mutant resistance as led by Apocalypse. Some interesting little details here:

Apocalypse has a new group of horsemen (we don’t learn that the first horsemen who Hickman has been emphasizing so much died during the fall of Krakoa until later), with Logan in the War role, Kuan-Yin Xorn as Death, North as Pestilence, and Krakoa/Cypher as Famine.

This group includes “Pureblood” (not wild about this label) mutants, Chimeras, and “Symbiotic” mutants, which covers pretty much every kind of mutant in this timeline in the same way that the All-New X-Men were designed to be internationally diverse.

While some of these designations - War for Wolverine and Death for the nihilist Xorn - make sense, there’s something really ironic about the plant-man representing Famine, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a clear link between North and the concept of Pestilence.

North as a second generation Lorna Dane/Emma Frost hybrid became a fan favorite despite uttering very few words, I guess because of the interesting combination of Magneto’s costume in Polaris’ colors and pink telepathy powers. 

For her part, Moira stands in as “Mother” of the younger mutant team (which I guess makes Apocalypse the “Father” of the older team), making this resistance cell a Brady-style fused/found family.

I was wrong about which generations Rasputin and Cardinal belong to: despite the fact that Rasputin is named Rasputin IV, both she and Cardinal are third generation Chimeras. Cardinal’s powerset seems to include Nightcrawler-style teleportation as well as Jean/Rachel/Nate-style telepathy. No idea who Freeman corresponds to, but no one else seems to know either. 

The Church, the Church is On Fire!:

On the other side of town, the Machine half of the Ascendancy reacts to the distraction attack. Omega Sentinel both seems to care more about humanity and be more human both in terms of her interests and her affect, while noted sociopath Nimrod the Lesser advocates for human genocide, just in case you were wondering who the bad guys were.

A further sign that we shouldn’t let our pre-existing knowledge color our interpretation is that we find out that the mutant resistance “have always sought to free the humans in some hope that together they might overcome the inevitability of” Nimrod. Needless to say, fighting to save “a world that hates and fears them” hasn’t exactly been Apocalypse’s wheelhouse, but it’s a sign that existential struggle changes all kinds of people’s characters in unexpected ways.

I really like the idea that mutants and humans are two peoples “divided by one language,” because it’s an interesting counter-point to Magneto’s argument in House of X #1 that a mutant language is a necessary precondition for cultural separation.

Further evidence for my thesis about AIs and analysis paralysis: Nimrod the Lesser’s obsession with trying to “disassemble the variables” and his total lack of interest in more qualitative understandings of his opposition leads him to delay just long enough to allow the resistance to get away with their data and unleash a singularity in his capital. Can’t help but see a parallel there with the Phalanx and other intelligences.

We move from there to a Highly Thematically Significant ecumenical debate between the cyborg purple priest and Cardinal, who describes himself as “a pacifist who’s been pushed to the brink” (much like Xavier?) and in the process has abandoned many of his own beliefs, even “overcome my genetic predispositions” for a higher purpose. (Which itself is thematically significant, given that the cyborg purple priest explicitly denied that one could avoid genetic destiny.) Cardinal wants to know why the priest would betray humanity on behalf of a malevolent divinity, but it’s not clear whether his own form of self-destruction is much different (although given that Cardinals deny the self, did the “terminal apocalypse seed” destroy his authentic self or create one?). 

For his part, the cyborg priest chooses veneration of the Great Machine above all else, seemingly dying in a state of religious ecstasy. There’s also another interesting contrast being drawn here - after Magneto positioned the mutants as pagan “gods,” we have a decidedly monotheistic capital-G “god” in the form of Omega Sentinel. 

Buying Time/Space:

As his X-Men prepare to go down swinging to buy him enough time, Apocalypse and his strike team make it to the data-base. I know that Hickman is usually described as more of a world-builder than dialogue wrioter, but I loved the line “I am older than even the idea of machines.” (Not so sure that’s true, Ancient Egypt loved itself some simple machines, but he could be referring more specifically to the computer.) 

We also learn that the data they’re looking for is “when Nimrod came online,” which initially sounds unimportant...up until we see Moira and realize that historical data is priceless when you’re dealing with time-loopers.

Nimrod is alerted by Cypher/Krakoa’s accessing of the data, but it’s worth noting that Nimrod doesn’t know what they’re looking for. He’ll describe it as “old data and machine lore,” but he clearly can’t recall and hasn’t integrated the data that’s been acquired into his own mental framework - which raises the question of whether the Phalanx or higher ups do any better with the data they’ve consumed. 

In the mean-time, Rasputin and Xorn unleash his singularity in order to sideline Omega Sentinel and buy their cause a little more time. There’s an interesting parallel with what Erasmus will do in House of X #3, but the singularity adds another level.

Omega’s question “do you have any idea of what lies at the heart of a real black hole” is even more ambiguous in the wake of Powers of X #5, where we learn that there are massive AI societies inside black holes. Is the Man-Machine Ascendancy a vassal of one of these, has Omega seen one? Or is she referring to a more abstract idea about the ultimate death of all things? (Watching A Brief History of Time messed me up as a kid.)

But just as the X-Men of X^1 underestimate the self-sacrificial tenacity of Orchis humans, Omega underestimates that of the X-Men and so a singularity is unleashed on Earth. Does this destroy the planet, in the same way that the singularity of the 4th Generation Chimeras wiped out Mars? Do Rasputin, Xorn, or Cardinal end up in another time/place as the tarot cards from Powers of X #1 would suggest? Is their desination one of the Titan Societies?  

In a parallel act, Apocalypse sacrifices himself to get the data away. Even as Nimrod is giving his big speech about how Apocalypse is no longer the “fittest of all,” we see how the Big A has clearly moved beyond that conception of himself, to embrace a larger cause he’s willing to die for.

As Aocalypse is dying, Wolverine awakens Moira in her ninth life and kills her so that she can bring the data about Nimrod into her tenth life. Which is one main reason why I’m really skeptical we’ll see a reboot into an 11th life at the end of the mini-series, because otherwise why devote half or more of your run-time to what she’s learned in this life if the next one is the really important one?

Infographic of the Ninth Life of Moira X:

I just realized that Moira’s last name works as both a play on the Nation of Islam’s tradition of giving out X as a new last name symbolic of the heritage destroyed by slavery (although the X-gene probably gives that a different symbolism for Krakoan mutants), and the number 10. Yes, I can be really short-sighted sometimes.

So what new information do we get about Life 9?

Well, the Apocalypse War goes well for mutants for fourteen years, with Avengers World defeated three years later, and the Annihilation Wave repelled eleven years later. Crucially, however, Apocalypse is unable to prevent Nimrod from coming online in Year 50, and within six years the mutants lose most of their earthly power, forcing a retreat to Krakoa and the adoption of Sinister’s breeding program. This buys the mutants about thirty years, but Krakoa’s fall in advance of the collapse of Mars suggestsa that it was never more than a band-aid.

Note that once again Moira goes into a coma. Man, by this point, she and Emma are going to have plenty to talk about wrt to their Sleeping Beauty syndromes.

[ilovebtsandexoalot]

rosie

pairing: yoongi x reader 

genre: angst, fluff

You exited your chaotic home early on that Wednesday morning. Your sister had taken the last of the quinoa cakes and you had had enough, so you opted for walking to school rather than enduring an extra 5 minutes with your sister even if it did mean having to leave 20 minutes earlier.  

You didn't mind walking for another reason though. Spending time with Yoongi had you half in ecstasy he was your best friend and you enjoyed sharing banter. He was also your crush. Now you knew to an outsider this may seem great seeing as you live right next door to each other, therefore you get to spend a lot of extra time with him. However, for you its different. You were crushing on him, and you were crushing damn hard. The only problem was, not only did he have no idea you felt this way but he also had a crush on someone else. To make this whole awful situation worse his crush was the most kind perfect beautiful girl you had ever seen, Rosie. 

Even though all of your friends had said otherwise, you couldn't help but think that you were just, well Sophie, nothing special really. If you were pretty, Rosie was stunning. If you were kind, she might as well have been the reincarnation of Mother Teresa, you supposed. Every time he talked about her to you, (which was a lot) because you were his best friend damnit and you couldn't pretend that you didn't like her or discourage him because the you'd seem like a shitty friend PLUS you did like her because who wouldn’t. Him talking about her felt like daggers through your heart. It felt like you were running in a race that you knew you'd never win. 

That morning you exited your driveways and the exact same time. You too always shared such remarkable timing.You were always in perfect sync. Your heart always screamed “THIS IS A SIGN YOU’RE CLEARLY MEANT TO BE” but the logic in your brain hastily corrected your hearts foolish mistake and washed out the disillusions with a wave of self hatred. 

You observed him. He managed to look breathtaking even in his idiotic leaf green school coat and you mentally cursed him for pulling off anything he wore. His black hair was fluffy and looked freshly washed. “Hey friend!” he said casually. Right you thought ‘friend’ because thats all you'd ever be. The one to come to when he wants to know what ring to to choose when he inevitably marries someone outstanding and completely worthy of him, while ripping you to shreds without  even knowing. 

You walked for a while in comfortable silence until he said it. The words that made the ground around you crumble to pieces and left you with no way to escape. “I think I'm gonna ask her on a date” he said confidently.  Your heart plummeted and as if you weren't already having a bad morning this made it five billion times worse. “Huh?” was all you could come up with . You just hoped to God that he was talking about something that wasn't about to rip your frail heart to shreds. “Rosie!” he said ‘“hey are you ok your voice sound a bit shaky” he said lightly punching you on the bicep. “Oh yeah I'm fine why wouldn't i be” you said hoping that your voice would betray the self destruction that you were experiencing. “Also thats sound great hope she says yes! “ you lied. You had to lie, for the sake of you friendship. What if he didn't feel the same way. How could you continue this friendship normally if he knew you harboured feelings for him and  he was fully responsible for your heartbreak. You couldn't do that, because doing that would not only ruin your close friendship, but hearing the confirmation that he really didn't love you would destroy you. You would finally plummet off the tightrope you have been trying so hard so maintain balance upon. Plus you suppose spending time with him this way was better than not spending time with him at all. 

That day at school was torture all you could think of was Yoongi and all of the threads of him being cut out of your grasp and being left with a broken heart and theres nothing you could say or do about it because nobody knows about this. to everybody else your Yoongis best friend. Nothing more. Nobody knew the pain you felt every time he looked at his love interest. And thats how it should be, because if nobody knows than nobody will ever find out especially Yoongi. 

You gathered your books for homework rather a huff as your teacher was a huge bitch and gave you a hell of a lot of homework. As you walked out of the school building you found your eyes drawn to the effortlessly stunning silhouette of Rosie along with Yoongi’s rather nervous looking one.He was doing it. There’s nothing you can do abut it. You lost him. The realisation punched you in the face. You never even had him. How can you lose something that wasn't even yours in the first place? You needed to get out. You needed to get home. You willed your tears to at least refrain until there weren't people you knew in the vicinity but it was no use. 

“y/n!” You barely heard the familiar voice over the constant ringing in your ears. You couldn't stop now. You couldn't face him now. You heard footsteps speeding up against the tarmac and felt a warm hand on your exposed arm. You reluctantly turned your head towards the confused boy. “woah woah hey hey hey why are you crying? are you ok?” You breathed a choked laugh and the question. No you weren't ok. Far from it actually. You had a constant pain in your chest because you were constantly wanting something you knew would never be yours in the way you needed it to be.  “I-I’m sorry” you choked. “I can’t do this.” you ran. Ran away from the pain. Away from his shouts of your name. Away from the boy who broke your heart and had no idea he had done it. 

You sat in your room on your bed crying and crying. Just crying. Your phone constantly ringing and Yoongi’s name flashing upon it. The ringing stopped. Had he given up? The thought brought sickness to your stomach. Did he really not care that much. Just then you heard a knock on the door. You didn't want to talk yet. You weren't ready. You needed him and you were too scared of the consequences of what you needed to say. Having him but being in constant emotional pain was better than not having him at all.

Wasn't it? 

You're parents weren't home yet so nobody would answer the door. What if it wasn't even him? What if it was your mum needing help with the shopping. You thought there was no harm in checking, So you reluctantly trudged through the hall and checked the peep hole. No mum. No sopping. Just a worried looking, incredibly gorgeous, kind and hilarious by that you had known so well. You didn't want to answer. You didn't mean to answer. You knew it wast wise. But you did it anyway. They say when you truly love someone the pull is strong and you find yourself alway drifting back. This was that. True love. The pull. You felt it and it threatened to consume you. And that is why you opened the door. 

When you opened it you saw Yoongi looking almost surprised that you did. “Come in.” you said flatly. You knew being cold was unreasonable because technically  he didn't quite know what he had done wrong, but you had had enough. He needed to know the truth before the pain controlled you. “So are you gonna tell me what I did to make you so pissed off at me or are you just gonna be bitchy and ignore me again.” He had no fucking right to say that and now you were angry. 

“You think I'm being bitchy” You almost screamed “wow how could you be this stupid” you said under your breath. “You think I'm being bitchy.” you said calmly this time. “Do you want to know whats bitchy?” you started. At this point Yoongi looked even more confused than when you told him what a period was in 4th class. “Longing, and yearning for your best friend and knowing he’ll never love you back.” you said breathlessly. 

“What are you talking about? Of course I love you” he said weakly. 

You laughed humourlessly. “Not in the same way I love you. Do you know what I���d do for you to look and me, to talk about me, to love me like you do Rosie. God I love you! How can you not see that!” You felt like all the life had been sucked from your body. “Please love me.” You whispered 

Yoongi stared blankly back at you. And so it being the painful demise of your weak heart. “I-I need to take a walk” all you could do was stand helplessly and watch him leave. Probably never to return. He grabbed his jacket and you heard the click of the front door. Thats when you sunk to the ground and cried, and cried and cried. 

You just sat there and thought about Yoongi, his hugs his touches his soft kisses at your temples that made you melt and didn't do a thing for him. All the things you had just lost. His company made you feel like you were finally happy and there was nothing anyone or thing could do to change it. Until now. Now you were alone. And your heart was broken. Forever. 

~

You didn't know how long you were asleep for. You almost had forgotten what had happened but not for long. You must have been so emotionally drained you fell asleep. But now you were faced with the soft expression of Yoongi looking fondly in your direction. It felt like a dream as he moved a strand of hair from your face and around your ear. “hey!” he said softly, “Are you awake?” you groans in response. “Good.” he said “Cause i need to tell you something.” 

“no” you said “can we just say like this for a while. Please” 

So you did. You stayed in his arms for a while. It felt just like it should. It felt perfect. It felt like Yoongi. 

“rosie said no.” he said softly. what. Was she crazy? “huh?” was all you could manage. “yeah, she mentioned something about having a boyfriend in Andrews or something.” he looked slightly dejected as he spoke. “oh I'm sorry yoongi..” you said. 

“Look y/n, I’m gonna tell you something. It may not be exactly what you're looking for but its the best i can give you right now. I’ll be honest. Ive never thought about you in that way before. BUT, if you're willing to I'm willing to try it as something more. I love you sophie not in the same way as you do yet, but I can see myself with you in the future. And that is why I'm asking you now, to go on a date with me on the condition that if it doesn't work you'll be willing to go back to friends, best friends.” 

“yes.” 

10 years later.

You and Yoongi had just finished your 10 year anniversary dinner. 10 years since you decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend. 10 years since he told you he loved you. In every way.

 It was the middle of summer. It was 9pm and as you walked through. The park where you and Yoongi had spent much of your childhood. The park where you went on your first real date. It was perfect. The sun was sinking into the horizon like quicksand. You made it to the top after a slow ascent. You walked handed in had over to the balcony type thing over looking the  bay. “Oh my God that is beautiful!” you exclaimed. “not as beautiful as you.” he smirked. “that reminds me actually.’ and that moment was when your life truly began. The moment where he knelt down one knee and spoke. “y/n y/l/n. I know we’re both young, and i know this may feel too soon to you, but it doesn't for me and well the more i think of waiting, the less i want to , and i just want today thank you for being you. Thank you for telling me your feelings so i would stop being such an idiot and realise mine. Thank you for making me study for the Leaving cert. thank you for reminding me not to eat too many koka noodles. thank you for not being Rosie. Thank you for being amazing, intelligent, beautiful you. There is not a single other person in the universe I’d rather spend the rest of my life with and thank you for letting me realise that. y/n y/l/n, will you make me the happiest man on earth, will you marry me?” By now obviously the tears were GUSHING but you didn't care. The man you adored loved you and wanted to marry you. All you could think of saying was

 “yes!”

[romancatholicreflections]

4th December >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 10:21-24 for Tuesday, First Week of Advent: ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see’.

Tuesday, First Week of Advent  

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 10:21-24

No-one knows who the Son is except the Father

Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said:

‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

Then turning to his disciples he spoke to them in private, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 10:21-24

Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

Turning to the disciples in private he said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

Reflections (9)

(i) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

Every so often in the gospels we are given a little insight into the prayer of Jesus. It is as if we are being allowed to eavesdrop on the most intimate relationship in Jesus’ life, his relationship with God, his Father. Today’s gospel reading gives us such an insight into Jesus’ prayer. It is a joyful prayer of praise inspired by the Holy Spirit. ‘Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, he said “I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and earth”’. The prayer of praise is the most selfless form of prayer there is. It is a movement towards God without any reference to ourselves. Jesus praises God for who God is and for what God is doing. What is God doing, according to this prayer of Jesus? He is revealing something really important to those whom Jesus calls ‘mere children’. God the Father is revealing to children the intimate relationship of love between himself and Jesus which leads to mutual knowledge, ‘no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son’. Who are these children who are receiving this revelation? The reference is probably to those who have the openness of the child to God’s message spoken through Jesus, in other words, the disciples. It is to the disciples that Jesus goes on to say, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see’. The disciples who are receptive to what God is showing them are contrasted to ‘the learned and the clever’, those who are so sure of what they know that are closed to what God is trying to reveal to them about the relationship between himself and Jesus. ‘Happy the eyes…’ There is a beatitude here that can potentially embrace us all, provided we have the same child-like openness to what God wants to reveal to us through his Son and the Spirit.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, First week of Advent

When we hear the term Beatitudes we probably think first of the ten Beatitudes from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that are well known to us. However they are not the only beatitudes in the gospel. This morning’s gospel reading contains a beatitude, one that is addressed to all of us, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see’. Jesus declares us blessed because we have come to see and hear what prophets and kings during the history of the people of Israel wanted to see and hear but never did. In the first reading today Isaiah looks forward to a descendant of Jesse, the father of David, on whom the Holy Spirit of God would rest in abundance. That person was Jesus and in this morning’s gospel reading he prays to God in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are fortunate to have seen and heard what Isaiah and others like him could only hope for. We may not have seen and heard Jesus in the way that his first disciples did, but we have seen and heard him in and through the gospels, in and through the church. As we prepare this Advent to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we might take a moment to give thanks to God for the gift of our Christian faith. It is a gift, God’s gift; we have done nothing to earn it. All the gifts we might receive in the next four weeks pale into insignificance alongside this great gift.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

Advent is a season of prayerful waiting for the coming of the Lord. The great Advent prayer is ‘Come Lord Jesus’. In that prayer we invite the Lord to come into our lives more fully. We ask the Lord to be born within our lives, so that we might worthily celebration the feast of Christ’s birth to Mary and Joseph. In Advent we enter into the spirit of Mary’s prayerful waiting for her son to be born, a prayerful waiting that found a special expression in her great prayer the Magnificat. At the beginning of the first week of Advent with its call to prayer, this morning’s gospel reading puts before us an example of the prayer of Jesus. His prayer was inspired by the Holy Spirit, ‘filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said...’ All true prayer is inspired and shaped by the Holy Spirit. In his prayer Jesus blesses or praises God for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children, while hiding them from the learned and the clever. Jesus’ prayer reminds us that we need the simplicity and the openness of the child to receive all that God is offering us. Advent calls on us to become like little children in that sense, to open our hearts in simplicity and humility to the Lord’s coming.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

The gospel reading this morning is one of the few passages in the gospels where the evangelists allow us to overhear the prayer of Jesus. He is portrayed as praying in the joy of the Holy Spirit. All genuine prayer in our own lives is an expression of the working of the Holy Spirit within us. Our prayer, in a sense, is only an entering into the ongoing prayer of the Holy Spirit deep within our hearts. In his prayer Jesus give thanks to God for all those who have welcomed Jesus’ revelation of his own intimate relationship with God. It is the children who have received this revelation, those considered weak and vulnerable, while those regarded as learned and clever have rejected this revelation. Jesus addresses his own disciples as among those who have received Jesus’ revelation of his own intimate relationship with God, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see. Advent is a time when we try to open our eyes more fully to what the Lord is trying to reveal to us. It is a season when we become like children so as to receive with greater openness what the Lord is offering us, a share in his own intimate relationship with God.

And/Or

(v) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

The first reading speaks about a shoot coming forth from the root or the stock of Jesse. It is one of the great visions of hope in the Jewish Scriptures. Jesse was the father of David and of David’s dynasty. The prophet sees that particular dynasty as almost dead. Yet, there is a root there and from that root will come someone who will fulfil the hopes that were associated with David and his descendants, someone on whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest with all its sevenfold gifts. As Christians we recognize Jesus as the fulfilment of that prophecy of Isaiah. In Luke’s gospel, in particular, Jesus is portrayed as full of the the Spirit of the Lord. In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke, Jesus is filled with joy by the Holy Spirit and in the power of that Spirit prays to God, blessing his Father for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children. His disciples have come to see what prophets and kings longed to see and never saw. We too are among those to whom the mysteries of the kingdom have been revealed, who have come to see what Isaiah and others longed to see and never say. For this we should never cease to give thanks, especially in this season of Advent.

And/Or

(vi) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

In this morning’s gospel reading, Luke gives us an insight into the prayer of Jesus. Jesus prays out of his unique relationship with God the Father, ‘no one knows who the Son is except the Son, or who the Father is except the Son’. Yet, it is clear from what Jesus goes on to say that this unique relationship is not a relationship that is closed in on itself. Jesus wants to draw people into his relationship with God. Jesus speaks about choosing to reveal God to others, so that others may come to know God as Jesus himself does. Jesus declares that it is children who are open to this revelation more than the learned and the clever. Jesus wants to draw everyone into his own relationship but only some people allow themselves to be drawn, those who have the openness of the child to the mystery of God. Jesus goes on to declare all who allow themselves to be drawn blessed because they have come to see what many people before Jesus wanted to see but never saw. Those of us who have been given and received the gift of faith are included within that beatitude of Jesus. Advent is a time to grow in our appreciation of what we have been given, a sharing in Jesus’ own relationship with God, and to ask for the grace to live out of that relationship more fully.

And/Or

(vii) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

Very occasionally the evangelists give us access to the content of Jesus’ prayer. This morning’s gospel reading is one of the places in the gospels where we hear Jesus praying. He praises God in the joy of the Spirit for revealing the mysteries of God’s kingdom to mere children as distinct from the learned and the clever. The learning of those who claimed to already know God and God’s will blocked them from hearing what God was trying to show them through his Son Jesus. In contrast, those who did not claim to know, who were genuinely searching, were open to receive what God was revealing through Jesus. These were the ‘children’ Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading, those who became like little children, who acknowledged their own need and were open to receive. The religious experts missed the opportunity of God’s visitation through Jesus, whereas those who would have been written off as knowing nothing of God or of God’s Law, welcomed God’s visitation and rejoiced at the year of God’s favour that Jesus was inaugurating. Jesus’ prayer reminds us that when it comes to God a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. We have to keep acknowledging our need for light. Advent is a season to enter into that poverty of spirit which keeps us open to what God wishes to show us. Such openness of spirit finds expression in the humble prayer, ‘Come Lord Jesus’.

And/Or

(viii) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

In today’s gospel reading, Luke, the evangelist, portrays Jesus at prayer and gives us access to Jesus’ intimate relationship with God his Father. This relationship is not in any sense a closed relationship, to which no one else is admitted. If, as Jesus says, no one knows the Father except the Son and no one knows the Son except the Father, Jesus also states that he, the Son, has chosen to reveal the Father to those who are open to receive this revelation. In other words, Jesus seeks to draw us into his own intimate relationship with his Father. Jesus addresses God his Father, filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus pours that same Spirit into our hearts so that we can address God, relate to God, as Jesus does. It is an extraordinary privilege to be offered a share in Jesus’ own relationship with God. That is why Jesus turns to his disciples in the gospel reading and declares them blessed or happy. They have seen and heard what prophets and kings longed to see and hear and did not. We are all included in that great beatitude. We are very fortunate to be offered by Jesus this gift of a sharing in his own relationship with God. Yet, if we are to receive this gift we need to become like little children. As Jesus says, the Father is revealed to mere children and hidden from the learned and clever. When our learning makes us arrogant and self-sufficient, we will not be able to receive the wonderful gift that Jesus is offering us. When we acknowledge our poverty before God, our dependence on God, then our hearts will be open to receive the great privilege that Jesus is offering us.

And/Or

(ix) Tuesday, First Week of Advent

In the gospel reading, Jesus makes a distinction between ‘the learned and the clever’ and ‘mere children’. It is children, those considered uneducated, who are open to the revelation of the unique relationship between Jesus and God the Father, whereas the learned and clever are closed to it. Most of Jesus’ disciples would not have been regarded as among the learned and the clever, and, yet, Jesus says to them, ‘happy the eyes that see what you see’. They have come to see what Jesus came to show us; they have come to recognize the intimate relationship of knowledge and love between Jesus and God his Father. It does not mean that learning and study are always a barrier to a relationship with God. Faith will always seek understanding; it will always question and even doubt. Yet, in the end, faith needs to go beyond understand into a realm where understanding falters and where we need to surrender to the mystery of God in Jesus. Jesus is suggesting that such a surrender often comes easier to children than to the learned and the clever. This links with another saying of Jesus in the gospels, ‘Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God’. When it comes to God and the things of God, our intellect and our learning can only bring us so far. There comes a point when we need to allow ourselves to be drawn into the deeper mystery of God,  by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and insight spoken of in the first reading.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[i-am-1134]

The Lady of Light

In the year of my 4th 6, I worked with a man at a barbeque shop that I ended up giving many names starting with ginger and eventually Red being that he had natural red hair and so as an ice breaker I liked filling his head with celtic lore and stories of red headed giants, attempting to break through his firm stances of skepticism. He had a very healthy way of dealing with knowledge, someone who clearly had no internal dispute with cognitive dissonance. I would draw conversations into topics leading to a frame of reference for some of my “bizzare” theories. Like clockwork he would say a little something like “Bullshit, total bullshit. Show me some proof.” in which id find a direction of knowledge to lead the way. He would come back and say either “Ok you got a point there.” or “I see where you get your ideas now but there are holes”. Once I figured out how open he was willing to be we began swapping hallucinogenic trips stories and he eventually said “Have you done dmt?” I answered “ Ive never even heard of it.” then he followed with some personal stories of his own. I was thinking it sounded like the helpers in psilocybin mushrooms on mega steroids and equipped with even deeper soul revelations. I was very interested at this point and just like that he said “You wanna try it?” and so a week or so later he invited me over to his place to partake.

The setting was just right, a perfect chill in the air and at the cusp of Twilight, a synchronosity with my time of power and 2 days after my date of birth. Red Began with an instruction on how to use it “ take two big hits if you just want the experience, 3 or 4 if you got the courage, and don't ride the flame.”. So going by his instruction it became obvious that sticking to my golden rule when dealing with hallucinogens and doing more than the doctor prescribes, 5 it was. He set me up on a couch in his living room facing a 9 foot window with the shades down barely seeping through the nights light, he said “Im gonna turn off the lights and leave you here with yourself.” I said “Alone? That's cool.” wondering why. Red replied with an assurance that its the best way.

With a bowl of pot and some of these yellow tiny crystals piled on top I thought “here we go” and began taking my puffs. The taste and the smell was potent, really embrassive to the nostrils yet familiar and the smoke was hard to hold in, coughing every hit.

Out of nowhere I became very aware of my hearing and focused on this sound. I then realized I was hearing my awareness and its pitch was getting higher and higher. My Whole body felt as if it had come alive with some engulfing force and every cell in my body was expressing a fraction of my awareness while bathing in it. Suddenly my attention was drawn to these eyes popping in and out of my surroundings. They would appear closed, open, peer into me, and then disappear. Following were shapes that were swiftly changing different colors and started off as the common platonic shapes but then became strange never before seen shapes with strange curves throughout glistening the colors of the rainbow one by one yet even quicker and like that, everything went away and the whole room was dark.

“What the hell happened, is this it?” I thought to myself when a light in front of me caught my eye. It was like light coming through the creases of a door. At that point I had come to realize that what was once Red's 9 ft window with blinds was now a huge metallic looking double door arched at the tops and was what appeared to be opening, letting in more of these rays of high yellow- golden light and revealing strange engravements all over it. A shield with something in some in-discernable language to me now forgotten, a sword that appeared to have flames coming off of it, two serpents on each door side going all the way to the top that looked like they were slithering down the door. I thought to myself that it must be because of the shadows on the doors surface due to the light coming through it as the doors were opening. The word Adonai engraved at the top of the door just above the shield that were both being cut in half as the door opened.

A silhouette made out of scintillating golden light in the shape of a woman appeared in the opening and began putting her foot down out of the door way. As her foot took each step downward it became clearer to me that she was walking down a crystal stair case and every step she took her shape became not only more clearer, solid looking but was changing appearance. Her feet, her legs, hips, stomach, breasts, shoulders, hands, her neck, her hair, and even all of her facial features were changing every step she took down the crystal staircase. When the morphing was over I was looking at the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen and realized that this creature was looking for my un-dividable attention and when I say that it had it, I really mean had it. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she began to crawl to me on hands and knees, popping her shoulder blades up and down like a lion or a puma. The whole time with her eyes fixated on mine and it felt like she was peering at something right through me and behind me or deep within me, she gave a quick half cocked suspicious like smile and disappeared within a flash of an eye.

All of a sudden I saw myself flying through the door way at the speed of thought and the surrounding became very incomprehensible. Seemed as if its was an environment filled with billions of electrical currents chaotically going each and every way and as quick as it came it was gone. In an instant the surroundings became a lush jungle all around me and all the trees and plants were luminescent with rich gold light streams. It seemed that the lights were responsible for the makeup of their forms. Flowers appeared to bloom out and retract back in a synchronized fashion with one another and at the speed of my heart beat. It was like the whole jungle was swaying back and forth to the beat of my breathe. There was a stream of water translucent yet emanating gold filaments of light that appeared to flow upstream as its current flowed down. It encapsulated me for what seemed to be quite a long time when my attention suddenly peered across the stream at a cluster of gold mushrooms. The golden mushrooms were so brilliant I couldn't help but smile. As I fixated on them I started thinking to myself how delicate they must be, like the wings of a golden moth. I look up from the ground and spot a big golden toadstool in the middle and sitting on top was the woman, sitting with her legs crossed and back in her original golden silhouette.

At that moment, like a lotus flower blooming in the middle of my mind space, I received what I was to come to know as a telepathic message. Each petal was like a linear conversation that I quickly found out that I could easily decipher into a coherency I could store in memory. It was as if my entire interaction with her was pre-written somehow beyond the confines of time.

The message made me realize even more the familiarity I was having with this place and the mysterious creature that appeared as a human woman. I said in my mind “Who are you?” and through the lotus message I heard “through the many ages it took you to get back here and who I am is what you want to know?” I never realized it before but at that moment I had this profound remembrance of an age old personal history and was witnessing it in it's totality and became embarrassed of my question. “Thotek” I heard and at that same instant I recollected where I actually was. I was at the point of all knowing, absolutely anything that can possibly be known was at my door step, all I had to do was ask the question. I became nervous with haste I realized that the golden jungle was fading as their luminosity was fading, so was she, and the force that I had been feeling engulfing me was beginning to wane.

“Quickly, you don't have the energy to stay here.” she said and I knew the substance was wearing off. I was completely unprepared for this gift of a lifetime and I was blowing it and I knew I was blowing it. I decided quickly and thought to her “ How do I assemble my light saber?” and “What am I ?” I heard a soft closed mouth type female chuckle that left me contemplating on the feeling of how this creature was close to me someway and out of nowhere I watched a lightsaber being assembled out of thin air. There were three main parts made out of a complexity of many parts and I realized almost instantaneously that my previous research was way off and amounted to a pile of shit. It was overwhelming but was quickly taken from me for a time because of what happened next.

The Next thing I remember I was back on the couch, no door in front of me and pitch black yet I could still see a faint dark blue hue of the living room like a silhouette of everything making it up. I was overwhelmed and depressed, I just got the greatest gift I probably will ever know and I blew it and like that a vortice appeared. It seemed to grow pretty significant in size and then a snout came through it, followed by a head, and a long body, it was a dragon, a chinese style dragon and its entire form looked like it was formed of some kind of glowing smoke. Its whiskers, its eyes, its scales, absolutely everything that made this dragon was in full detail and it was moving very slow with an enthralling grace. Another vortice opened up in front of it and it started going through when I notice another vortice and another, until the entire room was filled with this dragon going in and out of them.

“don't be afraid, if you feel ready reach out and touch.” I heard in my mind. Its power was great I could feel it. I put what felt was my hand out and became very intimidated and much to frightened so I pulled my hand back in.

At that moment a vortice opened right in front of me and I saw the dragon coming out right at me but slowly. I couldn't seem to move my body and began to brace myself for impact in the hopes of it being enough for whatever was about to come. It opened its mouth wide, it looked as if it could swallow me in one gulp and right when my upper body was within its jaws I was completely back in this reality. The last remanance of the dragon appeared as smoke swaying past my cheek and the feeling of a tingly cold energy running throughout my entire body to my core and exiting through what felt like two unseen or etheric appendages off my upper back. All I could muster out of my mouth was “......WOOOH....”

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

4th September >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 5:33-39 for Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time: ‘New wine must be put into fresh skins’.

    Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 5:33-39

When the bridegroom is taken from them, then they will fast

The Pharisees and the scribes said to Jesus, ‘John’s disciples are always fasting and saying prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees too, but yours go on eating and drinking.’ Jesus replied, ‘Surely you cannot make the bridegroom’s attendants fast while the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come, the time for the bridegroom to be taken away from them; that will be the time when they will fast.’

He also told them this parable, ‘No one tears a piece from a new cloak to put it on an old cloak; if he does, not only will he have torn the new one, but the piece taken from the new will not match the old.

‘And nobody puts new wine into old skins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and then run out, and the skins will be lost. No; new wine must be put into fresh skins. And nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. “The old is good” he says.’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 5:33-39

When the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast.

The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And he also told them a parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

Reflections (7)

(i) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s first reading, Saint Paul tells the members of the church in Corinth, ‘there must be no passing of premature judgement. Leave that until the Lord comes’. In other words, only the Lord is in a position to judge someone because, as Paul puts it, only he ‘can reveal the secret intentions of human hearts’. Only the Lord sees deeply enough to make a true judgement of others. Therefore, we need to be very slow to judge others, or even to judge ourselves. In that reading, Paul also says, ‘I will not even pass judgement on myself’. In the gospel reading we find the Pharisees passing premature judgement on Jesus’ disciples because they do not follow the Pharisees’ regulations regarding fasting. Jesus defends his disciples against this judgemental attitude, explaining that with his coming something very new has arrived. His ministry has the quality of a wedding feast, and who would think of fasting at a feast? His ministry is like new wine that calls for new wineskins, a new way of imagining how we relate to God. Jesus’ disciples have been caught up in this celebratory good news. It is not fair to judge them because they don’t want to drink the old wine. The risen Lord’s ministry continues to have the quality of the joy of the wedding feast today. His presence continues to be like new wine which requires new wineskins. The Lord is always leading us into new territory that breaks with where we have been. His presence among us is dynamic. The Holy Spirit is always ahead of us and we have to keep catching up with his leadings. It is not enough to say, ‘the old is good’, to quote the ending of the gospel reading. There is much good in the old, but the Spirit of the Lord is always breaking new ground, and that is something to rejoice in, not to complain over. What we need above all is the freedom to go where the Spirit is leading us.

And/Or

(ii) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

Something of the imagery of the wedding feast is to be found in this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus speaks of himself as the bridegroom and he makes reference to wine as a metaphor for his ministry. He speaks not just of wine but of new wine; there is a newness to what he is saying and doing, in comparison to the teaching of the scribes, the experts in the Jewish Law. The new wine of his ministry calls for new wine skins, a new outlook, a new disposition of mind and heart, a readiness to change. Faced with the new wine of Jesus’ ministry some people were saying, to quote the gospel reading, ‘the old is good’. Jesus valued the old, such as the Scriptures of his own people; he frequently quoted the Jewish Scriptures to explain his mission. Yet, he went beyond the old too. In terms of our own faith, we need to hold on to what is of value in the old. The tradition of the church, in the broadest sense of that term, has much to teach us today. Yet, we also need to be open to the Lord’s call to move beyond the old, because the tradition of the faith is a living tradition. It takes new forms in new generations. The Spirit of the Lord will always be moving us on into new territory, and we need to keep on trying to listen to what the Spirit may be saying to the church, to each one of us as members of the church.

 And/Or

(iii) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

The last saying of Jesus in today’s gospel reading seems to express an observation drawn from life, ‘nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new, “The old is good” he says’. Jesus was very aware that some people, especially the experts in the Jewish Law, were somewhat sceptical of his new way of doing things. Jesus was clearly a man of God and yet here he was, sharing table with some very ungodly people, tax collectors and sinners. He was celebrating when other religious people were fasting. He was ministering to people in life-giving ways on the Sabbath, when other religious people were treating it as a day of rest. In the gospel reading Jesus speaks of himself as the bridegroom and of his disciples as the wedding guests. It is a very celebratory image. All of this is very much in keeping with what Jesus had said in his opening sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth. He has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, a favour that knows no boundaries. Our faith is fundamentally a joyful affair. We have something to celebrate and give thanks for. We know ourselves to be continually touched by the Lord’s favour and we want to be channels of that favour to others. The new wine of the Lord’s presence is a cause for great joy, akin to the joy of a wedding feast. What we need are wineskins that match this new wine, lives that are characterized by joyful and willing service of the Lord and of each other.

 And/Or

(iv) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. In answering the question why his disciples do not fast, Jesus says that the bridegroom’s attendants cannot be made fast while the bridegroom is still with them. Jesus’ ministry is like the joy of a wedding feast; fasting is not appropriate but it will become appropriate when Jesus is taken away, after his death and resurrection. Our gospel reading is taken from the gospel of Luke. John’s gospel also refers to Jesus as a bridegroom. In that gospel John the Baptist refers to himself as the friend of the bridegroom who rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Like John we are all called to be friends of the bridegroom who rejoice at the bridegroom’s voice, who rejoice in the presence of the bridegroom. Later on in John’s gospel Jesus says to his disciples, ‘I no longer call you servants, I call you friends’. The bridegroom was taken away, as Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, but he was raised from the dead and is present among us until the end of time. Like John the Baptist, we are friends of the bridegroom who live in his presence and who rejoice greatly at his voice, at the many ways he speaks to us and is present to us.

 And/Or

(v) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

We can easily get very used to a certain way of doing things. Somebody comes along and does things differently and we can find ourselves getting a little irritated and wondering why things can’t simply be left alone. We find that kind of scenario at the beginning of this morning’s gospel reading. The Pharisees say to Jesus, ‘Why don’t you and your disciples fast and say prayers like the rest of us?’ In reply, Jesus spoke about his ministry as ‘new wine’ which is always in need of ‘new wine skins’. The Lord is always prompting us to show forth the new wine of his presence in new ways. These new ways will be in continuity with the old ways, but will move beyond them. The Lord who is always in our midst brings God’s energy to us and that energy cries out for new ways of being expressed. The Lord is always prompting us to take some new step in our relationship with him. We pray this morning for a greater openness to his promptings.

 And/Or

(vi) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus was very observant of people and of life. At the end of this morning’s gospel reading, he imagines a person who has come to appreciate wines that have matured over many years, ‘old wine’. Such a person has no interest in wines that have just recently been made. He says, ‘the old is good’. Jesus was aware that this mindset which says ‘the old is good’ can be found in areas other than that of wine drinking. He found himself up against this mindset on the part of the religious leaders of the time. There was a newness to Jesus’ teaching and behaviour which, while it excited the people, disturbed and troubled the religious experts of the day. Jesus uses the image in the gospel reading of ‘new wine’ for his ministry. This new wine simply could not be contained by the old wineskins that the religious leaders and experts were keen to preserve. There is always a newness to the Lord’s work among us. He is always prompting us to change, to be renewed, to be open to the new thing he is always doing among us. We can look for security in the old way of doing things, especially in matters of faith, but the Lord asks us to find our security in him. He asks us to entrust ourselves to his purpose for our lives, a purpose that will always keep us pilgrims, and prevent us from becoming too settled in our ways of relating to him. The author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it well when he calls upon us to ‘run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’.

 And/Or

(vii) Friday, Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time

At the end of today’s gospel reading, Jesus makes a somewhat humorous observation of human life. ‘Nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. “The old is good”, he says’. The world of Jesus was a very traditional one. What was ancient was revered. What had stood the test of time was shown respect. The new was suspect, especially in the domain of religion. The Roman authorities dismissed Christianity initially as a new superstition. It wasn’t simply one of many superstitions, religions which were not Roman, but it was even more suspect because it was new. We live in a different kind of culture, one defined more by the statement, ‘the new is good’, rather than ‘the old is good’. Innovation is more valued than tradition. Jesus speaks of his ministry in today’s gospel reading as ‘new wine’ which the old wine skins cannot contain. Yet, he did not reject his religious tradition. Indeed, he was steeped in his Jewish religious tradition. He valued and appreciated what was best in it, but he wanted to bring that tradition to completion, to fulfilment. When it comes to matters of faith, we all need to be rooted in a tradition. As followers of Jesus, we are rooted in the Christian tradition, which itself is rooted in the Jewish tradition. Yet, we also need to be open to the new ways that the Lord is working among us, the new ground he is breaking, the new paths he is asking us to take. Saint Augustine once spoke of God as ‘Beauty, ever ancient, ever new’. Our Christian tradition which seeks to express the Beauty of God revealed in Jesus is likewise both ever ancient and ever new.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[outofthewoods]

REPUTATION - ALBUM REVIEW

alright girlies here it is my first impressions (whatever I wrote down after the SS plus a few notes I made when it dropped) I AM LITERALLY....QUITE LITERALLY SHAKING....MY WIG: IS ON MARS 

READY FOR IT: At first I was kind of like…. :/ about this song but it’s actually a really good opener and a banger. Not sure I would’ve picked it as the second single but it goes all the way off. The bass has me shook Line: “he can be jailor burton to this taylor”

END GAME Very…..the weeknd vibes right ladies ?????????? this is like…..taylor’s Instagram baddie moment It is still SO WEIRD To me to hear rapping and Taylor swift in one song. Even tho we have the bad blood remix Im still….shook by Future and Taylor together ??????????? I really like this, it’s not one of my top 5 I don’t think but it’s so different from what I would've thought of for another ed/taylor collab Ed is giving me some don’t vibes..i’m into it…ed talking about the fourth of July is really iconic. Taylor telling the story of how this came about was really iconic too…I can literally picture her and ed getting drunk and being like HOWWWW COOL WOULD IT BE TO COLLAB WITH FUTURE????? LOL and then it actually happening I love her like. talk/shout/singing when she says “big reputation…” Line: “I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me” Her runs in the last chorus THANK GOD…..I NEEDED THESE VOCALS…..

I DID SOMETHING BAD THIS SONG HAD ME FUCKING QUAKING IN THE SESSION…… “If a man talks shit then I owe him nothing” THE CHORUS BANGS…..IM LITERALLY……MOUTH OPEN SHOCKED I CANT BELIEVE THIS….THE M.I.A. PAPER PLANES MACHINE GUN SOUNDS…. This is so……blank space but……..fucking darker you SINNERS “If he drops my name I owe him nothing, if he spends my change then he had it coming…” The chorus is here again Im bopping so fucking HARD WOWWWWWWWWWWWWW I’M……….CRYING AT THE VOCALIZATIONS OF THE HOOK. I’m pretty sure she said this came to her the same way she came up with “STAY!” in AYHTDWS The bridge ladies LIGHT ME UP!!! GO AHEAD AND LIGHT ME UP YOU FUCKING HEATHENS!!!! THIS SONG MAKES THE WHOLE ALBUM WORTHY OF A GRAMMY Im literally shaking like my skin is quivering….that 2000’s fade out……Please kill me

DON’T BLAME ME This is the hozier…take me to church….taylor swift version The chords are her vocals and that. Is revolutionary, Einstein found dead in Miami Line: “I would fall from grace just to touch your face, if you walk away I’d beg you on my knees to stay” The like…..wopping of the chorus is really just…..gold Her falsetto at the end of the second verse. Wig on mars This is the stoner Taylor swift song we didn't know we needed but are so thankful we have VOCALS IN THE LAST CHORUS….I NEEDED SOME RUNS AND THE PRERELEASES DIDNT GIVE THEM TO ME BECAUSE SHE WAS SAVING HER DESTRUCTION OF EVERY OTHER PERSONS VOCALS FOR THE ALBUM

DELICATE This is very Imogen heap to me…… like the layered robotic vocals. It’s very interesting…..a really good segue from DBM It’s got like a deep house….tropical feel to it that I am really enjoying girlies “my reputation’s never been worse, so he must like me for me” why does that line have me crying Taylor swift you are literally sunshine THIS IS THE CHORUS I REMEMBERED….the is it cool is it chill etc…….that’s what I thought CIWYW was after the SS for some reason ???? “do the girls back home touch you do like I do?” SECOND VERSE LYRICS Got me feeling some wildest dreams type of way she looked at me so much during this song I’m emotional, I was bopping to the chorus and she was laughing at me and winking when the beat comes in during the chorus Not a standout from the album but very cool very different good vibes man

LWYMMD Obviously a bop. I see why it’s in the middle of the album and when Taylor explained the progression of the songs this really makes a lot of sense. I’m just feeling fragile bc Taylor swift grabbed me by my cheeks, pulled me towards her, grabbed my hands, and danced with me during this song. Wow BABY I GOT MINE BUT YOU’LL ALL GET YOURS!!! We literally screamed this in each other’s faces it was so……amazing I will NEVER FORGET The video…..do we even need to remind ourselves of how fucking iconic it was When I first heard this I was so confused I had just woken up in Ireland at 6am to listen and I was like . What is this But the chorus goes all the way off tbh This is like a parallel to shake it off….the themes and messages of……being yourself and rising above what other ppl think of you…..

SO IT GOES… Ok I literally blanked this song from my memory at the session, I think bc it was right after LWYMMD and me and Taylor having our first proper moment of the night “Back against the wall….tripping when you’re gone…” This album is so bass heavy. I’m loving the studio instruments, I thought I would miss the live guitars etc but I really don’t because it doesn’t fit with the album “I’m so chill but you make me jealous” Sis we have learned from 10 years of music from you that you aren't chill al;ksdfnjksdhifbknsdfdkjf I love you mom I love the way she says so it goes! In the chorus “You know I’m not a bad girl….but I do bad things with you…” WHOMST “SCRATCHES DOWN YOUR BACK NOW…. Taylor you've done several numbers on me I stopped counting 8 years ago the whispered 1..2….3……WOW VOCALS….AGAIN……….SCRATCHES DOWN YOUR BACK NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES REALLY WILDIN OUT HUH

GORGEOUS This is such a cute song. For me it seems like one of the ones I like less, but at the session I remember being so happy listening to it because she pointed me out and called me by name when she was passing out the new merchandise….so I was chillin Also she kept winking at me during the DINGS!

GETAWAY CAR Queen of whisper singing I wanted to leave him….I needed a reason SUDDENLY I WILL ONLY EVER DRINK OLD FASHIONEDS. IVE NEVER HEARD OF ANY OTHER DRINK Okay in my mind I was like this song is :/ but it bangs to be honest! I love the chorus Should've known Id be the first to leave….this song is full of tea ladies This song to me seems like it’s about a rebound relationship that wasn’t so serious/was just a way to release pent up emotions from something awful “X marks the spot….where we fell apart…..” the pre chorus is really out here doing that sweeties The bridge has an interesting modulation that i don't know how to feel about….this whole album is like full of surprises/polarizing musical techniques so this is cool This is Taylor Swift fleshing out a metaphor/concept masterpiece to her full ability. Queen of literature who is Shakespeare I’ve never heard of him Said goodbye….in a getaway car……. The ends of the songs are so interesting on rep…….this one goes off

KING OF MY HEART “I’m better off being alone…” Miss Taylor I’m so glad that you’ve stopped thinking this because you are really….the most WORTHY person of love in the whole wide world… This is probably my least favorite song on the album. It has some remnants of getaway car in it I feel……she’s cute but getaway car is sexy and sexy destroys cute It’s a little repetitive but I appreciate it’s placement on the album………..you move to me like a Motown beat…..alright Miss king of my heart redeeming herself My broken bones are mending……….taylor I love u………why are u drinking beer when u could be having an old fashioned tho…..beer is gross

DANCING WITH OUR HANDS TIED Thank you piano I love a live instrument The story behind this song is so heartbreaking and knowing that makes….the song so much more impactful to me “You had turned my bed into a secret oasis, people started talking putting us through our paces” here’s a big fat FUCK YOU to the daily mail Again the chorus comes in and is so….huge and sprawling compared to the rest of the song…..shaking us to our very cores! I love that you can hear the frantic/anxiety she was feeling throughout the song….like the rushed vocals and drawn out lower notes…..then the chorus just coming in with GLORY I LOVE the instrumental of the chorus so much…..it’s so beautiful and a little 1989 to me. Like very eighties synth heavy We also have some VOCALS! In the bridge and last chorus! the runs are giving me life

DRESS This song is like a …… I’m kind of drunk in the meatpacking district running from bar to bar with someone I love in the cold with big coats on….tea to me The falsetto. Queen Taylor has really been expanding her vocal register and I’m FUCKING here for it “Everybody thinks they know us” circling back to the overall theme of the album. We know what she chooses to let us know and beyond that we’re just fucking guessing sinners This song is like a …… I don't really care what they think of us I just wanna really…………see your dick and I don't care what anyone thinks of that ! THE HAIR BLEACHED LINE……SHE IS LITERALLY THE QUEEN OF SELF DRAGS I CANT SHES SO SELF AWARE ITS UNBELIEVABLE…….she’s like being humorous but also referencing a time in her life that was really shitty for her so. Queen of duplicity “I woke up just in time…” this line says so much about where she was when she started seeing Joe

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS Oh girlies…..I have been so excited to hear this again since the session. She spilled some major fucking SCALDING tea before playing this so my ass was fully ready to be sloughed The alarms in the beginning…..a champagne sea…..my dream…… This is so fucking tongue in cheek about what everyone said about her #squad “I have to take them away” DEAD this is why she stopped having 4th of July parties klsadjidfnksdfd “Stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand….” Oh no…………WHO WOULD DO THIS TO MISS TAYLOR!!!!!!! “I took an axe to a mended fence….” The mhhhhhmmmmmm………. IF ONLY YOU WERENT SO SHADY SALKJFSDNKFJGM,DFLKNJGIDK WHY IS THIS SONG ABOUT ME SITTING ON TWITTER DRAGGING PEOPLE LEFT RIGHT AND CENTER Hard knock life………..TEA……during the fucking BANGER of a chorus….this is going to be so fun on tour…..SHE BETTER BE A SINGLE!!!!! hE sAiD shE saID!!!!! Here’s to mama…….yes miss Andrea here’s to u queen of the world THE BRIDGE…..SDFLSDMFJKNDNDSLJFKNFDJDSFNSD THIS IS WHY WE CANT HAVE!!!!! NICE!!!!! THINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cant even SAY IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE Heres to my REAL FRIENDS! WOW….just wow ladies this is the future liberals want

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT In my personal onion this is the most vulnerable song on the album. The first verse really has me out here crying in the club The chorus is so cute, this is a low-key banger and I wanna see her flying across the crowd during this song on tour

NEW YEARS DAY So here it is girlies….the most hyped song on the record…… Live piano. Minimal production. The concept behind this is so adorable “Candlewax and polaroids on the hard wood floor….” the most Taylor swift thing I have ever heard This relationship really seems like its forever my dudes she’s in it for the long run. She has never been so confident in a relationship that she’s CURRENTLY IN. She’s opening up DURING a relationship which is like……basically unheard of for her I love how subtle this is….the harmonies on the second chorus….crying in the club again “Hold on to the memories they will hold onto you…..” she said she's had that line ready to go for a while but couldn't find a place for it and here it is being adorable and wonderful also the line “Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I can recognize anywhere” Can I just speak on that line again….it is so beautiful and simple and shows how much she’s been through and the pain she has dealt with….and the sadness she KNOWS………..but she’s okay enough to talk about it. Im crying in the club 3.0

INITIAL RANKING: I Did Something Bad Don’t Blame Me Call It What You Want Dress Delicate Dancing With Our Hands Tied This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Look What You Made Me Do Getaway Car …Ready For It? End Game New Year’s Day Gorgeous So It Goes King of my Heart

[wonderfulmangotea]

My OC: "idk what I want my familiar to be"

Me: "Thanks fine sweetie take your time"

My other OC: "After thinking about like 3 animals for an hour, Ive finally deciding on the 4th animal that popped into my head after like 30 seconds."

Me: "sometimes it be like that, tell me so I can draw you with it."

My other OC: "It's a bobcat"

Me: *draws a super shitty version to get down the proportions then draws it perfectly the 2nd time* "And done!"

My other oc: "Thanks!"

My first OC: "I think a swan would suit me."

Me: alright cool *draws a swan with relative ease then draws her and another apprentice with their familiar, who I also have no trouble drawing*

My first OC: "on second thought....I think a ferret would suit me more"

Me: "sure thing I feel like it would suit you more as well and I feel like it would be easier to draw!"

Me, several hours later, with at least 4 pages of kind-of-ferrets drawn and at least 30 reference pictures: WHAT THE FUCK IS A FERRET??? THEIR PROPORTIONS CONSTANTLY CHANGE AND YET THEIR POINTY LITTLE FACES AND THEIR BEADY LITTLE EYES REMAIN THE SAME, EVER MOCKING ME FOR MY INABILITY TO DRAW THEIR DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE FORMS. THEY ARE AS IF GOD HERSELF SAID "Let's combine a raccoon, an otter, and a tube sock, have its fur looks like its constantly got a static charge, give them an extra dose of 'mischievious bastard juice' mixed with cocaine. Give them sharp little teeth, questionable bone existence, and the desire to steal anything and everything.

AND THE ANGELS SAID "Yeah that checks out." AND JUST LET GOD DO IT.

[wheretogofrmhere]

I wouldn’t mind if Lily and Niall were a thing, I just don’t see it happening...i mean who knows for sure but from people I’ve seen her date he doesn’t seem like her type. And about what you just posted about seeing blind, I saw an interview somewhere too (don’t remember where though) where it was mentioned as a 4th single! :)

yeah, i mean, logically i dont really have a type either if you were to line up all the guys ive dated/married (lol that sounds funny) so i dont put A LOT of emphasis on that, bc in the end its the person and clearly even tho a lot of times we go by looks at first (who we are drawn to), they’ve been following each other for awhile now on insta and she clearly has seen how he looks and his personality (from what we all see on sm) and she STILL wanted to go and meet him, so….yah its a toss up on that. i def wouldnt mind them getting together, but its really hard to even say bc he is SO busy right now. plus i have no idea about her schedule or anything. 

anyway, YES YOU MUSTVE READ THE SAME ARTICLE AS ME! hahahh i cant wait to see what hes got in store!